From a derelict shed adjoining a lonely road which stretched for miles across the Norfolk fens, a strange shape slid silently into the night mist. It was a motor-car of an unfamiliar design. The body, of gleaming aluminium, was of unusual width, and was lifted high above the delicate chassis and spidery bicycle wheels that seemed almost too fragile to bear the weight of an engine. Noiselessly the strange car backed out of the shed. There was no familiar teuf-teuf of the motor-engine; so silent w

Matters were in this stage when Dick, to his great surprise, received a brief telegram from Yvette. “Can you come to Paris? very urgent—Yvette,” the message ran. Dick left at once and next evening found him with Yvette and Jules at a small hotel near the Gare du Nord. After a cordial greeting Yvette, as usual, plunged direct into the business in hand. “Now, Dick,” she said, “our last adventure was quite a success. Are you good for something more exciting and decidedly more dangerous? Or,” she ad

“You are an Englishman, Monsieur Manton,” he had said, “and I will not ask you to sell your secret to France. But we are willing to bear the expense of perfecting your invention on the distinct understanding that when the time comes England shall have the option of sharing in it to the exclusion of all other countries except France. When you are ready we will officially invite the British Government to send a representative and will give them the opinion of coming in on equal terms. I do not thi

During the next fortnight similar explosions, all bearing the same distinguishing features, occurred in various parts of England. Sometimes there would be three or four in a single day in the same, or closely adjoining, areas. The public became excited. Not a single person was injured, the damage done was apparently trifling, since all the houses destroyed were of the poorest class. It looked like the work of a maniac—purposeless and without the slightest trace of a motive. People spoke of Bolsh

As the words fell slowly and calmly from his lips his hearers felt a thrill of ungovernable emotion, almost of apprehension. For they knew well that he spoke only of what he knew, and the measured phrases conjured up in their keen brains not only a picture of a world where labour had been reduced to the vanishing point, but of a world where evil still strove with good, where the enemies of society still strove against the established order of things which they hated, where crime in the hands of

He was now the last of the Renstokes. But he was still young. No one dreamed but that he would marry and that the ancient line would be continued. Then the blow fell! Through the late summer a series of mysterious attacks had been made on live stock throughout the western portion of Argyllshire. Sheep, and even deer, had been attacked, evidently by some unusually powerful animal. Sheep worrying, of course, is not an uncommon vice among dogs, and when the outbreak first started little was thought

“Gregoire has pushed things a bit too far,” was Yvette’s verdict, as she talked over with Dick Manton and Jules the latest and most blatant challenge to the forces of the law and order. “They mean to make certain this time. I’m sure of it?” “It certainly seems so,” Dick agreed. “But I wonder when and how it will be? That’s the point. Gregoire doesn’t show himself much in public now; he is practically living in the Prefecture, and surrounded by his agents he is far too well guarded for any attemp

Dick Manton had had a strange and adventurous career. But as he gazed at the odd announcement, he had a premonition that he was on the edge of a mystery stranger than anything that he had so far encountered. Having read the queer cryptogram over and over again, Dick slipped the paper into his pocket. Presently he finished his wine and sauntered out, with an uneasy feeling that made him wonder whether he would reach the door without a bullet in his back. He got out in safety, however, and once cl