For a time, it is true, the silence in that little gray home out where the snow lay white and glistening on field and road continued. Madame LeClare sat by the narrow drop-leaf table knitting. Joyce Mills, with a big black cat on her lap, seemed more than half asleep. Dark-haired Alice had curled herself up on two cushions beside the fire. The others sat in dreamy silence. It did not seem a time for small talk, this Christmas Eve. Were their thoughts busy with other Christmas Eves? Who can say? Were they thinking of the future, of the approaching New Year and what it would bring to them? Did they think at times of the five public enemies still at large and free to follow their evil ways? Perhaps, at times, all these. At any rate, they were silent. Into that silence there crept a whisper. The effect was electric! Madame dropped her knitting. Joyce started so violently that the cat bounced from her lap. With an involuntary motion Drew Lane reached for his gun. "Lanan--" the whisper began, "Lanan Road, attention! Those in Captain Burns' old home, attention!" The whisper was like a call "To Arms!" "You are in grave danger. Grave danger! The report is just that. I can tell you no more. Be on your guard!" The whisper ceased. The clock ticked on. From without came the hoarse scream of the rusty windmill. The black cat, walking across the floor, settled himself beside Alice among the cushions. As if directed by a common impulse, Drew and Tom removed their automatics, examined them with care, then dropped them with a little chug back into their places. "Peace on earth, good will toward men!" Drew quoted dryly. "In such a world as ours there can be no peace." "Grave danger," Johnny thought to himself. He was looking through the window to the white silence outside. "Danger? It does not seems possible! Captain Burns has kept this place a secret. We came here in a very round-about way. Surely no one followed us. "And yet--" A thought struck him squarely between the eyes. "And yet, the Whisperer, alone in his tower among the stars--he knows! "The Whisperer--who can he be?" He said the words aloud. Alice, who sat almost at his feet, shook her head. She did not know. No one did, at least almost no one. Was he a friend of the law, or its enemy? A friend, Johnny would have said. And yet, as he recalled how Spider had barely escaped death when he attempted to take a picture of that mysterious man of the tower, he could not be sure. Spider had not repeated his hair-raising experiment.