"Get to work!" he ordered. "Is this the way Imperial Germany is to conquer the earth--by sleeping?" Grumbling the men obeyed. The spy looked about him. "Where's Schmidt?" "Here," came a voice from a corner where a man was unrolling himself from a dirty blanket. "How's that wireless controller?" "I'm having trouble with it." "And yet you sleep?" The spy was raging now. "You get up here and find out what's wrong and remedy it. That wireless controller must be in absolute working order--understand? It can't fail! And what's more, it's night and day work for every one of you men from now on. This thing must be ready to launch the minute the fleet weighs anchor. The Ansonia plot's failed. Everything depends on us now!" The men grumbled again in answer. A curse from the spy and they settled down to work--to put the finishing touches on a wireless controller and on a torpedo, large enough and powerful enough to tear even a battleship to fragments! CHAPTER III THE PLOT AGAINST THE FLEET "What's happening on the dictograph?" Harrison Grant asked the question as he entered the room adjacent to the Hohenzollern Club and looked anxiously toward Dick Stewart the operative who sat with the receiver to his ear. Stewart shook his head. "Same old thing. Arguments. Conversation. Jokes. Drinks. Toasts to the Kaiser. That's all I can catch. It's just the same as it's been ever since the night of the Naval Ball. You don't suppose that they could have gotten a tip that we're in here, do you?" Harrison Grant shook his head. "Hardly," was his answer. "We would have known something about it. They'd rip that dictograph out so quickly they'd drag you through the hole after it. No--they're simply doing their talking in other places, that is all." The investigator looked at his watch. "Nearly midnight," he yawned. "I--" "You'd better go home and get some sleep," the operative broke in. "Cavanaugh and I will keep watch--and let you know the minute anything happens. Don't you think that's a wise plan?" Harrison Grant, with his ever present happy nature, smiled in spite of the fatigue that hung heavily upon him. "I think you must know how much sleep I haven't had!" was his comment. "And to tell the truth--I haven't had any since the night of the Naval Ball." He turned to the door, giving his men their final instructions for the night. And as he made his way homeward, the telephone lines were crackling between New York and Washington, Ambassador Von Bernstorff at one end and Karl Boy-Ed, Naval Attache, at the other. Nearby sat Capt. Franz von Papen and Dr. Heinrich Albert, waiting for the result of the conversation. At last Boy-Ed turned from the telephone. "Bernstorff's anxious about our plans for tomorrow," he announced. "I told him not to worry." "Well, there isn't anything to worry about, is there?" Von Papen hunched forward in his chair.