The details of departure were an old tale to me. As we swung farther and
farther out, I turned to a newspaper, a twentieth extra probably, which
I had heard a newsboy crying along the dock a little earlier, and had
bribed a steward to secure. Moon and stars were lacking to-night, but
the deck lights were good reading-lamps. Moving up the rail to one of
them, I investigated the world's affairs.
From the first sheet the usual staring headlines leaped at me. There
were the inevitable peace rumor, the double denial, the eternal bulletin
of a trench taken here, a hill recaptured there. A sensational rumor was
exploited to the effect that Franz von Blenheim, one of the star secret
agents of the German Empire, was at present incognito at Washington,
having spent the past month in putting his finger in the Mexican
pie much to our disadvantage. On the last column of the page was the
photograph of a distinguished-looking young man in uniform, with an
announcement that promised some interest, I thought.
"War Scandal Bursts in France," "Scion of Oldest Noblesse Implicated,"
"Duke Mysteriously Missing," I read in the diminishing degrees of
the scare-head type.
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