“John!”--and she sank aghast into the nearest chair. “It is true, Meg. I was there. His house is just one big wireless station. They caught him in the act. It is horrible to think of such treachery. I’ve hardly slept a wink all night.” “No wonder! But--is it possible? Is there no mistake?... Dr Rhenius?... I would have trusted him with my life.” “Yes. It is beyond me. But there is no possible doubt about it. They have taken him and Old Jacob away, and the police are in charge of the house. They say he will be shot.” “How terrible! Not the shooting. If he has done this he deserves to be shot. But ... our Dr Rhenius! Oh, I cannot take it in yet.” But in time she had to accept it, and they fell to discussion of ways and means. The Colonel was to be told that Rhenius had been suddenly summoned from home,--which was grimly true, and Mr Dare was to call at once on Dr Sinclair in the village, give him the same explanation, and beg his attendance on their patient. As he expected, Dr Sinclair received him with a certain amount of professional surprise at the irregularity of his procedure. He hummed and hawed for a time, and put such very pointed questions that Mr Dare was inclined to believe that he must have had suspicions of his own--provoked possibly, he thought, by professional jealousy and Rhenius’s German-sounding name; all of which was natural enough. All he permitted himself was that Dr Rhenius had been suddenly called away, and his return was so very doubtful that they felt it necessary to call in another doctor at once. And Dr Sinclair went. The Colonel was much put out and not easily reconciled to this transfer in which he had had no voice. It was so unlike Rhenius to go off like that without so much as a good-bye. He fumed weakly and fretted over it, and was barely civil to Dr Sinclair, who shook his head doubtfully when he went downstairs with Mrs Dare. “He is very weak,” he said. “Keep on as you are and above all things keep him quiet and free from disturbance of mind.” “It is not easy.” “I see that. But it is absolutely essential. The fever has pulled him down terribly and his heart is in a very ticklish state.” The following day the papers had the matter with bold head-lines--“WELL-KNOWN WILLSTEAD DOCTOR ARRESTED AS SPY, HOUSE FULL OF WIRELESS APPARATUS,” and so on. They did their best to keep the paper from the Colonel. But the very attempt aroused his suspicions and sent his temperature up again. In despair he was allowed to glance at it--and the mischief was done. He insisted on Lois reading every word, and all the time he lay looking at her with a dazed look on his white face. “Rhenius!” was all he said, in a strange shocked whisper, when she had finished, and then he lay back among his pillows and turned his face as far away from them as he could. And--“Rhenius!”--they heard him murmur more than once during the day, as though he were groping painfully among his shadows after some understanding of it all.