She and Jules had decided never to speak in public. It was essential, however, that they should be able to communicate freely, and through the wall between their rooms Jules had bored with a tiny drill a hole through which he had passed a wire of a small pocket telephone. They could thus talk with ease and with the doors of their rooms locked they were absolutely safe from detection so long as they spoke in a whisper.

It was on a dark night, the sky obscured by heavy masses of clouds, that Dick rose in the Mohawk from the Forest of Fontainebleau and headed for Verdun. A couple of hours’ flying brought him over the fortress and he descended in a clearing in a dense wood where he was welcomed by Captain Le Couteur, the chief engineer of the military wireless station. Covered with big tarpaulins, the Mohawk was left under the guard of a dozen Zouaves, and Dick and Captain Le Couteur motored to the citadel.

Here the Captain took Dick directly into the steel-walled chamber deep under the fortifications which was the brain of the defences of Verdun. It was the nucleus of the entire system of telegraph and telephone wires which, in time of war, would keep the commander of the troops in the district fully informed of everything that was happening in every sector of the defences. The innermost room of all, where none but the Captain himself had access, contained the secret codes which dozens of foreign agents would have willingly risked their lives to possess. Their efforts—and they knew it—would have been in vain, for the chamber was guarded day and night by a band of picked men whose fidelity to France was utterly beyond the possibility of suspicion.

“Your messages have already started—the seven dots at intervals of seven seconds,” said Captain Le Couteur when they were comfortably seated in the innermost room. “I got half a dozen test calls last night and everything seems to be working well. I expect they are arousing some interest, for operators all over Europe will be mystified. There will be another call about nine o’clock and in the meantime you had better get some sleep. I will call you if anything happens.”

Dick stretched himself on a couch and slept peacefully. Nine o’clock found him with Captain Le Couteur seated in the innermost room at a table covered with delicate wireless apparatus. Turning a switch, the Captain lit up the row of little valves, put the receiving set in operation, and assuming one headpiece himself, handed another to Dick.

He placed his hand upon one of the ebonite knobs of the complicated 

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