“‘Don’t you hear him calling you?’ she gasped. “I seized the seismaphone, pressed the button, and, in the silence of the night, I heard Martin Bradley wailing, ‘Churchill--Churchill.’ “I spoke into the thing, so that his bell would ring, and he would know that I was listening. “‘Good-by,’ he called. ‘They are killing us off one by one. The Russian, and two of the Englishmen are dead now, and it’s my turn next. They’ve just brought in an American, and he told me on his fingers that the legations----’ “That was as far as he got. I heard a terrible screeching, which drowned out his voice; and suddenly all was quiet. “Three times since that some of those heathen have got hold of the thing; but that death message of Bradley’s is the last English word that has come over the seismaphone. “The third time I heard them at it, I threw in the megaphone attachment, and shouted as loud as I could. Since then not a sound has come from the instrument. “I put the advertisement you saw in the papers; but though hundreds of men have tried, no one has been able to duplicate the part of the seismaphone I now have. Some have refused even to try, when I explained what was wanted, for they thought me either crazy or a fool. “I hoped at first that some one might be able to replace the loss, but now I know it cannot be done. Bradley told me that it took him three years to determine the distances at which the wires had to be placed, and he alone knew the principle on which the whole mechanism depends. “No one has ever been able to duplicate the diaphragm. It is a curious alloy of copper, zinc, and some other metal; but what that third metal is, no one can determine.” Churchill had finished his strange story; and now he leaned back in his chair, his face gray and set. Outside the noise of a great city waking to another day’s life could be heard, and somewhere in the house I heard a clock slowly strike five. I picked up the seismaphone from the table and brought it over to the light. Then, even as I held it in my hand, I saw the little hammer begin vibrating rapidly, and heard the tinkling of the bell. But Randolph Churchill had heard that signal too, and starting from his chair, he snatched the instrument from my hands, and held it to his ear. “It’s only those damned heathen at it again,” he groaned, and threw the thing on the table. In falling it must have pressed the tiny button, which threw on the megaphone attachment. The little bell began ringing again, and I started back, trembling with a strange mixture of fear and awe. For, above the clatter of the wagons, and the grinding of the cars as they climbed Fourteenth Street hill, there, in that little room, fifteen thousand miles from the Celestial Empire, I heard a confused bable of many voices, howling and cursing in the Chinese tongue. A QUESTION OF HONOR. A QUESTION OF HONOR.