rns to the battery room and
succeeds in recovering the portable instrument.

"To-day Lieutenant Mackinson, while pursuing an investigation of the
affair, is shoved into a closet and only escapes death from suffocation
by making himself heard as he telegraphs for help over a steam-pipe.

"It must have been while we were rescuing the lieutenant that the same
man again enters the wireless room and leaves there this chain, which
had been attached to the iron cross, and also this note of warning.

"The impudent effrontery and the cunning treachery of this man
constitute him a menace to every other person aboard this ship. We are
not safe while he is free.

"This German spy must and shall be found."

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEATH OF THE SPY

The inability of Lieutenant Mackinson to add a single word of further
information to what he had said as he regained consciousness on the
promenade deck increased the mystery.

The young lieutenant, it seemed, had been following a trail which he
believed was leading him closer and closer to the object of the hunt,
and it was in forging the links of this chain of circumstantial evidence
that the young officer was led into the lower depths of the ship.

"From a sailor who did not know why I was inquiring," he told the
captain, "I learned that on the night the unknown man invaded the
battery room this sailor had seen another member of the crew, presumably
from the engine or boiler room, throw aside something as he hurried
along the passageway leading from the wireless room. He was in his
undershirt.

"The sailor said he was about to investigate when he saw us come along,
and you stooped to pick up whatever it was that had been thrown away.

"While I was talking to him another member of the crew, evidently also
from the boiler or engine room, brushed by us. He had disappeared when
the sailor said to me, 'I think that was the fellow--the one that just
went by.' Not wanting to arouse his suspicions, I ended the conversation
with a casual remark, and then strolled away until I was out of the
sailor's sight, and then hurried as fast as I could toward the engine
room.

"I do not know that part of the ship well, and it was very dark down
there. I was groping my way along when I thought I heard steps just
ahead of me. I stopped to listen, and when the sound was not repeated I
proceeded onward.

"All of a sudden I was grasped by the neck and one arm from behind, and
thrown into tha