That Bayonne plant wa’n’t much to look at, just a few sheds and a spur track.  I hadn’t been to the Yonkers foundry, but I had an idea it wa’n’t much more impressive.  Course, there was the joint on East 153d Street.  I knew that well enough, for I’d helped negotiate the lease.

It had been run by a firm that was buildin’ some new kind of marine motors, but had gone broke.  Used to be a stove works, I believe.

Anyway, it’s only a two-story cement-block affair, jammed in between some car-barns on one side and a brewery on the other.  Hot proposition to trot out as the big end of a six-million-dollar contract!  But it was the best I had to offer, and after the Lieutenant had finished his Oolong and lighted a cigarette I loads him into the limousine again and we shoots uptown.

“Here we are,” says I, as we turns into a cross street just before it ends in the East River.  “The main works,” and I waves my band around casual.

“Ah, yes,” says he, gettin’ his eye on the tall brick stack of the brewery and then lettin’ his gaze roam across to the car-barns.

“Temporary quarters,” says I.  “Kind of miscellaneous, ain’t they?  Here’s the main entrance.  Let’s go in here first.”  And I steers him through the office door of the middle buildin’.  Then I hunts up the superintendent.

“Just takin’ a ramble through the works,” says I.  “Don’t bother.  We’ll find our way.”

Some busy little scene it is, too, with all them lathes and things goin’, belts whirrin’ overhead, and workmen in undershirts about as thick as they could be placed.

I towed Cecil in and out of rooms, up and down stairs, until he must have been dizzy, and ends by leadin’ him into the yard.

“Storage sheds,” says I, pointin’ to the neat rows of shell-cases piled from the ground to the roof.  “And a dozen motor-trucks haulin’ ’em away all the time.”

The Lieutenant he inspects some of ’em, lookin’ wise; and then he walks to the back, where there’s a high board fence with barbed wire on top.  “What’s over there?” says he.

“Blamed if I know,” says I.

“It’s rather important,” says he.  “Let’s have a look.”

I didn’t get the connection, but I helped him shove a packin’-case up against the fence, so he could climb up.  For a minute or so he stares, then he ducks down and beckons to me.

“I say,” he whispers.  “Come up here.  Don’t show your head.  There!  What do you make of that?”

So I’m prepared for something tragic and thrillin’.  But all I can see is an old slate-roofed house, one of these weather-beaten, dormer-windowed relics of the time when that part of town was still in the suburbs.  There’s quite a big yard in the back, with a few scrubby old pear trees, a double row of mangy box-bushes, and other traces of what must have been a garden.

In the far corner is a crazy old summer-house with a saggin’ roof and the sides covered with tar paper.  There’s a door to it, fastened with a big red padlock.