Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/110

 "That's the woman!"

"Precisely. And the second is that when Lambert took possession of my personal effects in that Paris studio, he got, among other things, my Department pocket cipher-code."

"Which would do him precious little good!"

"On the contrary, it was of sufficient value to enable him to hurry on to Washington with the girl, pick up what he could of the Department procedure, and then have the girl forge two signatures to despatches addressed to the incoming steamer Pannonia. That's the situation. Those messages were made to bear every evidence of being official. The one feature missing was the fact that they were sent from a district office and not from the Department's own operator."

"You mean they faked those two wires?" This time Wilsnach could not dissemble his astonishment. "I do. And it strikes me as being about as bold a bit of work to head off pursuit as I ever encountered. I take off my hat to Lambert!"

"But are you sure, dead sure?"

Kestner smiled.

"I've been talking to both Cuddeback and the Chief himself, on long distance. No such messages ever came out of the Department."

"Then what are we to do?"

"We're to keep after Lambert and his gang until we get them and get them right. We're to keep on that trail until we run the last man down."

Wilsnach's perplexity did not disappear.

"But it's not even a trail," he protested. "We