This evidence he found most difficult to secure. For months he had
watched the handsome foreigner with the patience of a hound. He had
taken particular pains to hold Jennie's friendship in order to be thrown
with Socola on every possible occasion. His men from the Secret Service
Department had followed Socola's every movement day and night with no
results.
He pretended the most philosophic acceptance of the situation and
bantered the lovers with expressions of his surprise that an early
marriage had not been announced.
Socola received the Captain's professions of friendship with no sign of
suspicion. He read Dick's mind as an open book. He saw through his
pretentions and the tragic purpose which underlay his good-natured
banter. He knew instinctively that his movements were watched and moved
with the utmost caution. For a time he found it impossible to visit the
house on Church Hill. Detectives were on his heels the moment he turned
his steps to that hill.
The boarding house in which he lived was watched day and night. And yet
so carefully had he executed his work the men who were hounding him were
completely puzzled. They could not know, of course, that Socola had
chosen as his secretary a man in the Department of State.
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