Brixton's den. No sooner had he discovered it than Kennedy became
intensely interested. For the moment he seemed entirely to forget
the electric-light wires and became absorbed in tracing out the
course of the telephone trunk-line and its extensions. Continued
search rewarded him with the discovery that both the household
line and the private line were connected by hastily improvised
extensions with the two receivers he had discovered in the out-of-
the-way corner of a little dark storeroom.

"Don't disturb a thing," remarked Kennedy, cautiously picking up
even the burnt matches he had dropped in his hasty search. "We
must devise some means of catching the eavesdropper red handed. It
has all the marks of being an inside job."

We had completed our investigation of the basement without
attracting any attention, and Craig was careful to make it seem
that in entering the library we came from the den, not from the
cellar. As we waited in the big leather chairs Kennedy was
sketching roughly on a sheet of paper the plan of the house,
drawing in the location of the various wires.

The door opened. We had expected John Brixton. Instead, a tall,
spare foreigner with a close-cropped moustache entered. I knew at
once that it must be Count Wachtmann, although I had never seen
him.

"Ah, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed in English which betrayed
that he had been under good teachers in London. "I thought Miss
Brixton was here."