Suddenly, like a flash of inspiration, there came to her mind the recollection of the wireless telephone apparatus which her father had once rigged up for experimental purposes in the attic of this very house. The colonel had become very friendly with Otto Schilder, and, being an enthusiastic electrician, had suggested the installation of the wireless apparatus, with which they might hold experimental conversations, and had forthwith secured the instruments and arranged them in the Schilders’ attic. Meredith was not especially interested in such experiments, but she had often seen her father use the apparatus at the fort, and believed she could manage it in such an emergency. The door leading up to the attic from the third floor was unlocked, but how to escape the sharp espionage of Marie presented a difficulty, and after vainly trying a number of ruses, she almost despaired of accomplishing it, until at last, about noon, hope was revived by the ringing of a bell summoning Marie to her mistress. The maid who took her place on guard, a stupid sort of girl, Meredith had little difficulty in disposing of; then, the coast clear at last, she hurried to the floor above. The place, lighted only from above by small skylights, stretched away, dim and shadowy, into the recesses and corners under the eaves. There were boxes and packing cases all around, behind which anything might be lurking. The silence, too, was a little fearsome; the only sound to break the stillness was the buzzing of a fly. Meredith did not falter long, however, but turned to the business before her, and, lightly threading her way between the boxes, reached the table, with its black cabinet on top, and the wires running up to the mast on the roof. Instrument, table and all were covered with the dust of long disuse, but when she had slipped the receiver on over her ears, and had touched a knob or two on the box, she was delighted to find that the instrument had lost none of its efficiency. CHAPTER XIII. WIRELESS TALK. At first, a mere jumble of indistinguishable sounds greeted her, punctuated by the sharp crack-crack from two amateur wireless telegraphers holding conversation across her field of hearing; but soon she had remedied all that, and had her apparatus tuned down to the wave lengths of the instrument at the post. “Hello, there!” she broke in heedlessly on some practice work being given a couple of recruits by a sergeant instructor. “This is important,” she said, as the sergeant advised her, rather brusquely, not to “butt in.” “I wish to speak to Adjutant Grail at once!” “And who are you?” the sergeant demanded, still truculent over the interruption. “Miss Vedant!” “Oh!” The voice, borne on the wings of the air, was now smooth and soft as oil. “Excuse me, miss, for speaking as I did. I mistook you for one of those amateurs that’s always bothering around. I’m sorry, miss, but Captain Grail ain’t at the post just now.”