"Don't know yet," said Ned. "It's evident, though, that Muller is in hopes of picking up some information from the fleet by eavesdropping on its wireless. I'm mighty glad now that I didn't tell him I could read cipher."
Further conversation was interrupted by the re-entrance of Herr Muller. He stepped brusquely up to Ned.
"You had better be ready to catch anything you can," he said; "everything is in readiness above, and we should be picking up messages at any moment now."
Ned nodded and sat down on the stool set over against the table, on which the glittering array of instruments were fastened.
For a long time—or so it seemed to him—he sat thus. Suddenly, in his ears, there sounded the faintest of scratching sounds. It was as soft as the footsteps of an invalid fly. But Ned knew that somewhere out on the sea ship was speaking to ship, and that what he heard was the echo of their talk.
Suddenly he picked up a pencil and began to write rapidly. Herr Muller bent over his shoulder. He watched with keen absorption as Ned's pencil flew over the paper.
"Yes, she's all right; but she's not as pretty as the blonde operator at Key West."
"Is that the message you were expecting?" inquired Ned blandly, gazing up at Herr Muller.
"What nonsense is dot?" sputtered the other, lapsing into his foreign accent.
"Well, since you ask me," rejoined Ned, "I think it's the operator on one coasting steamer talking to the wireless man on another vessel about a blonde young lady at Key West."