the
semicircle of the Chiltern Hills and so place the whole Thames valley
east of Reading at their mercy.

"In consequence of the ease with which the enemy's airships have
destroyed both telegraphic and railway communication, no definite
details are at present to hand. It is only known that since the attack
on Aldershot the fighting has not only been on a colossal scale, but
also of the most sanguinary description, with the advantage slowly but
surely turning in favour of the invaders. Such news as reaches us comes
entirely by despatch rider and aerogram. We greatly regret to learn,
through the former source, that yesterday evening Lord Westerham, the
last of the six special Service officers attached to General French's
staff, was either killed or captured in a gallant attempt to carry
despatches containing an accurate account of the situation up to date
from Reading to Windsor, whence it was to be transmitted by the
underground telephone cable to His Majesty at Buckingham Palace."

"That reads pretty bad," said Lennard, when Mr Simmons had left the
room, "especially Westerham being killed or taken prisoner; I don't like
that at all. I wish we'd been able to collar His Majesty of Germany on
that trip to Canterbury as Lord Kitchener suggested, and put him on
board the _Ithuriel_. He'd have made a very excellent hostage in a case
like this. I must say that, altogether, affairs do not look very
promising, and we've still two months all but a day or two. Well, if Mr
Parmenter doesn't get across with his aerial fleet pretty soon, I shall
certainly take steps to convince him and his Allies, who are fighting
for a few islands when the whole world is in peril, that my ultimatum
was anything but the joke he seemed to take it for."

He finished his wine, drank a cup of coffee and smoked a meditative
cigar in the library, and then went up to the observatory.

It was a lovely night from his point of view; clear, cool and almost
cloudless. The young moon was just rising to the eastward, and as he
looked up at that portion of the south-western sky from which the
Celestial Invader was approaching he could almost persuade himself that
he saw a dim ghostly shape of the Spectre from Space.

But when he got to the telescope the Spectre was no longer there. The
field of the great reflector was blank, save for the few far-away
star-mists, and here and there a dimly-distant star, already familiar to
him through many nights of watching.