CHAPTER II

At length Mrs. Van Stuyler, being a woman of large experience and some

social deftness, recognised that a change of subject was the easiest way

of retreat out of a rather difficult situation. So she put her cup down,

leant back in her chair, and, looking straight into Lord Redgrave's

eyes, she said with purely feminine irrelevance:

"I suppose you know, Lord Redgrave, that, when we left, the machine

which we call in America Manhood Suffrage--which, of course, simply

means the selection of a government by counting noses which may or may

not have brains above them--was what some of our orators would call in

full blast. If you are going to New York after Washington, as you said

on the boat, we might find it a rather inconvenient time to arrive. The

whole place will be chaos, you know; because when the citizen of the

United States begins electioneering, New York is not a very nice place

to stop in except for people who want excitement, and so if you will

excuse me putting the question so directly, I should like to know what

you just do mean to do----"

Lord Redgrave saw that she was going to add "with us," but before he had

time to say anything, Miss Zaidie turned round, walked deliberately

towards her chair, sat down, poured herself out a fresh cup of coffee,

added the milk and sugar with deliberation, and then after a preliminary

sip said, with her cup poised half-way between her dainty lips and the

table:

"Mrs. Van, I've got an idea. I suppose it's inherited, for dear old Pop

had plenty. Anyhow we may as well get back to common-sense subjects. Now

look here," she went on, switching an absolutely convincing glance

straight into her host's eyes, "my father may have been a dreamer, but

still he was a Sound Money man. He believed in honest dealings. He

didn't believe in borrowing a hundred dollars gold and paying back in

fifty dollars silver. What's your opinion, Lord Redgrave; you don't do

that sort of thing in England, do you? Uncle Russell is a Sound Money

man too. He's got too much gold locked up to want silver for it."

"My dear Zaidie," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, "what _have_ democratic and

republican politics and bimetalism got to do with----"

"With a trip in this wonderful vessel which Pop told me years ago could

go up to the stars if it ever was made? Why just this, Lord Redgrave is

an Englishman and too rich to believe in anything but sound money, so is

Uncle Russell, and there you have it, or should have."

"I think I see what you mean, Miss Rennick," said their host, leaning

back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, as steamboat

travellers are wont to do when seas are smooth and skies are blue. "The

_Astronef_ might come down like a vision from the clouds and preach the

Gospel of Gold in electric rays of silver through the commonplace medium

of the Morse Code. How's that for poetry and practice?"

"I quite agree with his lordship as regards the practice," said Mrs. Van

Stuyler, talking somewhat rudely across him to Zaidie. "It would be an

excellent use to put this wonderful invention to. And then, I am sure

his lordship would land us in Central Park, so that we could go to your

Uncle's house right away."

"No, no, I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me there, Mrs. Van

Stuyler," said Redgrave, with a change of tone which Miss Zaidie

appreciated with a swiftly veiled glance. "You see, I have placed myself

beyond the law. I have, as you have been good enough to intimate,

abducted--to put it brutally--two ladies from the deck of an Atlantic

liner. Further, in doing so I have selfishly spoiled the prospects of

one of the ladies. But, seriously, I really must go to Washington

first----"

"I think, Lord Redgrave," interrupted Mrs. Van Stuyler, ignoring the

last unfinished sentence and assuming her best Knickerbocker dignity,

"if you will forgive me saying so, that that is scarcely a subject for

discussion here."

"And if that's so," interrupted Miss Zaidie, "the less we say about it

the better. What I wanted to say was this. We all want the Republicans

in, at least all of us that have much to lose. Now, if Lord Redgrave was

to use this wonderful air-ship of his on the right side--why there

wouldn't be any standing against it."

"I must say that until 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 beyond the

limits of the Solar System, and so if you wish to be landed either in

Washington or New York it shall be done. You shall be put down within a

carriage drive of your own residence, or of Mr. Russell Rennick's. I

will myself see you to his door, and there we may say goodbye, and I

will take my trip through the Solar System alone."

There was another pause after this, a pause pregnant with the fate of

two lives. They looked at each other--Mrs. Van Stuyler at Zaidie, Zaidie

at Lord Redgrave, and he at Mrs. Van Stuyler again. It was a kind of

three-cornered duel of eyes, and the eyes said a good deal more than

common human speech could have done.

Then Lord Redgrave, in answer to the last glance from Zaidie's eyes,

said slowly and deliberately:

"I don't want to take any undue advantage, but I think I am justified in

making one condition. Of course I can take you beyond the limits of the

world that we know, and to other worlds that we know little or nothing

of. At least I could do so if I were not bound by law as strong as

gravitation itself; but now, as I said before, I just ask whether or not

my guests or, if you think it suits the circumstances better, my

prisoners, shall be released unconditionally wherever they choose to be

landed."

He paused for a moment and then, looking straight into Zaidie's eyes, he

added:

"The one condition I make is that the vote shall be unanimous."

"Under the circumstances, Lord Redgrave," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, rising

from her seat and walking towards him with all the dignity that would

have been hers in her own drawing-room, "there can only be one answer to

that. Your guests or your prisoners, as you choose to call them, must be

released unconditionally."

Lord Redgrave heard these words as a man might hear words in a dream.

Zaidie had risen too. They were looking into each other's eyes, and many

unspoken words were passing between them. There was a little silence,

and then, to Mrs. Van Stuyler's unutterable horror, Zaidie said, with

just the suspicion of a gasp in her voice:

"There's one dissentient. We are prisoners, and I guess I'd better

surrender at discretion."

The next moment her captor's arm was round her waist, and Mrs. Van

Stuyler, with her twitching fingers linked behind her back, and her nose

at an angle of sixty degrees, was staring away through the blue

immensity, dumbly wondering what on earth or under heaven was going to

happen next.