"My lieutenant," corrected the Master.

"As second in command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me, and avoidable danger."

"It is neither," answered the man at the wheel. "What would you have done? What better plan could you have proposed?"

"You could have built your own flyer, couldn't you? Since money's no object to you, and you don't even know, accurately, how much you've got--n.o.body can keep track of figures like those--why risk legal interference and international complications at the start, by--"

"To build the kind of flyer we need would have taken six or seven months. Not all my money could have produced it, sooner. And absolute ennui can't wait half a year. I'd have gone wholly stale, and so would you, and all of them. We'd have lost them.

"Again, news of any such operations would have got out. My plans would possibly have been checkmated. In the third place, what you propose would have been tame sport, indeed, as a beginning! Three excellent reasons, my dear Major, why this is positively the only way."

"Perhaps. But there's always the chance of failure, now. The guards--"

"After your own experience, when that capsule burst in the laboratory, you talk to me about guards?"

"Suppose one escapes?"

The Master only smiled grimly, and sighted his course up the dark river.

"And the alarm is sure to be given, in no time. Why didn't you just buy the thing outright?"

"It's not for sale, at any price."

"Still--men can't run off with three and a half million dollars' worth of property and with provisions and equipment like that, all ready for a trial trip, without raising h.e.l.l. There'll be pursuit--"

"What with, my dear Bohannan?"

"That's a foolish statement of mine, the last one, I admit," answered the major, as his companion swung the launch a little toward the Jersey sh.o.r.e. "Of course nothing can overhaul us, once we're away.

But you know my type of mind weighs every possibility, pro and con.

Wireless can fling out a fan of swift aerial police ahead of us from Europe."

"How near can anything get to us?"

"I know it all looks quite simple and obvious, in theory.

Nevertheless--"

"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master, incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swift attack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That's your racial character.

"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."

His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward the Manhattan sh.o.r.e. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the other way.

"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'll ever hear me utter. Full speed ahead--to Paradise--or h.e.l.l!"

They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north.

By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys--that of bending others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of his fancy.

Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kept his lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word to Captain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master's cross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials were genuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but the same thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind them all. Now he was trusting him with much, already.

"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of the captain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed the command. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at the bows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. The goal lay not far off.

To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting Spuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of the cliff or atop it, showed that the spa.r.s.ely settled Palisades were drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant steamer-whistles from astern.

A crawling string of lights, on the New York sh.o.r.e, told that an express was hurling itself cityward. Its m.u.f.fled roar began to echo out over the star-flecked waters. The Master threw a scornful glance at it. He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city's lights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river's edge. Then he looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by the metropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.

"Child's play!" he murmured. "All this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies--child's play. Less than that--the blind swarming of ants!

Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?"

He turned back and thrust over the spokes. The launch drew in toward the Jersey sh.o.r.e.

"Let the engines run at half-speed," he directed, "and control her now with the clutch."

"Yes, sir!"

The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master nodded to himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be a valued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There might be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case that should be necessary.

The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the cliff. Sounds from sh.o.r.e began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren shrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A human voice came vaguely hallooing.

Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light was visible. The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening.

He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel. But all he said was:

"Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!"

As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouring stars. The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hook and came forward. Out of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet the launch. The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradled against the stringpiece.

Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out.

Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulating something in the bottom of the launch. Then he stepped to the engine.

"Out, Rrisa," he commanded, "and hold hard with the hook, now!"

The Arab obeyed. All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.

The Master leaped to the wharf.

"Let go--and throw the hook into the boat!" he ordered.

While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launch began to draw slowly back into the stream. Already it was riding a bit low, going down gradually by the bows.

"What now?" questioned the major, astonished.

"She will sink a hundred or two yards from sh.o.r.e, in deep water,"

answered the Master, calmly. "The sea-c.o.c.k is wide open."

"A fifteen thousand dollar launch--!"

"Is none the less, a clue. No man of this party, reaching the sh.o.r.e tonight, is leaving any more trace than we are. Come, now, all this is trivial. Forward!"

In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow, rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff, and began to ascend. A lathering climb it was, laden as they were with heavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.