e in this country all we will do to
them will be put them in jail for a year or two. If I had my way I'd
shoot them all on sight."

"Without any evidence--without trying them?" questioned Jane.

"Without trial, yes--without evidence, no; but in the case of these
Hoffs we have evidence enough to stand them both up and shoot them."

"Have you learned more?" she asked quickly. "Is Frederic, too, involved
with his uncle?"

He shot an appraising glance at her. He had been inclined to regard
Dean's suspicion that she was in love with the younger Hoff as the mere
figment of jealousy, but where two young persons of the opposite sex are
thrown together, there is always the possibility of romance. Jane
colored a little under his searching glance, yet what he read in her
face seemed to satisfy his doubts, and he made up his mind to take her
fully into his confidence.

"Thanks to your quick wit in reading those advertisements," he said, "we
have now a fairly complete index of the Hoffs' activities in the last
six months. I have been spending the last two hours in going over all
the Dento advertisements that have appeared. For weeks they have been
sending out a regular series of bulletins."

"Bulletins about what?" asked Jane.

"About everything of interest to the secret enemies of our country:
explanations of where and how to get false passports, detailed
statements of the sailings of our transports, directions for obtaining
materials for making bombs, instructions for blowing up munition plants,
suggestions for smuggling rubber, orders for fomenting strikes. They
even had the nerve to use the name of William Foxley, signed to a
testimonial for Dento."

"Who is William Foxley?" asked Jane curiously.

"In the Wilhelmstrasse code that was in use when Von Bernstorff was
still in this country; in sending their wireless messages they made
frequent use of proper names which had a code meaning. Boy-ed was
'Richard Houston,' Von Papen was 'Thomas Hoggson' and Bolo Pascha was
always mentioned as 'St. Regis,' In this same code 'William Foxley'
always meant the German Foreign Office."

"But surely you did not learn this from the advertisements?"

"Not at all. Hugo Schmidt, who was reputed to be the paymaster of the
gang, was caught trying to burn a copy of this code at the German Club.
With the records of their wireless messages our government managed to
reconstruct the whole code. The use of a word or two from this code in
thes