black of an attendant, stood
looking down at him distrustfully. His eyebrows were shaved, and a
mustache drooped down to his sharp, flat chin like sea-weed.

He asked Harrison a sharp question in a dialect that smacked of the
guttural Tibetan.

"He wants to know where you came from," translated Harrison irritably.

"From Wenchow. A mandarin. He should know."

The man in severe black bowed respectfully, and Peter looked at him
frigidly.

Harrison slipped the Murdock receivers over his ears, and his voice
went on in a weak, garrulous and meaningless whimper.

"Static--static--static. It is horrible to-night. I cannot hear these
fellows. Ah! Afghanistan has nothing, nor Bengal. Hey, you fool, I
cannot hear this fellow in Szechwan. He has a message. Yes, you, I
cannot hear him. Not a word! He is faint, like a bad whisper. They
will beat me again if I cannot hear!"

He tried again, forcing the rubber knobs against his ears until they
seemed to sink into his head.

"Have you good hearing?"

"I will try," said Peter.

"Then sit here. You must hear him, or we will both be beaten. This
fellow goes straight to _him_."

Peter slipped into the vacated chair and strapped down the receivers.
A long, faint whisper, as indistinguishable as the lisp of leaves on a
distant hill, trickled into his ears. Ordinarily he would have given
up such a station in disgust, and waited for the air to clear. Now he
wanted to establish his ability, to demonstrate the acuteness of
hearing for which he was famous.

Behind him the black-garbed attendant muttered, and Peter scowled at
him to be silent.

With deftness that might have surprised that wretch, Harrison, had his
wits been more alert, he raised and closed switches for transmission,
and rapped out in a quick, professional "O.K."

He cocked his head to one side, as he always did when listening to
far-away signals, and a pad and pencil were slid under his hand.

The world and its noises and the tense, eager figures behind him,
retreated and became nothing. In all eternity there was but one
thing--the message from the whispering Szechwan station.

His pencil trailed lightly, without a sound, across the smooth paper.

A message for L. Y. An American girl. Brown hair. Eyes with the
moon's mystery. Lips like a new-born rose. Enchantingly young.

The blood boiled into Peter's brain, and the pencil slipped from
fingers that were like ice. There was only