“Sailed for New York from Liverpool four days ago. She is wanted in France for connection with some wholesale swindling of a bank in Lille four or five years ago. We lost sight of her for a little while lately, but that we have just explained by the fact that she recently went through a form of marriage at a registry with a rich American Senator, Colonel Clutterbuck. I say went through a form of marriage, for her husband, one of the clerks in the Lille bank, is now in the hands of the French police. My lord, you may make your mind easy about your boy. No doubt he is the child who sailed with Colonel and Mrs. Clutterbuck four days ago as Mrs. Clutterbuck’s nephew, Roland Tyrrell, aged six.” “What is to be done now?” cried Lord Francis, relieved at getting a clew to his boy, and in despair at finding the child must already be half-way across the Atlantic. “She will be arrested on landing, and brought back.” “But the boy, my son?” “If you wish it, we can cable, and have him looked after for you. There will be a few days lost in legal formalities in New York.” “I’ll follow the boy. I’ll go by the next boat!” and, with this resolution, and no thought of anything else, he rushed away from Scotland Yard for his chambers. At his chambers he found everything as he had left it weeks ago. Into a couple of portmanteaus he bundled some clothes--any, no matter what, he could put his hands on. Then he sat down to think. His brain was in a whirl. Only one thought had any value, any place in his mind--the recovery of Ronny. On that depended all. On that depended the life of Fenella, and his own power of making reparation to her for all she had gone through. He had forgotten one thing at Scotland Yard. The inspector had said they could cable to have the boy taken care of for him. He had not asked the inspector to do so. He sat down, and, with a hand that shook so that he could hardly hold the pen, he wrote to the inspector, begging that a message might be sent by cable, bidding them look after Ronny on his behalf in New York. He marked the envelope “private,” for there was plenty of time for the cable, and he wished the whole affair to be kept as quiet as possible. Then he had nothing else to do but to get forward. He did not think of looking to see, or of inquiring when the next boat left. Queenstown was the point nearest to America, and, by the Irish mail that night, he started for Cork. It was not until he had been six hours plunging through the Atlantic toward the New World, in the huge ocean steamer, that he remembered he had sent no word to Guernsey. But he dismissed the omission from his mind as a matter of no moment; “for,” thought he, “all the messages in the world would not serve my poor girl as she now is, and I am going to fetch the elixir of life for her--our Ronny’s voice.”