Chapter IX - Page 2

could you be----'

'Oh, I know--I know! I know everything you would say. Everything you can say I have said to myself, and ten times more and ten times worse. There is nothing you can say of me more bitter than what I think about myself.'

'Did you tell her anything about my report?'

'I told her everything--everything! Do you understand? She is going to telegraph from Queenstown the full essence of the reports--of both our reports.'

'Heavens! this is fearful. Is there no way to prevent her sending it?'

'If you think you can prevent her, I wish you would try it.'

'How did you find it out? Did she tell you?'

'Oh, it doesn't matter how I found it out. I did find it out. A man told me who she was; then I asked her, and she was perfectly frank about it. She read me the report, even.'

'Read it to you?'

'Yes, read it to me, and punctuated it in my presence--put in some words that I suggested as being better than those she had used. Oh, it was the coolest piece of work you ever saw!'

'But there must be some way of preventing her getting that account to New York in time. You see, all we have to do is to wire your people to hand in our report to the directors, and then hers is forestalled. She has to telegraph from a British office, and it seems to me that we could stop her in some way.'

'As, for instance, how?'

'Oh, I don't know just how at the moment, but we ought to be able to do it. If it were a man, we could have him arrested as a dynamiter or something; but a woman, of course, is more difficult to deal with. George, I would appeal to her better nature if I were you.'

Wentworth laughed sneeringly.

'Better nature?' he said. 'She hasn't any; and that is not the worst of it. She has "calculated," as she calls it, all the possibilities in the affair; she "calculates" that we will reach Queenstown about Saturday night. If we do, she will get her report through in time to be published on Sunday in the New York Argus. If that is the case, then see where our telegram will be. We telegraph our people to send in the report. It reaches the office Saturday night, and is not read. The office closes at two o'clock; but even if they got it, and understood the urgency of the matter, they could not place the papers before the directors until Monday morning, and by Monday morning it will be in the London financial sheets.'

'George, that woman is a fiend.'

'No, she isn't, John. She is merely a clever American journalist, who thinks she has done a very good piece of work indeed, and who, through the stupidity of one man, has succeeded, that's all.'

'Have you made any appeal to her at all?'

'Oh, haven't I! Of course I have. What good did it do? She merely laughed at me. Don't you understand? That is what she is here for. Her whole voyage is for that one