able. "That
paper is willing to pay any price for a big story, if it can be proved
authentic. Proved, mind you, documents and all the rest of it. I cabled
them to know if they wanted to see you, and, if they found what you had
was the real goods, whether they would stake you. They cabled back,
right away, that you were to go up there."

"Up where?"

"N'York."

"But I haven't money enough to go to New York!" protested Stuart.

"Who said anything about money? That's up to the paper. Your expenses
both ways, and your expenses while you're in N'York, will all be paid."

"Are you sure?"

"Seeing that I'll pay your trip up there myself, and charge it up on my
own expense account, of course I'm sure. There's a boat going tomorrow."

"But you couldn't get a berth for tomorrow," protested Stuart, though he
was weakening. He had never been to New York, and the idea of a voyage
there, with his fare and all his expenses paid, tempted him. Besides, as
the reporter had suggested, it would be almost impossible for him to
continue the quest of Manuel, Leborge and Cecil alone. More than that,
the boy felt that, if he could get a big metropolitan paper to back him,
he would be in a position to find and rescue his father.

"Can't get a berth? Watch me!" said the reporter, who was anxious to
impress upon the lad the importance of the press. And, sure enough, he
came back an hour later, with a berth arranged for Stuart in the
morrow's steamer. He also advanced money enough to the boy for a
complete outfit of clothes. An afternoon spent in a Turkish bath
restored to the erstwhile disguised lad his formerly white skin.

One sea-voyage is very much like another. Stuart made several
acquaintances on board, one of them a Jamaican, and from his traveling
companion, Stuart learned indirectly that Great Britain's plan of
welding her West India possessions into a single colony was still a live
issue. The boy, himself, remembering how easily he had been pumped by
Dinville, was careful not to say a word about the purpose of his trip.

Thanks to Dinville's exact instructions, Stuart found the newspaper
office without difficulty. The minute he stepped out of the elevator and
on the floor, a driving expectancy possessed him. The disorderliness,
the sense of tension, the combination of patient waiting and driving
speed, the distant and yet perceptible smell of type metal and printers'
ink, in short, the atmosphere of a newspaper, struck him wit