But about ten o’clock the following morning the dreaded blow fell.
They were seated in the underground chamber, Dick ill at ease and full of gloomy forebodings. The apparatus set to receive messages on three-hundred-and-fifty-metres. Suddenly a buzzing noise was emitted from the loud-speaking telephone on the bench.
Seven dots, seven times repeated, clicked out strong and dear!
Surely seconds had never passed so slowly! It seemed an age before Captain Le Couteur, his face white as chalk, took down the message which followed, and then referring to the code, read:
“Yvette arrested this morning by Kranzler.”
Dick turned dizzy and the room spun round him as the dreadful significance of the words struck him. Kranzler, of all men! The murderer of Yvette’s father and mother, the man whom she had beaten over and over again at his own game of espionage during the war, the man whose sensational attempt to dispose of Rasputin’s stolen jewels had been foiled by Yvette’s skill and daring! He was, as they knew, a desperate brute who would stick at nothing to feed his revenge.
Dick was rushing from the room, determined at all hazards to leave for Berlin at once, when Le Couteur seized his arm in a grip of iron.
“Steady, Manton,” he said sharply. “Don’t be a fool. You’ll spoil everything. Sit down and wait for more news.”
The words brought Dick to his senses.
“I’m sorry, Le Couteur,” he said, “but I think I went a bit mad. You are quite right. But Kranzler—of all men! You know the story, of course?”