“Why, that’s M. Lemaire, to a dot!”

“I guess there’s no doubt about it, then,” laughed Mr. Graham.  “You’ve fallen into the hands of a pair of the boldest, wickedest and cleverest of foreign spies.”

“I thank you heartily for informing me about them,” breathed Jack Benson, his eyes gleaming as he thought of the pair.  “But there’s one thing that puzzles me.  Mlle. Nadiboff is a Russian, and M. Lemaire must be a Frenchman.  Then which country owns that precious pair?”

“Spies rarely have any country,” smiled the washington correspondent.  “They work for whichever government will pay them best.  Today they will sell out their employers of yesterday.”

“They’re a noble lot, then,” grunted Jack, disgustedly.

Mr. Hennessy proposed that they go down to have a look at the dungeon underground.  While they were examining that damp, slimy old cell, the conversation continued.

“Has either of that pair seen you, Mr. Graham?” asked Jack.

“I don’t believe it.  I’m not stopping at the Hotel Clayton.”

“Then neither of them will suspect that I’ve been posted,” muttered Benson, with a short laugh.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I rather think,” smiled the young submarine captain, “that I may attempt to pay that pair back in their own coin—­somehow.  By the way, do either of them know you well when they see you?”

“They might remember me as a newspaper writer,” replied Graham.  “So I’ll keep out of the way.”

“It won’t be necessary for me to keep out of the way,” added Hennessy.  “I don’t know either Mlle. Nadiboff or her companion; and, besides, I’m here openly as a reporter interested in the submarine craft.”

By this time the three had returned to the upper air.

“I’ll vanish, now,” proposed Mr. Graham.  “But you, Hennessy, if Captain Benson doesn’t mind, might as well go along with him.  You may get a good look at the Nadiboff woman.  You, too, may think her very young.  She has a knack of keeping so.  Yet she’s at least twenty-eight or thirty.  Good-bye, for the present!”

Graham turned, losing himself from their sight amid the ruins.  Hennessy walked with Jack back to where Hal and the woman awaited them.

Jack’s mind was rapidly revolving plans for teaching some one a lesson that would not be forgotten.

CHAPTER VIII

EVEN UP FOR MR. KAMANAKO

“This is Mr. Hennessy, one of the newspaper men who visited our boat yesterday afternoon,” said Jack, on rejoining his companions.  “Mr. Hennessy has been returning good for evil.  While I am unable to tell him any of the things he wants most to know about our boat, he, on the other hand, has been telling me much of interest about these ruins.”

“There are a lot of legends about this old wreck of a castle,” laughed Hennessy.  “Most of them are too silly to consider for a moment.  One of the old stories has to do with a secret passage.  Some of the guides hereabouts show what they solemnly explain was one of the outlets of the secret passage in bygone days.  Do you care to devote five minutes to looking at the ridiculous thing?”