Mortlake, too, had
received a notice that his machines were eligible for a test, so that
there would have seemed to be no object for his acting treacherously.
Otherwise, the young officer might have been suspicious. What he had seen
of Mortlake had not particularly elevated that gentleman in his opinion.
But if he had desired to wrong the Prescotts, reasoned the officer, such a
resourceful man as he had adjudged Mortlake to be, would have sought a
deeper and more subtle way of going about it.
"And I'd have staked my word on that boy's loyalty; aye, and on his
sister's too," muttered the officer, as he made ready for his hasty trip
to Long Island.
By this it will be seen that Lieut. Bradbury was by no means proof against
the rather common failing of inclining to believe the first evil report we
hear. It is a phase of human nature that is not combatted as it should be.
In the meantime, Roy and Peggy had sustained a surprise, likewise. The day
before that on which Lieut. Bradbury received the disturbing dispatch, an
automobile had whizzed up to their gate and stopped. Roy, Peggy and Jess
and Jimsy were at a game of tennis, when a rather imperious voice summoned
them, from the tonneau of the machine.
They looked up, to see a remarkably pretty young girl, who could scarcely
have been more than eighteen years old.
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