steel-clad battleships, their fighting-tops lost in the shadows of the
opposite hills. Beside them, obscure, with no lights visible, lay the
great transports that in a few hours, or in a few days--who knew--they
would be convoying with their precious cargo of fighting men across the
war-perilled Atlantic.

It was on the forward deck of one of these great battleships that the
eyes of the man ahead were riveted. His shadower, evidently much
concerned in his actions, crept slowly and stealthily forward,
approaching nearer and still nearer without being observed.

A dim light became visible on the warship's deck and then vanished.
Still the man stood there watching, a puzzled, anxious look coming into
his face. Quickly the light reappeared--two flashes, a pause, two
flashes, a pause, and then a single flash. It was such a light as might
have been made by a pocket torch, a feeble ray barely strong enough to
carry to the adjacent shore, a light that if it had been flashed from
some sheltered nook by the boat davits might not even have attracted the
attention of the officer on the bridge nor of the ship's watchmen.
Manifestly it was a signal intended for the eyes of some one on shore.

A muttered imprecation escaped the lips of the watcher on the Drive. He
stood there, straining his eyes toward the ship as if expecting a
following signal, then he turned and gazed aloft at the windows of the
apartment houses lining the driveway to see if some answering signal
flashed back.

And in the shadow of the buildings, hardly ten feet away but half
sheltered by a doorway, stood his sinister pursuer, motionless
but alert.