doctor.

They now rushed up to the hotel and telegraph office of Inchnadampf. The
doctor, after visiting the bar, went on in the motor to Lairg; it was to
return for Merton, who had business enough on hand in sending the
despatches. He was thinking over 'The Seven Hunters.' It might be,
probably was, a blind, or the kidnappers, having touched there, might
have departed in any direction--to Iceland, for what he knew. But the
name, 'the Seven Hunters,' was not likely to have been invented by a
practical joker in London. If not, the conspirators had really captured
and kept to themselves Mr. Macrae's line of wireless communications. How
could that have been done? Merton bitterly regretted that his general
information did not include electrical science.

However, he had first to send the despatches. In one Mr. Macrae informed
Gianesi and Giambresi of the condition of their instrument, and bade them
send another at once with a skilled operator, and to look out for
probable tamperers in their own establishment. This despatch was in a
cypher which before he got the new invention, and while he used the old
wires, Mr. Macrae had arranged with the electricians. The words of the
despatch were, therefore, peculiar, and the Highland lass who operated, a
girl of great beauty and modesty, at first declined to transmit the
message.

'It's maybe no proper, for a' that I ken,' she urged, and only by
invoking a local person of authority, and using the name of Mr. Macrae
very freely, could Merton obtain the transmission of the despatch.

In another document Mr. Macrae ordered 'more motors' and a dozen
bicycles, as the Nabob of old ordered 'more curricles.' He also
telegraphed to the Home Office, the Admiralty, the Hereditary Lord High
Admiral of the West Coast, to Messrs. McBrain, of the steamers, and to
every one who might have any access to the control of marine police or
information. He wired to the police at New York, bidding them warn all
American stations, and to the leading New York newspapers, knowing the
energy and inquiring, if imaginative, character of their reporters. Bude
ought to have done all this on the previous day, but Bude's ideas were
limited. Nothing, however, was lost, as America is not reached in forty-
eight hours. The millionaire instructed Scotland Yard to warn all
foreign ports, and left them _carte-blanche_ as to the offer of a reward
for the discovery of his missing daughter. He also put off