you got it?" demanded my companion as we entered the room.

"It's still coming through," replied the other without moving, "but in
the same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone
back to the beginning--just _Dr. Petrie_--_Dr. Petrie_."

He began to listen again for the elusive message. I turned to Platts.

"Where is it being sent from?" I asked.

Platts shook his head.

"That's the mystery," he declared. "Look!"--he pointed to the table;
"according to the Marconi chart, there's a Messageries boat due west
between us and Marseilles, and the homeward-bound P. & O. which we
passed this morning must be getting on that way also, by now. The
_Isis_ is somewhere ahead, but I've spoken all these, and the message
comes from none of them."

"Then it may come from Messina."

"It doesn't come from Messina," replied the man at the table,
beginning to write rapidly.

Platts stepped forward and bent over the message which the other was
writing.

"Here it is!" he cried excitedly; "we're getting it."

Stepping in turn to the table, I leant over between the two and read
these words as the operator wrote them down: _Dr. Petrie_--_my
shadow_....

I drew a quick breath and gripped Platt's shoulder harshly. His
assistant began fingering the instrument with irritation.

"Lost it again!" he muttered.

"This message...." I began.

But again the pencil was travelling over the paper:--_lies upon you
all_ ... _end of message_.

The operator stood up and unclasped the receivers from his ears.
There, high above the sleeping ship's company, with the blue carpet of
the Mediterranean stretched indefinitely about us, we three stood
looking at one another. By virtue of a miracle of modern science, some
one, divided from me by mile upon mile of boundless ocean, had
spoken--and had been heard.

"Is there no means of learning," I said, "from whence this message
emanated?"

Platts shook his head, perplexedly.

"They gave no code word," he said. "God knows who they were. It's a
strange business and a strange message. Have you any sort of idea, Dr.
Petrie, respecting the identity of the sender?"

I stared him hard in the face; an idea had mechanically entered my
mind, but one of which I did not choose to speak, since it was opposed
to human possibility.

But had I not seen with my own eyes the bloody streak across his
forehead as the shot fired by Karamaneh entered his high skull, had I
not known, so certainly as