Mamise feared the Teutonic might, but she could not for a moment consent to accept it. There was only one thing for her to do, and that was to learn what plans she could, and thwart them. Here within her grasp was the long-sought opportunity to pay off the debt she had incurred. She could be a soldier now, at last. There was no price that Nicky might have demanded too great, too costly, too shameful for her to pay. To denounce him or defy him would be a criminal waste of opportunity. She said: "I understand. You are right, of course. Let me help in any way I can. I only wish there were something big for me to do." Nicky was overjoyed. He had triumphed both as patriot and as lover. "There is a big think for you to do," he said. "You can all you vill." "Tell me," she pleaded. "You are in shipyard. This man Davidge goes on building ships. I gave him fair warning. I sinked one ship for him, but he makes more." "You sank his ship?" Mamise gasped. "Sure! The _Clara_, he called her. I find where she goes to take cargo. I go myself. I row up behind the ship in little boat, and I fasten by the rudder-post under the water, where no one sees, a bomb. It is all innocent till ship moves. Then every time the rudder turns a little screw turns in the machine. "It turns for two, three days; then--_boom_! It makes explosion, tears ship to pieces, and down she goes. And so goes all the next ships if you help again." "Again? What do you mean by again?" "It is you, Marie Louise, who sinks the _Clara_." Her laugh of incredulity was hardly more than a shiver of dread. "_Ja wohl!_ You did told Chake Nuttle vat Davidge tells you. Chake Nuttle tells me. I go and make sink the ship!" "Jake Nuddle! It was Jake that told you!" Mamise faltered, seeing her first vague suspicions damnably confirmed. "Sure! Chake Nuttle is my _Leutnant_. He has had much money. He gets more. He shall be rich man after comes _Der Tag_. It might be we make him von Nuttle! and you shall be Gräfin von Oesten." Mamise was in an abject terror. The thick trees of the park were spooky as the dim light of the car elicited from the black wall of dark faint details of tree-trunks and naked boughs stark with winter. She was in a hurry to learn the rest and be gone. She spoke with a poor imitation of pride: "So I have already done something more for Germany. That's splendid. Now tell me what else I can do, for I want to--to get busy right away." Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see through her thin disguise. "You are close by Davidge. Chake Nuttle tells me he is sveet on you. You have his confidence. You can learn what secrets he has. Next time we do not vait for ship to be launched and to go for cargo. It might go some place ve could not find.