Chapter 7: A Third Machine

I confess that at first this letter dumfounded me. “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” slipped from my open mouth. The old servant stared at me, not knowing what to think.

“Oh, sir! is it bad news?”

I answered for I kept few secrets from this faithful soul by reading her the letter from end to end. She listened with much anxiety.

“A joke, without doubt,” said I, shrugging my shoulders.

“Well,” returned my superstitious handmaid, “if it isn’t from the devil, it’s from the devil’s country, anyway.”

Left alone, I again went over this unexpected letter. Reflection inclined me yet more strongly to believe that it was the work of a practical joker. My adventure was well known. The newspapers had given it in full detail. Some satirist, such as exists even in America, must have written this threatening letter to mock me.

To assume, on the other hand, that the Eyrie really served as the refuge of a band of criminals, seemed absurd. If they feared that the police would discover their retreat, surely they would not have been so foolish as thus to force attention upon themselves. Their chief security would lie in keeping their presence there unknown. They must have realized that such a challenge from them would only arouse the police to renewed activity. Dynamite or melinite would soon open an entrance to their fortress. Moreover, how could these men have, themselves, gained entrance into the Eyrie unless there existed a passage which we had failed to discover? Assuredly the letter came from a jester or a madman; and I need not worry over it, nor even consider it.

Hence, though for an instant I had thought of showing this letter to Mr. Ward, I decided not to do so. Surely he would attach no importance to it. However, I did not destroy it, but locked it in my desk for safe keeping. If more letters came of the same kind, and with the same initials, I would attach as little weight to them as to this.

Several days passed quietly. There was nothing to lead me to expect that I should soon quit Washington; though in my line of duty one is never certain of the morrow. At any moment I might be sent speeding from Oregon to Florida, from Maine to Texas. And this unpleasant thought haunted me frequently if my next mission were no more successful than that to the Great Eyrie, I might as well give up and hand in my resignation from the force. Of the mysterious chauffeur or chauffeurs, nothing more was heard. I knew that our own government agents, as well as foreign ones, were keeping keen watch over all the roads and rivers, all the lakes and the coasts of America. Of course, the size of the country made any close supervision impossible; but these twin inventors had not before chosen secluded and unfrequented spots in which to appear. The main highway of Wisconsin on a great race day, the harbor of Boston, incessantly crossed by thousands of boats, these were hardly what would be called hiding-places! If the daring driver had not perished of which there was always strong probability; then he must have left America. Perhaps he was in the waters of the Old World, or else resting in some retreat known only to himself, and in that case--

“Ah!” I repeated to myself, many times, “for such a retreat, as secret as inaccessible, this fantastic personage could not find one better than the Great Eyrie!” But, of course, a boat could not get there, any more than an automobile. Only high-flying birds of prey, eagles or condors, could find refuge there.

The nineteenth of June I was going to the police bureau, when, on leaving my house, I noticed two men who looked at me with a certain keenness. Not knowing them, I took no notice; and if my attention was drawn to the matter, it was because my servant spoke of it when I returned.

For some days, she said, she had noticed that two men seemed to be spying upon me in the street. They stood constantly, perhaps a hundred steps from my house; and she suspected that they followed me each time I went up the street.

“You are sure?” I asked.

“Yes, sir and no longer ago than yesterday, when you came into the house, these men came slipping along in your footsteps, and then went away as soon as the door was shut behind you.”

“You must be mistaken?”

“I am not, sir.”

“And if you met these two men, you would know them?”

“I would.”

“Good;” I cried, laughing, “I see you have the very spirit for a detective. I must engage you as a member of our force.”

“Joke if you like, sir. But I have still two good eyes, and I don’t need spectacles to recognize people. Someone is spying on you, that’s certain; and you should put some of your men to track them in turn.”

“All right; I promise to do so,” I said, to satisfy her. “And when my men get after them, we shall soon know what these mysterious fellows want of me.”

In truth I did not take the good soul’s excited announcement very seriously. I added, however, “When I go out, I will watch the people around me with great care.”

“That will be best, sir.”

My poor old housekeeper was always frightening herself at nothing. “If I see them again,” she added, “I will warn you before you set foot out of doors.”

“Agreed!” And I broke off the conversation, knowing well that if I allowed her to run on, she would end by being sure that Beelzebub himself and one of his chief attendants were at my heels.

The two following days, there was certainly no one spying on me, either at my exits or entrances. So I concluded my old servant had made much of nothing, as usual. But on the morning of the twenty-second of June, after rushing upstairs as rapidly as her age would permit, the devoted old soul burst into my room and in a half whisper gasped “Sir! Sir!”

“What is it?”

“They are there!”

“Who?” I queried, my mind on anything but the web she had been spinning about me.

“The two spies!”

“Ah, those wonderful spies!”

“Themselves! In the street! Right in front of our windows! Watching the house, waiting for you to go out.”

I went to the window and raising just an edge of the shade, so as not to give any warning, I saw two men on the pavement.

They were rather fine-looking men, broad-shouldered and vigorous, aged somewhat under forty, dressed in the ordinary fashion of the day, with slouched hats, heavy woolen suits, stout walking shoes and sticks in hand. Undoubtedly, they were staring persistently at my apparently unwatchful house. Then, having exchanged a few words, they strolled off a little way, and returned again.

“Are you sure these are the same men you saw before?”

“Yes, sir.”

Evidently, I could no longer dismiss her warning as an hallucination; and I promised myself to clear up the matter. As to following the men myself, I was presumably too well known to them. To address them directly would probably be of no use. But that very day, one of our best men should be put on watch, and if the spies returned on the morrow, they should be tracked in their turn, and watched until their identity was established.

At the moment, they were waiting to follow me to police headquarters? For it was there that I was bound, as usual. If they accompanied me I might be able to offer them a hospitality for which they would scarce thank me.