"That may or may not be," Jocelyn Thew replied. "All that I am fairly sure of is that you will keep your mouth shut now. You know," he went on, his voice growing a shade more menacing, "that I never threaten where I do not perform. I may not be over here myself, but there will be a few men left in New York, and one word from your lips--even a hint--and your life will pay the forfeit within twenty-four hours. You will be watched for a time--you and a few others of your kidney--watched until the time has gone by when anything you could say or do would be of account." "Have you anything more to say to me?" the man stammered. "I feel faint." His persecutor threw open the door. "Nothing! Get into your car and drive home. Keep out of sight and hearing for a time. You are no particular ornament nor any use to any country, but remember that everything you have done, you have done when the country of your birth was in trouble and the country of your adoption was at peace. The situation is altered. The country of which you are a naturalised citizen is now at war. You had better remember it, and decide for yourself where your duty lies." They listened to his heavy footsteps as he descended the stairs. Then the girl turned to her companion. "Mr. Thew," she began, "you are not a German or an Austrian, yet you are doing their work, risking your life every day. Is it for money?" "No," he replied, "in a general way it is not for money." "What is it, then?" she asked curiously. He stood looking out across the roofs and at the distant skyscrapers. She watched him without speaking. She knew very well that his eyes saw nothing of the landscape. He was looking back into some world of his own fancy, back, perhaps, into the shadows of his own life, concerning which no word that she or any one else in the city had ever heard had passed his lips. CHAPTER IV The two men--Crawshay and Sam Hobson--still a little breathless, stood at the end of the dock, gazing out towards the river. Around them was a slowly dispersing crowd of sightseers, friends and relations of the passengers on board the great American liner, ploughing her way down the river amidst the shrieks and hoots of her attendant tugs. Out on the horizon, beyond the Statue of Liberty, two long, grey, sinister shapes were waiting. Hobson glanced at them gloomily. "Guess those are our destroyers going to take the _City of Boston_ some of the way across," he observed. "To think, with all this fuss about, that she must go and start an hour before her time!" "It's filthy luck," the Englishman muttered.