The Box with Broken Seals by Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips), 1866-1946

"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

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."