"Oh, yes. His transmitter is very powerful, and sometimes, at night, he can reach Poldhu in Cornwall."
"Then your uncle is, apparently, a skilled scientist, as well as a daring criminal!" I said, surprised.
"Oui, M'sieur. He is just now experimenting with a wireless telephone, and has already heard from Algiers, across the Mediterranean, to Genoa, where his friend, the man Hodrickx, has established a similar station. It was Hodrickx you saw at Spring Grove."
"And the wireless is sometimes used for their nefarious purposes, I suppose?"
"Probably. But that is, of course, their own secret. I am told nothing," was her reply, dropping into French. "Sometimes, when at home, my uncle sits for hours with the telephones over his ears, listening—listening attentively—and now and then, scribbling down the mysterious call-letters he hears, and referring to his registers to see whose attention is being attracted. Every night, at twelve o'clock, he receives the day's news sent out from Clifden in Ireland to ships in the Atlantic."
"It must be an exceedingly interesting hobby," I remarked.
"It is. If I were a man I should certainly go in for experimenting. There is something weirdly mysterious about it," she said with a sweet expression.
"If he can speak by telephone across the Mediterranean to Genoa, then, no doubt, such an instrument is of greatest use to him in the pursuit of his shameful profession," I said.
"I expect it is," she answered rather grimly, regarding me with half-closed eyes. "But, oh! M'sieu', how can I bear the future? What will happen now? I cannot tell. For me it must be either a violent death, at a moment when I least expect it, or—or——"
"Leave it all to me, Lola," I interrupted. "I'll leave no stone unturned to effect the arrest of the whole gang."