“I don’t see a letter-box ahead, fellows, but I saw one, half-way down the block, at the last corner we passed.  You two keep right on.  I’ll join you.”

Presently Jack and Eph halted in their walk to look back.

“Where is Hal?” demanded Somers.

“He can’t have lost us,” muttered Jack.

“Oh, I guess he has simply taken a short cut to meet us ahead on the way.”

Yet, though they continued to look for their comrade until they had neared the State, War and Navy Building, Hal Hastings had not again appeared in sight.

“Say, but this is fearfully careless of good old Hal,” muttered Jack Benson, uneasily, as he glanced at his watch.  “We’ve no time to go back to look for him, either, for we’ve barely time to reach the Secretary’s office.”

“We’ll have to go in without Hal, then,” grumbled Eph.  “It makes me feel like a fool, too!”

Had the two lads but known it, there was still plenty of time.  For the Secretary of the Navy may make an appointment with an understrapper, and then find that he must first see some more important personage.

There were “big” callers ahead of the boys that day, so that it was nearly two o’clock when Lieutenant Jack and Ensign Eph were admitted to the presence that they were to leave shorn of their brief rank and command.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Benson.  Good afternoon, Mr. Somers,” was Secretary Sanders’s swift greeting.  “You were most successful, and I must congratulate you heartily.  But—­where is Mr. Hastings?”

“We don’t know, Mr. Secretary,” Jack admitted.  “He left us for a short time, as we thought, and, since then—­”

Mr. Sanders wheeled sharply as the door opened and a clerk came in.

“Pardon me, sir,” apologized the clerk.  “But a note has just come for Lieutenant Benson, sir, and the messenger was insistent that it was a most important matter—­”

“You may take your note and read it, Lieutenant,” suggested the Secretary of the Navy.

Young Benson gave a start when he recognized, in the address, the handwriting of Hal Hastings.

In another instant Jack gave a much more violent start.  For these were the words that met his astounded gaze.

"Dear Jack:  I am in a Washington police station, feeling like a number-one idiot.  Soon after leaving you I ran into Millard, face to face, There was a policeman within two hundred feet at the moment.  I let out a full siren yell and dashed at Millard.  He held on to me until the policeman reached the spot.  I let him hold me, thinking that the easiest way.  But Millard produced a paper—­a request from the military authorities at Fort.  Craven, to arrest and hold anyone pointed out by the bearer.  I talked—­some—­to that policeman, but it did no good.  He took me to the station house, and here I am!  Millard vanished, after saying that he’d wire the news of my arrest to Fort Craven.  You’ll have to explain me out of this.  Yours disgustedly, Hal."