started? Good! We're waiting for him."

Hobson replaced the receiver upon the instrument.

"Downs is coming right along," he announced. "I tell you what it is,
Mr. Crawshay," he went on, recommencing his walk up and down the
apartment, "I don't feel happy to be so far away from the coast.
That's what scares me. Chicago's just about the place they'd land us,
if this is a hanky-panky trick. We're twenty hours from New York, and
the _City of Boston_ sails to-morrow at five o'clock."

The Englishman shook himself and rose from his recumbent position upon
the sofa. He was a man of youthful middle-age, colourless, with
pleasant face, a somewhat discontented mouth, but keen grey eyes. He
had been sent out from Scotland Yard at the beginning of the war to
assist in certain work at the English Embassy. So far his
opportunities had not been many, or marked with any brilliant success,
and it seemed to him that the gloom of failure was already settling
down upon their present expedition.

"You don't believe, then, any more than I do, that when a certain box
we know of is opened at the Foreign Office in London, it will contain
the papers we are after?"

"No, sir, I do not," was the vigorous reply. "I think they have been
playing a huge game of bluff on us. That's why I am so worried about
this trip. I wouldn't mind betting you the best dinner you ever ate at
Delmonico's or at your English Savoy that that box with the broken
seals they all got so excited about doesn't contain a single one of
the papers that we're after. Why, those blasted Teutons wanted us to