"I doubt if you would believe me," replied Surigny, wincing.

"Is there any good reason why I should believe you?" Dave returned, studying the Frenchman's face.

"Perhaps none so good as the fact that I am a gentleman," the Count of Surigny answered more boldly. "The word of a gentleman is always sacred."

"May I ask to what this talk is leading?"

"I hardly know how to proceed with you," complained the young Frenchman. "Once you did me a great service. You taught me to live and that to die by my own hand was cowardice. Monsieur, you taught me how to be a man."

"And you have remembered the lesson?" Dave inquired, with the same expressionless face.

"I at least know," the Frenchman returned, "that a man should remember and serve his friends."

"Then you have been serving me?"

"I have been working hard, swallowing insult and stifling my sense of decency as far as possible, in order that I might serve you and prove myself worthy to be your friend," replied Surigny, with such earnestness that Darrin now found himself staring in open-eyed astonishment at the young n.o.bleman.

"Perhaps you are going to try to offer me particulars of how you have been preparing to serve me," Dave said with a shrug.

"Monsieur," cried the Frenchman, as if in sudden desperation, "are you prepared to accept my word as you would wish your own to be accepted?"

"Wouldn't that be asking considerable of a comparative stranger?"

"Then answer me upon your own honor, Monsieur Darrin," the Count of Surigny appealed eagerly. "Do you consider me a gentleman or--a rascal?"

Ensign Dave opened his lips, then paused. He was now asked to speak on his own honor.

His pallor giving way to a deep flush, Surigny suddenly opened his lips to speak again.

"Monsieur Darrin," he urged, his voice quavering, "do me the honor to look in my eyes. Study me from the viewpoint of an honest man. Tell me whether you will believe what I have to say to you. Do not be too quick. Take time to think."

As Dave found himself gazing into the depths of the other's eyes, and as he studied that appealing look, he felt his contempt for Surigny rapidly slipping away.

"Now, speak!" begged M. le Comte de Surigny. "Will you believe what I am about to tell you, as one man of honor speaks to another?"

For an instant Ensign Dave hesitated. Then he answered quickly:

"Yes; I will believe you, Monsieur le Comte."

"In doing so, do you feel the slightest hesitation?"

"Naturally," rejoined Darrin, a slight smile parting his lips, "I am a.s.sailed by some doubts as to whether I am wise in doing so, but I will believe what you have to say to me. I prefer to believe you to be, of your own choice, a man of honor."

Surigny uttered a cry of delight. Then he went on:

"Perhaps, Monsieur Darrin, you will even be willing to set me the example in truthfulness by telling me whether you know of the plot of those with whom I have had the shame of being a.s.sociated."

"You will doubtless recall, Monsieur le Comte, since it was said only a moment ago, that I promised only to believe what you might have to say to me. I did not promise to tell you anything."

Indeed, at this point, Ensign Dave was perilously near to breaking his word as to believing Surigny. It looked to him as if the Frenchman were "fencing" in order to extract information.

"Well, then," exclaimed Surigny, with a gesture of disappointment, "I will tell you that which I feel I must. Listen, then. With Gortchky, Mender, Dalny and others, I have been engaged in a plan to cause a British warship to be sunk in the harbor yonder, and under circ.u.mstances such as to make it appear as the work of you Americans.

Did you know that, Monsieur?"

"Go on," urged Dave Darrin.

"At first," murmured the Count, coming closer, "I believed Gortchky's statement that I was being engaged in secret diplomatic service. When I learned the truth, I was deeply involved with the miserable crew.

Also, I was very much in debt, for Gortchky was ever a willing lender.

"There came a day, Monsieur, when there dawned on me the vileness of the wicked plot in which I had become engaged. For a few hours I felt that to destroy myself was the only way in which I could retrieve my honor. But the lesson you had taught served me well in those hours of need. Then the thought of you, an officer in the American Navy, brought a new resolve into my mind. No pledges that I had ignorantly made to such scoundrels could bind me. I was not their slave. Pledges to do anything that could bring dishonor upon one are not binding on a man of honor. I did not even feel a sense of debt to Gortchky, for he had used the money with evil intentions. From the moment of these realizations I had but one object in view. I would go on taking such money as I needed, and with no thought of the debt; and I would serve these monsters with such seeming fidelity that I could at last find my way open to serving _you_ fully, Monsieur Darrin. I pause for an instant. Do you believe all that I have just told you, my friend?"

"Yes," answered Dave. The next second he caught himself wondering if, through that "yes," he had unintentionally lied.

CHAPTER XX

THE ALLIES CLEAR FOR ACTION

"I left Naples for this island on an east-bound liner," continued the Count of Surigny. "Not until within an hour of sailing did I know the whole of the terrible story that now spoils my sleep at night and haunts me by day. Monsieur Darrin, if you have scented any dreadful plot, at least I do not believe you know just what it is."

Once more the young Frenchman paused. Dave, however, having regained his expressionless facial appearance, only said:

"Go on, Monsieur le Comte."

"Then I have but to tell you what the plot is," resumed Surigny.

"Gortchky, Mender, Dalny and others knew that the American fleet would stop at Malta, because American fleets in these waters always do stop at Malta. They knew also that a British fleet often remains here for months at a time. So these arch scoundrels knew to a certainty that the 'Hudson' of your Navy would be here in due course of time. In a word, every plan has been made for sinking a British battleship here at Malta under circ.u.mstances which will make it appear to be plainly the work of a group of American naval men."

Darrin, still silent, steadily eyed the Frenchman.

"You do not start!" uttered Surigny, in amazement. "Then it must be because you already know of the plot!"

"Go on, please," urged Dave quietly.

"The plan must have been made long ago," the Frenchman continued, "for, before August, 1914, before the great war started, though just when I do not know, Gortchky and the others, or their superiors, had a submarine completed at Trieste. It was supposed to be a secret order placed for the Turkish government. The craft was not a large one.

Gortchky and some a.s.sociates took the submarine out for trial themselves. Days later they returned, reporting that the underseas craft had foundered, but that they had escaped to land in a collapsible boat. Most of the payments on the submersible had already been made. Gortchky paid the balance without protest, and the matter was all but forgotten.

"I do not know what reason Gortchky had given the builder, if indeed he offered any explanation, but the tubes in the submarine had been made of the right dimensions and fitted with the right mechanism to fire the American torpedo. And a man whom I judge to have been a German spy in America before the war--a German who had served as draftsman in the employ of an American munitions firm--was at Trieste to furnish the design for both the torpedo tubes and for the four American torpedoes that the Trieste firm also supplied.

"You will have divined, of course, Monsieur Darrin," Surigny continued, "that the submarine was not lost, but concealed at a point somewhere along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean until wanted. So far ahead do some enemies plot! Where the submarine has remained during the interval I do not know, but I do know that, submerged only deep enough for concealment, she has been towed to these waters recently by relays of fishing boats manned by Maltese traitors to Britain. Ah, those rascally Maltese! They know no country and they laugh at patriotism. They worship only the dollar, and are ever ready to sell themselves! And the submarine will endeavor to sink the British battleship to-night!"

"To-night!" gasped Darrin, now thoroughly aroused.

"To-night," Surigny nodded, sadly, his face ghastly pale. "Even the yacht that carries the plotters is here."

"These are hardly the times," Dave remarked, "when it would seem to any naval commander a plausible thing for a yacht to cruise in the submarine-infested Mediterranean. And, if the plotters are using and directing the movements of a yacht, I am unable to see how they could obtain clearance papers from any port."