It had been a long discussion, and Bob and Frank were content to do as Mr. Temple proposed.  Jack, perforce, agreed, although the strain of the last few days, which he had carried alone, was beginning to tell on him and he yearned for instant action.  He showed the others to their rooms, Bob and Mr. Temple sharing Mr. Hampton’s room, and Frank bunking in with Jack himself.

After Frank had undressed and tumbled into bed, so dog-tired, as he said, that he could barely keep his eyes open to see the way to his pillow, Jack went out to stand in the starlight on the porch.  After leaning against a pillar some minutes, during which his active brain kept milling endlessly over the details of the past few days, he had an impulse to go over to the radiophone station and talk to the guard, an ex-cowboy, on duty there since the attack by three Mexicans at the time this story opened.

Hands in his pockets, head bowed in thought, he moved across the hard packed sand, his feet making practically no sound.

CHAPTER XII

JACK DISCOVERS A TRAITOR

Two figures stood at the door of the radio station power house.  The station was a duplicate of Mr. Hampton’s other station on his Long Island estate, earlier described.  So engrossed were the two men in whispered conversation that they were unaware of Jack’s noiseless approach.

The soft sibilant sound of whispering which came to his ears just as he was about to approach the door roused Jack from his reflections.  His suspicions were on the alert because of the happenings of recent days, and he halted.  Certain, after standing a moment with every nerve tensed, that he had not been seen, Jack backed cautiously until again around the corner of the building.

Who were the two men?  What were they whispering about?  Pressing against the side of the building, Jack thought quickly.  One of the two must be the night watchman.  Perhaps the other was the man who kept guard at the station by day.  If he were, thought Jack, then, perhaps, some new danger menaced and the night man had called the day man to help him.  This theory also would account for the fact that they were whispering, instead of conversing in normal tones.

So probable did this supposition seem to Jack that he decided to join the men and ask what the danger was.  Caution, however, prompted him to reconnoitre by peeping around the corner before stepping into the open.  The next moment he was thankful he had done so.  For, as he looked, one of the two struck a match and held it in cupped hands to a cigarette, and Jack saw the man was Remedios.

Drawing his head back quickly, Jack leaned against the building, trying to compose his thoughts.  What was Remedios doing here?  Not many hours before he had foiled the plan of the traitorous Mexican chauffeur to deliver him and his friends to the enemy.  Was Tom, the ex-cowboy, on guard at the radio plant, a traitor?  Jack could not believe it.