“Hold your horses! Sabotage? There’s no evidence of sabotage in these murders—no destruction, with the possible exception of the foundry accident in Bethlehem.”

“Oh, there is destruction, all right. Terrible destruction. I said sabotage and I meant sabotage.”

“Why would a spy kill when killing is sure to draw attention to his spying?”

“They fooled me, too,” said Captain Falconer. “I feared that Artie Langner had accepted bribes and killed himself out of guilt. Then I thought, What awful luck that poor young Grover Lakewood fell on his head. But when they killed Alasdair MacDonald, I knew it had to be sabotage. And didn’t he, too? Didn’t he whisper, ‘Hull 44’?”

“As I told you,” Bell admitted.

“Don’t you see, Bell? They’re sabotaging Hull 44 by murdering minds. They’re attacking the minds that imagine the vital guts of that warship—guns, armor, propulsion. Look past the steel and armor plate. Hull 44 is no more than the minds of the men still working on it and the minds of those who died. When saboteurs kill our minds, they kill unborn thoughts and new ideas. When they kill our minds, they sabotage our ships.”

“I understand,” Bell nodded thoughtfully. “They sabotage our ships not yet launched.”

“Or even dreamed of!”

“Which enemy do you suspect?”

“The Empire of Japan.”

Bell recalled immediately that old John Eddison had claimed to have seen a Japanese intruder in the Washington Navy Yard. But he asked, “Why the Japanese?”

“I know the Japs,” Falconer answered. “I know them well. I served as an official observer aboard Admiral Togo’s flagship Mikasa when he destroyed the Russian Fleet at the battle of Tsushima—the most decisive naval battle since Nelson beat the French at Trafalgar. His ships were tip-top, his crews trained like machines. I like the Japs, and I certainly admire them. But they are ambitious. Mark my words, we will fight them for the Pacific.”

Bell said, “The murderers who attacked Alasdair MacDonald were armed with Butterflymessers manufactured by Bontgen and Sabin of Solingen, Germany. Isn’t Germany a leading contender in the dreadnaught race?”

“Germany is haunted by the British Navy. They’ll fight tooth and claw for the North Sea, and Britain will never let them near the Atlantic. The Pacific is our ocean. The Japanese want it, too. They are designing ships for distant service across the wide Pacific, just as we are. The day will come when we’ll fight them from California to Tokyo. For all we know, the Japs will attack this summer when the Great White Fleet approaches their islands.”

“I’ve seen the headlines,” Bell said with a wry smile. “In the same newspapers that inflamed the war with Spain.”

“Spain was a cakewalk!” Falconer retorted. “A stumbling relic of the Old World. The Japs are new—like us. They’ve already laid down Satsuma, the biggest dreadnought in the world. They’re building their own Brown-Curtis turbines. They’re buying the latest Holland submarines from Electric Boat.”

“Nonetheless, early in an investigation it pays to keep an open mind. The saboteurs could serve any nation in the dreadnought race.”