ped inside the door and beckoned to that gentleman.
Asking permission to retire for a few moments, Itto passed out of the door
with the newcomer. Instead of going on down the secret staircase, however,
the two opened a door at the end of the little hall upon which the front
room gave, and appeared in the apartment where Ned was hiding.

The boy, however, was not in view from the place where they stood, and
they had no reason to suspect his presence there, so he remained quiet and
listened with all his ears to the low-voiced conversation carried on
between the two.

"And these are the latest?" Itto asked, referring to papers in his hand.

"Yes, they are the last."

"And the showing--"

The newcomer shrugged his shoulders.

"You see for yourself," he said.

"Well," Itto said, directly, "it does not matter, does it?"

"Not in the least."

"If the information does not leak out," Itto went on, "there will be no
change in our plans. We cannot afford to wait."

"For our country's sake there must be no delay."

Ned was slowly piecing this talk with the one which he had heard from the
front room, and the significance of it all was sending little shivers down
his back. He thought he understood at last.

As the two men left the room Ned heard a paper rustle on the floor, and at
once made search for it. It was a drawing, similar to the one discovered
in the bomb-room at the old temple, and was a complete sketch of the Gatun
dam, the spillway, the locks--everything was shown, with character of
fills and suggestions regarding the foundations. Here and there on the
drawing were little red spots.

The significance of the red marks brought a date to Ned's mind. The
drawings found in the bomb-room had borne a date, Saturday, April 15. If
what he surmised was correct, he had only a little more than twenty-four
hours in which to work. In the period of time thus given him he might,
without doubt, succeed in averting the destruction of the big dam. But
that was not the point.

His business there was not only to protect the Gatun dam but also to get
to the core of the conspiracy and bring the plotters to punishment. The
men who were plotting on the Isthmus were also plotting in New York. An
inkling of the true state of affairs came to him, and he saw that in order
to accomplish what he had set out to do his reach must be long enough to
stretch across the Atlantic and there grapple with the subordinates in the
treacherous plot