Nearer and nearer came the dark shadows, and both the airmen had their Webleys trained on them now. In that moment they might have shot them down easily, and before long they would regret they had not done so. But that is not the English way, for the ordinary Englishman would give even a dog his chance, as the saying goes. Still, there are dogs and dogs, and sometimes human dogs are worse than the four-footed ones. But the Englishmen were uncertain; they did not know what world-wide conspirators were these two men. They did not know what fearful deeds would happen even that day on the Hamadian desert, two thousand miles away, but all of it engineered from this spot, and made possible by these two men. And as they did not know, they did not fire, but waited. "Gott in Himmel, where does that _verdammt_ live wire begin?" asked one of the men in a low but vehement voice. It was the professor himself, searching for one of his own man-traps. Sharpe glanced at Keane, but the other motioned him not to fire. "We’re learning something, old man!" he whispered. "This is the gateway to the aerodrome." The two men had passed them now, passed within six yards, and yet had missed them. They were now groping a little way ahead, looking for secret signs and marks lest they should be hoist upon their own petard. "Donner und Blitzen! Have you found it yet, Fritz?" called the professor a little louder to his friend. "Here it is, Professor! Be careful ... there are six wires already laid for those _verdammt_ Englishmen, Keane and--what is the name of the other?" "Sharpe!" rapped out the professor, as though he had known the man all his life. At these words the two Englishmen looked at each other in blank amazement. And before their astonishment could subside, the opportunity which had been given to them of ridding the world of two great conspirators had passed. "One--two--six!" they heard the mechanic say, as he helped the professor over the deadly maze, scarcely fifteen yards in front of them, and then their dark forms had merged into the trees and disappeared, their voices becoming fainter and fainter. "Great Scott!" gasped Sharpe, when he recovered from his astonishment; "we’ve walked right into the hornets’ nest." "We should have done if we’d gone another fifteen yards," replied Keane, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Fortunate you had that presentiment of impending danger," said his friend. "We should have been lying dead and half grilled over his deadly wires but for that strange, weird feeling of mine," replied Keane. "But there, after all our attempts at concealment, he knows all about us." "Even our names seem familiar to him," remarked the senior airman, greatly puzzled. "I cannot understand it," replied the other. "Who can have given him this information?" "Who indeed?" asked Keane. "It is as great a mystery as the other matter."