Gaston, smoking peacefully by the fireside, soon heard, as he expected, the savage clamour of dogs in the farmyard mingled with agonised cries for help.

He hurried out. Two warders, one of them badly bitten, were backed against the fence, hardly keeping at bay with their sticks a couple of powerful dogs.

Gaston called off the dogs and, full of apparent solicitude, expressed his regret. He listened to the guards’ explanation.

“She cannot have been here,” he declared, “the dogs would have bitten her to pieces. But, of course, we will look round if you like.”

The guards, however, were more than satisfied. Gaston’s argument was backed by their own experience, and they were quite ready to be convinced if they could only get away from the ferocious dogs who continually prowled about snarling as though even the presence of their master was hardly sufficient to protect his visitors. They little dreamed that the savage brutes would indeed have torn Yvette to pieces had not Gaston thoughtfully taken the precaution to lock them up before he and Jules started to rescue her!

Away at Verdun Dick stood beside the Mohawk waiting impatiently in the dark. Time and again he had tested every nut and screw in the machine; time and again he had run the powerful engine to make sure that it was in working order.

At last the longed for moment for action came. Anything was better than long drawn-out suspense.

He wrung Le Couteur’s hand as he stepped into the machine.

“I’ll be back with her by dawn,” he said, “or else—” there was no need to finish the sentence.

He had not gone five minutes before Le Couteur received a message from Jules announcing that Yvette had escaped. If only Dick had known!

It was raining hard when the Mohawk rose into the air, but Dick was beyond caring for the weather, and anxious only for Yvette, he sent the helicopter tearing through the darkness eastward to Berlin. He drove almost automatically, his thoughts intent on the girl ahead of him.

As he approached Berlin, the weather cleared and the rain stopped. All around him were the navigation lights of the German mail and passenger planes, hurrying to every quarter of the Empire, and, even in his anxiety, Dick was conscious of an uneasy feeling of irritation at the thought that 

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