LITMIR.BIZ

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There is no need for you to know where I am going, and I am not going to tell you. There is no need for you to remember that you ever knew me in your life. There is no need for you to remember any of the work in which you have been engaged. Your propaganda has developed a few strong men in this country and discovered a good deal of pulp. You are part of the pulp. There is only one other thing. If you should be heard of, Rentoul, shall we say telephoning, or calling upon the police here, offering to sell—No, by God, you don't!" The man's furtive tug at his hip pocket was almost pathetic in its futility. Jocelyn Thew had him by the throat, holding him with one hand well away from him, a quivering mass of discoloured, terrified flesh.

      "Now you know," he continued coolly, "why I sent for you, Rentoul. Now you know why I rather preferred to see you here to coming to your Fifth Avenue mansion. I don't like traps—I don't like traitors."

      "I give you my word," the breathless man began, "my word of honour—"

      "Neither would interest me," the other interrupted grimly. "You are to be trusted just as far as you can be seen, just as far as your own safety and welfare depend upon your fidelity. You needn't be so terrified," he went on as, leaning over, he took the revolver from Rentoul's pocket, drew out the cartridges and threw it upon the table. "You've earned any ugly thing that might be coming to you, but I should think it very probable that you will be able to go on over-feeding your filthy carcass for a few more years. First of all, though, perhaps you had better tell me exactly why you have an appointment with Mr. Harrison, from Police Headquarters, at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"

      Rentoul was white to the lips.

      "I wanted to explain about the wireless," he faltered.

      "That sounds very probable," was the contemptuous reply. "What else?"

      "Nothing!"

      Jocelyn Thew shrugged his shoulders. His victim cowered before him. For the first time the girl moved. She came a little nearer, and there was fury in her eyes as she looked down upon the terrified man.

      "We could keep him here," she whispered. "Ned Grimes and some of the others will be in soon. There are plenty of ways of getting rid of him for a time."

      "It wouldn't be worth while," Thew said simply. "One doesn't commit crimes for such carrion."

      Rentoul had struggled into a sitting posture. He was dabbing feebly at his forehead with an overperfumed handkerchief.

      "I wanted to make peace at Headquarters," he whined. "I want to be left alone. I should not have told them anything."

      "That may or may not be," Jocelyn Thew replied. "All that I am fairly sure of is that you will keep your mouth shut now. You know," he went on, his voice growing a shade more menacing, "that I never threaten where I do not perform. I may not be over here myself, but there will be a few men left in New York, and one word from your lips—even a hint—and your life will pay the forfeit within twenty-four hours. You will be watched for a time—you and a few others of your kidney—watched until the time has gone by when anything you could say or do would be of account."

      "Have you anything more to say to me?" the man stammered. "I feel faint."

      His persecutor threw open the door.

      "Nothing! Get into your car and drive home. Keep out of sight and hearing for a time. You are no particular ornament nor any use to any country, but remember that everything you have done, you have done when the country of your birth was in trouble and the country of your adoption was at peace. The situation is altered. The country of which you are a naturalised citizen is now at war. You had better remember it, and decide for yourself where your duty lies."

      They listened to his heavy footsteps as he descended the stairs. Then the girl turned to her companion.

      "Mr. Thew," she began, "you are not a German or an Austrian, yet you are doing their work, risking your life every day. Is it for money?"

      "No," he replied, "in a general way it is not for money."

      "What is it, then?" she asked curiously.

      He stood looking out across the roofs and at the distant skyscrapers. She watched him without speaking. She knew very well that his eyes saw nothing of the landscape. He was looking back into some world of his own fancy, back, perhaps, into the shadows of his own life, concerning which no word that she or any one else in the city had ever heard had passed his lips.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      The two men—Crawshay and Sam Hobson—still a little breathless, stood at the end of the dock, gazing out towards the river. Around them was a slowly dispersing crowd of sightseers, friends and relations of the passengers on board the great American liner, ploughing her way down the river amidst the shrieks and hoots of her attendant tugs. Out on the horizon, beyond the Statue of Liberty, two long, grey, sinister shapes were waiting. Hobson glanced at them gloomily.

      "Guess those are our destroyers going to take the City of Boston some of the way across," he observed. "To think, with all this fuss about, that she must go and start an hour before her time!"

      "It's filthy luck," the Englishman muttered.

      The crowd grew thinner and thinner, yet the two men made no movement towards departure. It seemed to Crawshay impossible that after all they had gone through they should have failed. The journey in the fast motor car, after a breakdown of the Chicago Limited, rushing through the night like some live monster, tearing now through a plain of level lights, as they passed through some great city, vomiting fire and flame into the black darkness of the country places. It was like the ride of madmen, and more than once they had both hung on to their seats in something which was almost terror. "How are we going?" Crawshay had asked perpetually.

      "Still that infernal half-hour," was the continual reply. "We are doing seventy, but we don't seem to be able to work it down."

      A powerful automobile had taken them through the streets of New York, and lay now a wreck in one of the streets a mile from the dock. They had finished the journey in a taxicab, and the finish had been this—half an hour late! Yet they lingered, with their eyes fixed upon the disappearing ship.

      "I guess there's nothing more we can do," Hobson said at last grudgingly. "We can lay it up for them on the other side, and we can talk to her all the way to Liverpool on the wireless, but if there is any scoop to be made the others'll get it—not us."

      "If only we could have got on board!" Crawshay muttered. "It's no use thinking of a tug, I suppose?"

      The American shook his head.

      "She's too far out," he replied gloomily. "There's nothing to be hired that could catch her."

      Crawshay's hand had suddenly stolen to his chin. There was a queer light in his eyes. He clutched at his companion's arm.

      "You're wrong, Hobson," he exclaimed. "There is! Come right along with me. We can talk as we go."

      "Are you crazy?" the American demanded.

      "Not quite," the other answered. "Hurry up, man."

      "Where to?" "To New Jersey. I've got Government orders, endorsed by your own Secretary of War. It's a hundred to one they won't listen to me, but we've got to try it."

      He was already dragging his companion down the wooden way. His whole expression had changed. His face was alight with the joy of an idea. Already Hobson, upon whom the germ of that idea had dawned, began to be infected with his enthusiasm.

      "It's a gorgeous stunt," he acknowledged, as he followed his companion into a taxicab. "If we bring it off, it's going to knock the movies silly."

      Katharine, weary at last of waving her hand to the indistinct blur of faces upon the dock, picked up the great clusters of roses which late arrivals had thrust into her arms at the last moment, and descended

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