in the dark, and if we are late people will be about and we shall run the risk of being spotted.”

Yvette promptly produced a small but beautifully clear contour map.

“There’s your landing-place,” she said, pointing to a large clearing surrounded by thick woods. “It’s about fifteen miles from Paris, and my own aeroplane is pushed in under the edge of the trees. It is quite a lonely spot in the forest a little to the north of Triel. Of late years the forest has been very much neglected and very few people go there. An old farmer, who lives quite alone, grazes a few sheep in the clearing, and I have, of course, had to arrange with him about my machine. He thinks I am an amateur flyer, and I have told him I am making some secret experiments and paid him to keep quiet. I flew the machine there myself when I bought it from the François Frères, of Bordeaux. Of course, I had my papers all in order when I bought it.”

“All right; that will do well enough,” said Dick. “We will go over to-night. Jules can go by the boat train.”

A few hours later Dick and Yvette were standing in the shed beside the strange motor-car, Dick rapidly explaining the system of converting the machine into a monoplane.

“We must get off the ground as quickly as possible,” he said. “People go to bed early in these parts, but there is always a chance of some one being about, and I don’t want to be caught while we are making the change.”

At a suitable spot on the road, the change was made. It occupied Dick, with Yvette’s skilful help, just twenty minutes.

“We can do it in fifteen,” he declared, “when you are thoroughly accustomed to it.”

As a matter of fact they did it in less on one memorable occasion some weeks later when their pursuers were hot on their heels.

Soon they were speeding swiftly southwards. Dick had set the monoplane on a steep, upward slant, aiming to reach ten thousand feet before he drew abreast of London. Thanks to the clinging mist, they were soon utterly out of sight from below, and Dick had to steer by compass until they sighted thirty miles ahead, and slightly to their right, the great twin beams of light which marked the huge aerodrome at Croydon.

Then Dick veered to the south-east, flying straight for Lympne and the French coast. After all, he argued, the bold course was the best. No one would expect an aeroplane on an illicit errand to venture right above the head-quarters of 

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