an, we rushed after him as best we could,
Craig leading.

He led the way to the little wireless room. The door was bolted on the
inside, but we managed soon to burst it open.

I shall never forget the surprise which greeted us. In a chair, bound
and gagged, as though he had been overcome only after a struggle, sat
Petzka.

Mrs. Petzka threw herself frantically on him, tearing at the stout cords
that held him.

"Nikola--what is the matter?" she cried. "What has happened?"

Through his gag, which she had loosened a bit, he made a peculiar,
gurgling noise. As nearly as I could make out, he was struggling to say,
"He came in--surprised me--seized me--locked the door."

Julia Rovigno stood rooted to the spot--utterly speechless.

There, surrounded by electric batteries, condensers, projectors,
regulators, resonators, reflectors, voltmeters, and ammeters, queer
apparatus which he had smuggled secretly on the _Furious_, before a
strange sort of device, with a wireless headgear still over his ears,
stood the owner of at least two of the liners of the belligerents which
were to have made the dash for the ocean after he had succeeded by his
new wireless ray device in removing the hostile fleet--Count Rovigno
himself.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUPER-TOXIN

"I've got to make good in this Delaney case, Kennedy," appealed our old
friend, Dr. Leslie, the coroner, one evening when he had dropped
unexpectedly into the laboratory, looking particularly fagged and
discouraged.

"You know," he added, "they've been investigating my office--and now,
here comes a case which, I must confess, completely baffles us again."

"Delaney," mused Craig. "Let me see. That's the rich Texas rancher who
has been blazing a trail through the white lights of Broadway--with that
Baroness Von Dorf and----"

"And other war brokers," interrupted Leslie.

"War brokers?" queried Craig.

"Yes. That's what they call them. They're a new class--people with
something to sell to or with commissions to buy for belligerent
governments. In Delaney's case it was fifty thousand or so head of
cattle and horses, controlled by a syndicate of which he was the
promoter. That's why he came to New York, you know,--to sell them at a
high price to any European power. The syndicate stands to make a small
fortune."

"I understand," nodded Kennedy, interested.

"Just as though there wasn't mystery enough about Delaney's sudden
death," Leslie hurried on, "here's a