just now I had hardly contemplated turning the
_Astronef_ into an electioneering machine. Still, I admit that she might
be made use of in a good cause, only I hope----"

"That we shan't want you to paste her over with election bills, eh?--or
start handbill-snowstorms from the deck--or kidnap Croker and Bryan just
as you did us, for instance?"

"If I could, I'm quite sure that I shouldn't have as pleasant guests as
I have now on board the _Astronef_. What do you think, Mrs. Van
Stuyler?"

"My dear Lord Redgrave," she replied, "that would be quite impossible.
The idea of being shut up in a ship like this which can soar not only
from earth, but beyond the clouds, with people who would find out your
best secrets and then perhaps shoot you so as to be the only possessors
of them--well, that would be foolishness indeed."

"Why, certainly it would," said Zaidie; "the only use you could have for
people like that would be to take them up above the clouds and drop them
out. But suppose we--I mean Lord Redgrave--took the _Astronef_ down over
New York and signalled messages from the sky at night with a
searchlight----"

"Good," said their host, getting up from his deck-chair and stretching
himself up straight, looking the while at Miss Zaidie's averted profile.
"That's gorgeously good! We might even turn the election. I'm for sound
money all the time, if I may be permitted to speak American."

"English is quite good enough for us, Lord Redgrave," said Miss Zaidie a
little stiffly. "We may have improved on the old language a bit, still
we understand it, and--well, we can forgive its shortcomings. But that
isn't quite to the point."

"It seems to me," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, "that we are getting nearly as
far from the original subject as we are from the _St. Louis_. May I ask,
Zaidie, what you really propose to do?"

"_Do_ is not for us to say," said Miss Zaidie, looking straight up to
the glass roof of the deck-chamber. "You see, Mrs. Van, we're not free
agents. We are not even first-class passengers who have paid their fares
on a contract ticket which is supposed to get them there."

"If you'll pardon me saying so," said Lord Redgrave, stopping his walk
up and down the deck, "that is not quite the case. To put it in the most
brutally material form, it is quite true that I have kidnapped you two
ladies and taken you beyond the reach of earthly law. But there is
another law, one which would bind a gentleman even if he were