At this point we digress, in order to drag in the fact that this ship, the _Mesopotamia_, was one of the largest ships afloat at this time. The following year there would be bigger ones in commission, but for the moment she ranked among the largest. She was over eight hundred feet long and of a beam measurement and a hull depth to correspond; but even upon a craft of such amplified proportions as this was news travels with amazing rapidity, especially if it be news calculated to arouse and to excite. Such a ship might be likened to a small, compact town set afloat, with all the social ramifications of a small town and with all of a small town's curiosity regarding the private affairs of the neighbours. Ashore gossip flies swiftly enough, goodness only knows; at sea it flits from point to point, as if on the wings of the swallow. What one knows every one else knows, and knows it very soon too. The digression is concluded. Let us return to the main thread of our narrative. Let us go back to the joint occupants of D-forty. It was nine-twenty that same evening when Keller broke in upon his companion, who sat at the little desk, still busied with his writing. Keller seemed flustered, not to say indignant. He slammed the door behind him viciously. "Somebody's on," he stated, speaking with disconsolate conviction. "I know I haven't said anything, and it don't stand to reason that you'd be talking; but they're on." "On what?" inquired Bronston calmly. "On to us--that's what! It's leaked out who we are." "What makes you think that?" "I don't think anything about it--I know. I've got the proofs. We had our little game all fixed up for to-night--me and the same three fellows I've been playing with right along; but when I looked them up in the smoking room after dinner they all three excused themselves--said they didn't feel like playing. Well, that was all right, but a little later I saw Latham and Levy joining in a game with two other men, both strangers to me. So I tried to get into another game that was just starting up, and the fellows there horned me out. I could tell they didn't want to be playing with me. And going through the lounge I tumbled, all of a sudden, to the fact that all the people there, men and women both, were looking hard at me and nodding to one another--get what I mean? Maybe they didn't think I saw them--I didn't let on, of course--but I did see 'em. I tell you they're on. Say, what do you know about a lot of stuck-up people passing up a man cold, just because they've found out some way that he's a private detective?" Overcome by his feelings he snorted in disgust. Then added, as an afterthought: "Well, what's the next move? What do you think we'd better do now?" Bronston considered a moment before answering.