“‘I give you my share in the seismaphone,’ he continued after a while, ‘and I pray you may be able to duplicate the half you now have, for you will never see this one again. The two instruments are exactly alike, except for the wiring, and that you will have to get by experiment, for all my data have been destroyed.’
“Then he must have fainted, for he stopped suddenly, and I heard a voice, probably that of one of the Englishmen, saying, ‘Poor devil, I wish I could get to him; but they’ve tied me to this ring in the wall, and I can’t move a foot.’
“I didn’t hear another word till late that night, when I woke up to find Nellie by my bed, pale and trembling.
“‘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.