“Your great work accomplished,” Otto continued, “remember your orders.  Forty miles due east of Sandy Hook there will be lying two great submarines, waiting to take you off—­not U-boats, but two of our powerful, wonderful new X-boats, big enough to destroy any of their little cruisers that are patrolling the coast, fast enough to escape any of their torpedo boats.  How important the war office judges your work you may realize from this—­it is the first mission on which these new X-boats have been dispatched.  They are out there now.  We have had a wireless from them.  They are waiting to convey six heroes back to the Fatherland, where the highest honors will be bestowed on them at the hands of our Emperor himself.  Herr Captain and Comrades—­”

He stopped abruptly, and there came into his face a pained look of surprise, of terror.

"Was is dass?” he cried in alarm.

One of Fleck’s men in hiding out there in the shadow of the building had been seized by an irresistible desire to sneeze.

The terrifying suspicion that there had been some uninvited spectator outside, listening to their plotting, swept over the whole room.  The whole company, hearing the sound that had alarmed old Hoff, arose as one man and stood tensed, stupefied with fear, gazing white-faced in the direction from which the sound had come.

Fleck, rudely brushing Jane aside, dropped back from the window and blew a sharp blast with a whistle.  At the sound his men came running up with their rifles ready.

Inside, the man called Hans, seizing an electric torch, dashed to the door, and pulling it wide, rushed forth, his torch lighting the way before him.  Before he even had time to see the men gathering there and cry an alarm, a blow from the butt of Carter’s revolver stretched him senseless on the stoop.

“In the name of the United States I command you to surrender,” cried Fleck, springing boldly into the open doorway, revolver in hand; “the house is surrounded.”

Instantly all within the room was confusion.  Some of those nearest the door, seeing behind Fleck the protruding muzzles of the guns, promptly threw up their hands in token of surrender.  Others bolted madly for the front door, only to find their egress there blocked by the rifles in the hands of the guard that Fleck had had the foresight to station there.

Old Otto, the pallor of fear on his face giving away to an expression of demoniac rage, drew a revolver and aimed it straight at Fleck.  Jane, who unbidden had followed the raiders as they entered and now was standing wide-eyed in the doorway watching the spectacle, was the only one to see that just as old Otto pulled the trigger his nephew, whether by accident or design, she could not tell, jostled his arm, sending the bullet wide of its mark.

“Come on, men,” cried Fleck, advancing boldly into the room.

Eight of the Germans, piteously bleating “Kamerad” stood against the wall near the door, their hands stretched high above their heads.