rdy. "This spy business
is never absent from my thoughts, with its menace to our boys on the
ocean."

"I think that you will soon be free to go back to the army," said the
Chief. "Your work is about done. This thing is coming to a head fast
now. But of course I shall need your boys to listen in for a time, so
that we can know what the Germans are sending. But there will probably
be no more real work for you. We certainly are grateful for the help
you gave us, though. We have been terribly crowded these last few
weeks."

In his pride at the work his boys had done, Captain Hardy momentarily
forgot the errand that had brought him to the Chief's office. He stood
before the head of the secret service, smiling happily. Again he began
to think of that long chain of secret wireless stations, so sinister
and so menacing, with voice crying treachery to voice through the air,
carrying word that at any time might cause the murder of thousands of
our brave soldiers. Mentally he journeyed along the line of those
stations--from New York to Buffalo, to Detroit, to Milwaukee, to Omaha,
to Santa Fe, to Socorro, to Mexico. With quick imagination he pictured
the scores of little secret stations needed to carry those treacherous
messages across so vast a span of earth. Some he saw skilfully hidden
in forests, as the wireless had been concealed at the Elk City
reservoir. Some he pictured in abandoned farmhouses. Others he saw in
barns, in the stacks of ruined factories. And some he imagined as
flinging their voices abroad amid the burning plains of the arid
border-lands. But he could not picture to himself the invisible
messenger that took the word across the boundary. He could not fathom
the mystery, he could not picture to himself the missing link in the
chain. As was always the case with him, his mind began at once to
grapple with its problem--in this instance the riddle of the missing
link. He actually forgot where he was.

"I wonder," he said, though he was really talking to himself, "what was
done with that smuggler."

"We clapped him into jail to await trial for smuggling," said the Chief.

Captain Hardy came to himself with a start, and smiled. "You say they
got nothing incriminating on him," he remarked. "Did your men find
anything at all?"

"Only the money he had gotten for his tobacco."

Mechanically Captain Hardy had thrust his hand into his pocket. As the
Chief answered the question, Captain Hardy'