ird," said Hugh, "before we do anything else. I'm
hungry. Haven't eaten since last night, dear. I've been too excited to
think of eating--or sleeping."

In a quiet corner of the big cafe they had their bird and just enough
champagne to give them the courage that counts. With their heads close
together they planned and plotted until they forgot the rain that
pattered against the window panes, and dreariness turned to rosy
assurance.

"Just a little nerve, dear," said he as they arose. "Do as I have told
you and trust to luck. It can't fail."

The plain-clothes man was just outside the door. Scores of people were
hurrying past, umbrellas raised in the face of the drizzle. Down
Broadway the glare of lights was broken and left hazy in the fog like
rain. The sidewalks in the distance looked like a bobbing field of black
mushrooms, shiny and sleek. The air was chill with the wet shadows of a
night that hated to surrender to the light of man.

"Where's the cab?" demanded Hugh. "Get it up here quick. I don't want to
keep my friend waiting at the station. Come in and have a drink,
officer. It's no fun standing around this kind of weather. No job for a
decent human being, I'd say. Especially when one's set to watch
respectable people and not criminals. This is a rattling good joke on
me--and my sister. I need about three good, stiff drinks? We'll go in
next door here. Get into the cab, Marian, We won't be inside
two minutes."

If the plain-clothes man was willing to take the drink, all well and
good, but if he refused--but he did not refuse. He looked carefully
about, shivered appropriately, and said he "didn't care if he did."
Grace urged them to hurry as she entered the cab and Hugh gave his
promise. Scarcely had the two men passed beyond the light screen doors
when Grace Vernon coolly stepped from the cab and hurriedly made her way
off through the crowd of umbrellas, first telling the driver to wait for
her in front of the drug store.

A moment later she boarded a Broadway car, and excited, but intent only
on reaching a place where she could safely engage a cab to take her to
the dock. And all the time she was hoping and praying, not for herself,
but for the important young gentleman who was clicking his righteous
glass in a den of iniquity.

CHAPTER IV

READY FOR THE SEA

Ridgeway, his nerves tense and his eyes gleaming, marched his thoroughly
chilled companion up to the bar. He manoeuvred so that the plain-cl