Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/105

 her game. He had hoped to figure in that end. But it had been ordered otherwise.

Kestner handed the fluttering sheets over to the patiently-waiting Wilsnach.

"We're out of it," he announced, though it took an effort to speak as lightly as he wished.

"Out of what?" asked Wilsnach.

"Read them!" was all Kestner said.

Wilsnach frowned over the two despatches for several seconds. Then he too looked disconsolately up, and stared at the broken skyline of the evening city and the crowded waterways and the ever shuttling ferries and harbour-tugs.

"Why, this means we've got to get aboard the Mauretania to-night!" Kestner heard his companion exclaim. "This is Wednesday, and she'll sail an hour after midnight. We can't even get to a hotel."

Kestner quietly lighted a cigar and leaned on the ship's rail.

"It's all in the game!" he said as he folded up the messages.

"But what are we to do?" asked Wilsnach.

"The only thing there is to do," was Kestner's answer. "First make sure of a stateroom on that steamer and then buy some clothes. Of course we might do the Avenue and the Drive in a taxi, with dinner at Delmonico's, say, for the sake of old times." "It'll seem like a funeral!" scoffed Wilsnach.

"Well, it is one!" acknowledged Kestner.