The invasion had indeed been planned by our enemies with marvellous forethought and cunning. There was treachery in the Intelligence Department of the British Admiralty, foul treachery which placed our country at the mercy of the invader, and sacrificed thousands of lives. On the morning following the sudden Declaration of War, the officer in charge of the telegraph bureau at Whitehall, whose duty it had been to send the telegrams ordering the naval mobilisation, was found lying dead beside the telegraph instrument--stabbed to the heart! Inquiries were made, and it was found that one of the clerks, a young Frenchman who had been taken on temporarily at a low salary, was missing. It was further discovered that the murder had been committed hours before, immediately the Mobilisation Orders had been sent; further, that fictitious telegrams had been despatched cancelling them, and ordering the Channel Fleet away to the Mediterranean, the Coastguard Squadron to Land's End, and the first-class Reserve ships to proceed to the North of Scotland in search of the enemy! Thus, owing to these orders sent by the murderer, England was left unprotected. Immediately the truth was known efforts were made to cancel the forged orders. But, alas! it was too late. Our Fleets had already sailed! CHAPTER IX. COUNT VON BEILSTEIN AT HOME. Karl von Beilstein sat in his own comfortable saddlebag-chair, in his chambers in the Albany, lazily twisting a cigarette. On a table at his elbow was spread sheet 319 of the Ordnance Survey Map of England, which embraced that part of Sussex where the enemy were encamped. With red and blue pencils he had been making mystic marks upon it, and had at last laid it aside with a smile of satisfaction. "She thought she had me in her power," he muttered ominously to himself. "The wolf! If she knew everything, she could make me crave again at her feet for mercy. Happily she is in ignorance; therefore that trip to a more salubrious climate that I anticipated is for the present postponed. I have silenced her, and am still master of the situation--still the agent of the Tsar!" Uttering a low laugh, he gave his cigarette a final twist, and then regarded it critically. The door opened to admit his valet, Grevel. "A message from the Embassy. The man is waiting," he said. His master opened the note which was handed to him, read it with contracted brows, and said-- "Tell him that the matter shall be arranged as quickly as possible." "Nothing else?" "Nothing. I am leaving London, and shall not be back for a week--perhaps longer."