The Secret Wireless Part 23

"Well, they'd hardly try Premium Point because that is a private estate, and they would have difficulty in getting to the water-front."

"Then that limits them to the two others."

"Exactly. And one is as easy to get to as the other."

Captain Hardy frowned. "What are we going to do?" he asked. "We might pick the wrong place and miss them. And since there are several of these spies in the boat, and they are desperate fellows, we'd never dare divide our forces. What are we going to do?"

"Gee!" said Willie. "We just pa.s.sed Two Hundredth Street. Some town, eh, with two hundred numbered streets?"

The car rushed on. In silence the three men were considering how they should meet the situation before them.

"If only we could get into touch with our motor-boat," said one of the secret service men, "we could arrange a plan to cover every possibility."

"We've got to find what this Revere Rendezvous is," insisted Captain Hardy. "Can't you think of anything that would suggest such a name?"

The three men fell silent, pondering the matter. The car swept on.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Willie. "We've left Third Avenue, but we're going so fast now I can't make out the names on the sign-posts."

And indeed they were going. As they approached the edge of the city limits, where there was little traffic and the driver could see far ahead, he pressed his foot on the accelerator and the great car went roaring through the street at more than thirty miles an hour. And as they drew closer and closer to the open country, the man at the wheel rushed them on faster and faster. In vain Willie looked at the sign-posts. The car darted past them with baffling speed. But Willie wanted to know where he was.

"What street are we on now?" he asked, leaning toward the driver.

"The Boston Post Road," said the driver, without turning his head.

Captain Hardy caught the name and his eyes flashed. "The Boston Post Road!" he repeated. "Does this go anywhere near New Roch.e.l.le?"

"Right through it," said the driver, "only they call it Main Street within the town limits."

"Does it pa.s.s near Echo Bay?"

"It's the very road that meets the arm of the bay."

Captain Hardy turned from the driver to the other secret service men.

"Can you think of anything that would connect the name of Revere with the point where the bay touches this road?"

"By George!" cried one of the men. "You've hit it exactly. I had forgotten all about it, but there's a stone marker in a wee bit of a park, put up to commemorate the pa.s.sage of Paul Revere on his famous ride. He came down this very road, and that marker is almost at the exact spot where the road touches the arm of the bay."

"Good!" said the captain. "That is probably the place."

"Beyond a doubt. It's the logical place, too, come to think of it.

For if a fellow drove into Huguenot Park and found that somebody was trailing him, he couldn't get away. He'd be bottled up. But if he stuck to the Boston Post Road, he'd have all New England to run to.

What's more, there's a road-house near by, where cars can be left.

Things couldn't have been made to order any better."

"Then I guess our course is clear," said the other agent. "We'll leave our car near by and find good hiding-places close to the water at this point."

Meantime, the motor-boat, breasting the waves as though striving for a speed prize, had borne Henry and Roy and their older companions rapidly back over the path they had so recently traversed. Up the East River the craft went roaring, under the great bridges, that at night seemed only strings of fairy lights arching the stream, past prison walls and towering tenements, and on to the swirling rapids so recently visited.

The two boys paid little attention to what they were pa.s.sing. Already they had seen it twice. But never had either of them seen a craft like that they were in. It was one of those long, low racing boats, steered with a wheel like a motor-car, and slopingly decked over in front to s.h.i.+eld the driver. And it roared like an aeroplane as it tore through the water. For the boys in the boat were rus.h.i.+ng toward their goal almost as swiftly as their comrades on land.

What most interested Henry and Roy was the array of b.u.t.tons and k.n.o.bs and other instruments on the dashboard, like the lighting b.u.t.tons and speedometer on an automobile.

"I wonder what they are for," said Roy to Henry. "I never saw a boat like this before."

"Nor I, either," replied Henry.

"Right you are," said one of their companions. "There probably isn't another like it. It's both a motor-boat and an electric boat.

Sometimes we have to be very quiet about our work and then we would never dare go roaring along as we are now. You can hear us a mile away. So we have an electric motor and storage batteries for quiet work. When we run by electricity, we don't make any more noise than a swan."

The boys expressed their admiration. "And n.o.body could see you, either," said Roy. "The boat's exactly the color of the water. When it's as dark as this, I'll bet you couldn't see it fifty yards away."

"Well, you may have a chance to test your belief," said the agent with a smile.

"What do you think will happen?" asked Roy.

"I don't know. But when that German motor-boat goes into Echo Bay, we've got to go after it; and we don't dare be seen, either."

"What's the bay like?" inquired Henry.

"It's an irregular little sheet of water with several small islands in it; and if these Germans go clear in, we'll nab them easily. But if they don't, we may have a lively chase."

On rushed the motor-boat. Past Cla.s.son Point, past the long projecting finger of land known as Throgs Neck, with Fort Schuyler at its extremity, then northward again into ever widening waters, past Elm Point, and Hewlett Point, and Barker Point until they were fairly in the wider reaches of Long Island Sound.

On the right loomed the high and precipitous sh.o.r.es of Long Island, hardly visible in the cloudy darkness. On the left, far across the waving waters, was the unseen ragged coast of the mainland, broken by a hundred irregular indentations, studded with numberless little promontories, and fringed with islands as a woman's throat is girt with a necklace of beads. Ahead of them stretched untold miles of gently heaving water. And there, too, blazed two beacons to point the path for mariners--the Sands Point Light, topping the eastern bluff, and the fiery eye of Execution Rocks, that reared their jagged pinnacles far out from the sh.o.r.e, to tear the bottoms of unwary s.h.i.+ps.

"We'll go straight north," said the man at the wheel, "for those spies are without doubt biding their time in some sheltering cove among the islands over there. And there they will doubtless stay until the hour to meet their comrade."

He flashed a pocket torch on his watch. "We are in good time," he said. "We shall get there well before them. Then we shall have to hide and see what happens."

Straight up the Sound drove the rus.h.i.+ng racer, plunging through the rolling swells, tossing the spray to right and left. Ahead of it glowed and winked the fiery eyes of the lighthouses. Along either sh.o.r.e shone innumerable street lamps and the lights of late retiring householders. Save for themselves the water seemed deserted. The great steamers that ply between New England and the metropolis had long since pa.s.sed and vanished in the misty darkness to the north. No freighters were breasting the waves, no tugs were puffing along with strings of barges in their rear. No ferry-boats were crossing. And none of the legion of sailing craft and motor-boats, none of the thousands of pleasure yachts that sometimes dot the smiling waters in the daytime, was abroad. The little secret-service boat seemed to be alone in that vast expanse of water.

Suddenly the boat careened violently. The boys were alarmed, but their comrades merely smiled.

"We're turning," explained the man at the wheel. "Now we'll go straight into the harbor. And it will be just as well if we make less noise."

He slowed down his engine and the roaring sound died away. The boat fell off in speed, but still pushed ahead with good momentum. For perhaps a mile the boat advanced. Then the driver shut off his engine entirely.

"Those fellows might be in Echo Bay itself," he said. "They couldn't find a safer place to hide than right among the pleasure craft. We won't take any chance of being discovered. We'll just glide in like a shadow and anchor where we can watch things."

He switched over to his electric drive and the boat began to forge ahead again, but with all the stealth of a tiger in the jungle. The operation of its machinery was noiseless, and only the gentle slap of the waves against the bow gave audible evidence of its pa.s.sage. For a considerable time they rode in silence. In the thick darkness the sh.o.r.e was almost invisible while the glowing street lights that shone here and there served only to accentuate the blackness of the night.

Close together in the c.o.c.kpit huddled the pa.s.sengers, for the air was raw and chilly.

"Until we've got those fellows safe in handcuffs," said the man in charge of the party, "I don't want one of you to speak aloud. And stay down in the bottom of the boat where you can't be seen."

Noticeably the speed of the little craft fell off, It no longer drove through the waves, but slipped through them so softly that even the gentle splas.h.i.+ng at the bow was ended. Presently Henry missed the slight vibration, of which he had been but semi-conscious, and he knew that the pilot had shut off his power completely.

Now the sh.o.r.es, with their towering trees, began to loom up uncertainly in the darkness, and Henry knew that the boat was slipping into the harbor. Presently he became aware of a dark spot ahead of them on the water, then another, and another; and straining his eyes, he saw that before them lay a great company of motor-boats and sailing yachts.