ehind them declared.
"That's my job now. Didn't you hear us shouting after you, Olive and I?
Look!"

Her brother waved a telegram.

"You've got your ship?" Thomson inquired.

"I've got what I wanted," the young man answered enthusiastically. "I've
got a destroyer, one of the new type--forty knots an hour, a dear little
row of four-inch guns, and, my God! something else, I hope, that'll
teach those murderers a lesson," he added, shaking his fist towards the
placard.

Geraldine laid her hand upon her brother's arm.

"When do you join, Ralph?"

"To-morrow night at Portsmouth," he replied. "I'm afraid we shall be
several days before we are at work. It's the _Scorpion_ they're giving
me, Gerald--or the mystery ship, as they call it in the navy."

"Why?" she asked.

His rather boyish face, curiously like his sister's, was suddenly
transformed.

"Because we've got a rod in pickle for those cursed pirates--"

"Conyers!" Thomson interrupted.

The young man paused in his sentence. Thomson was looking towards him
with a slight frown upon his forehead.

"Don't think I'm a fearful old woman," he said. "I know we are all
rather fed up with these tales of spies and that sort of thing, but do
you think it's wise to even open your lips about a certain matter?"

"What the dickens do you know about it?" Conyers demanded.

"Nothing," Thomson assured him hastily, "nothing at all. I am only going
by what you said yourself. If there is any device on the _Scorpion_ for
dealing with these infernal craft, I'd never breathe a word about it,
if I were you. I'd put out to sea with a seal upon my lips, even before
Geraldine here and Miss Moreton."

The young man's cheeks were a little flushed.

"Perhaps you're right," he admitted. "I was a little over-excited. To
get the _Scorpion_ was more, even, than I had dared to hope for. Still,
before the girls it didn't seem to matter very much. There are no spies,
anyhow, hiding in the trees of Berkeley Street," he added, glancing
about them.

Thomson held up his finger and stopped a taxicab.

"You won't be annoyed with me, will you?" he said to Conyers. "If you'd
heard half the stories I had of the things we have given away quite
innocently--"

"That's all right," the young man interrupted, "only you mustn't think
I'm a gas-bag just because I said a word or two here before Gerry and
Olive and you, old fellow."

"Must you go, Hugh?" Geraldine asked.

"I am so sorry," he replied,