My eyes fell upon the paper, and I saw that it was covered with lines of puzzling figures in groups of seven, all written neatly in a distinctly feminine hand. "Well," I asked in surprise, "what does all this mean?" "Only one thing," was the hard reply. "This paper, folded small and secreted, was found in this card-case. Those figures you see convey a message in the secret code of the Intelligence Department of the German Naval War Staff--a seven-figure code. A couple of hours ago we succeeded in deciphering the message, which is to the effect that you and Ashton have made an astounding discovery and have succeeded in directing a powerful electric wave by which you can charge metals at a distance, and cause sparking across any intervening spaces of those metals. By this means you are hoping to defeat Zeppelins by exploding the gas inside their ballonets, and as you are both highly dangerous to the success of the enemy's plans for the wholesale destruction of life and property by airships, it is here suggested that you should both meet sudden ends at the hands of certain paid hired assassins of the Berlin secret police." Then, after a pause, the captain again looked at me, and said very slowly: "Mr Munro. This document found in Miss Lethmere's purse is nothing else but your own death-warrant! Miss Lethmere is a spy and, though she may be your friend, she is plotting your death!" CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE SIGNALMAN'S STORY. I sat, staggered by that damning evidence placed before me! Proof indisputable lay there that Roseye--my own dear well-beloved, she whose ready lips met mine so often in those fierce, trustful caresses-- the intrepid girl who had been as "a pal" to Teddy and myself in our secret experiments, and who knew all the innermost secrets of our invention and our power to fight Zeppelins--was a traitor to her country! It was incredible! Was it by her connivance that the steel bolt in my machine had been withdrawn, and one of wood substituted? In this terrible war men laughed, and women wept. The men went out to the front in Flanders with all the fine patriotic sentiment of Britons, singing gaily the various patriotic songs of war. But alas! how many went to their death, and the women wept in silence in the back streets of our dear old London, and of every town in the work-a-day kingdom. In official circles it was known--known indeed to the public at large-- that the Zeppelin menace was a real and serious one. Teddy and I had, in secret, striven our best to discover a means by which to combat these sinister attacks upon our non-combatants. Yet upon that leather-covered table before me lay that puzzling cryptic message found among the belongings of my missing beloved. The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery. After a few moments of silence I raised my head and, looking again at Pollock, said: "All this is, of course, very interesting from the point of view of a police problem, but the hard, real fact remains."