"But she sha'n't fight it out by herself!" he cried. "Do you think I'm such a coward as that--to stand back, not offering to help?" "Perhaps you can't help," I interposed. "Don't talk nonsense!" he retorted. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Lester, but I'm overwrought--I can't choose my words. But it _is_ nonsense. I love her--of course I can help. Don't you see, it's not herself she's thinking of--she's trying to spare _me_." I nodded. Perhaps it was for his sake that Marcia Lawrence had taken that wild step. That would be like a woman. "You may be right," I said. "I'd never thought of that solution, but Mrs. Lawrence's last words to me would seem to point that way. She said that the matter would rest in your hands--that it would be for you to choose, after you'd heard the story." "I don't want to hear the story!" Curtiss cried. "Good God! What do I care for the story! I've made my choice, once and forever! I want her! Of course it was to spare me she ran away! She'd never think of herself!" I might have retorted that it had been a rather questionable form of mercy; that she could scarcely have inflicted on him any suffering more acute than that which he had undergone. But I forbore; instead, I took the telegram again and studied it. "If you really wish to find her," I said, "perhaps this will give us a clue." "I do wish to find her." "This form will tell us which station this message was sent from, I think. Wait here a minute," and I crossed the hall to the brokerage offices of Sims & Wesson. "May I speak to your operator?" I asked of the junior partner. "Certainly," he said, and waved me to the little room where the instruments were clicking merrily away. "Can you tell me what these characters mean?" I asked, placing the message before the operator and pointing to the row of figures and letters at the top of it--"61CWDDSA8PD." "The sixty-one," he said, "means that this was the sixty-first message received at Elizabeth this morning; 'CW' means that the message was filed at the Christopher Street office--corner Christopher and West; 'DD' and 'SA' are the initials of the operators who sent and received the message; '8PD' means that there are eight words in the message and that it was prepaid. It's the regular form used on all Western Union messages." "Thank you," I said, and hurried back across the hall elated, for I had learned more than I had dared to hope. "Well?" asked Curtiss, looking up with anxious face. "The message was filed at the Christopher Street office," I said, "Christopher and West streets----" "West Street?" echoed Mr. Royce. "What on earth was she doing there?" "She could have been doing only one thing," I pointed out exultantly. "When a woman goes down to the docks, it must be----" "To take a boat!" "Just so! And when she goes to that particular portion of the docks, it must be to take a trans-Atlantic liner." Curtiss stared at me for a moment as though not understanding; then he rose heavily to his feet.