ard as I may, I can't be certain whether it
was Mrs. Neumann, or somebody else. But I wanted to speak to you about
Bessie just now."

"What about her, Jack?" asked Tom, knowing how much his chum was
concerned over the unknown fate of the pretty young girl they had met on
the Atlantic liner, and who was apparently anything but happy in the
charge of her legally appointed guardian, Carl Potzfeldt.

"There are several things she told me, half unwillingly, I admit, that I
guess I haven't said anything about to you, Tom."

"Then she confided her secrets to you, eh?" half chuckled Tom; though he
saw his chum was in anything but a humorous frame of mind. "I remember
you told me she felt very bitter toward all Germans because she had lost
her mother when the _Lusitania_ went down."

"Yes. But this had to do with her guardian," Jack continued.

"Oh, I see! Mr. Potzfeldt, Jack? You haven't felt favorably disposed
toward that gentleman at any time since first meeting him."

"Neither have you, Tom, to tell the truth!" declared the other quickly.
"In fact, as I remember it, both of us were pretty much inclined to
believe he was a paid spy of the German Government, working on some line
of dark business over in America. Well, he had to clear out in a hurry,
Bessie told me."

"Did the authorities get track of his scheming work, and was he in
danger of being arrested for plotting against Uncle Sam's interests as a
neutral?" Tom asked.

"It may have been that; but Bessie wasn't sure about it. In fact, she
seemed inclined to believe her guardian had some secret, which was in
danger of being exposed. An old friend of her mother's was interesting
himself in the matter. Given time, he might have made it uncomfortable
for Carl Potzfeldt; and so the gentleman cleared out between two days."

"Taking Bessie with him!"

"Yes. They made as if to go to Chicago, but instead hurried to New York.
When he came aboard at the last call he kept to his cabin for a time,
until we were well away from land. There has been considerable of
mystery about his actions. Bessie is afraid of him, too. She even hinted
that she believed he might have obtained control of her fortune and
herself through fraud, and that this was in danger of being found out at
the time he cut stick and ran."

"All this is interesting, Jack; but just when and how we're ever going
to learn the truth about it I'm unable even to guess. It would be like
hunting for a needle in a h