over carefully together. You know the truth now. When Germany is at war she doesn't fight in kid-gloves--like your idiotic pigs of English!" CHAPTER NINE. TO "NUMBER 70 BERLIN." Lewin Rodwell, as a powerful and well-informed secret agent, was no amateur. After the old fisherman had left the close atmosphere of that little room, Rodwell seated himself on a rickety rush-bottomed chair before the sewing-machine stand, beside the bed, and by the bright light of the petrol table-lamp, carefully and with expert touch adjusted the tangle of wires and the polished brass instruments before him. The manner in which he manipulated them showed him to be perfectly well acquainted with the due importance of their adjustment. With infinite care he examined the end of the cable, unscrewing it from its place, carefully scraping with his clasp-knife the exposed copper wires protruding from the sheath of gutta percha and steel wire, and placing them each beneath the solid brass binding-screws upon the mahogany base. "The silly old owl now knows that we won't stand any more nonsense from him," he muttered to himself, in German, as he did this. "It's an unsavoury thought that the old fool, in his silly patriotism, might blab to the police or the coastguard. Phew! If he did, things would become awkward--devilish awkward." Then, settling himself before the instruments, he took from his inner pocket the long, bulky envelope, out of which he drew a sheet of closely-written paper which he spread out upon the little table before him. Afterwards, with methodical exactness, he took out a pencil and a memorandum-block from his side-pocket, arranging them before him. Again he examined the connections running into the big, heavy tapping-key, and then, grasping the ebonite knob of the latter, he ticked out dots and dashes in a manner which showed him to be an expert telegraphist. "M.X.Q.Q." were the code-letters he sent. "M.X.Q.Q." he clicked out, once--twice--thrice. The call, in the German cable war-code, meant: "Are you ready to receive message?" He waited for a reply. But there was none. The cable that ran for three hundred miles, or so, beneath the black, storm-tossed waters of the North Sea was silent. "Curious!" he muttered to himself. "Stendel is generally on the alert. Why doesn't he
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