Then I asked you to throw it overboard, Mr.
Bayne; and you were wonderful. You must have thought I was mad, but you
didn't flutter an eyelid or even smile. I have never forgotten--and I've
never forgiven myself either. When I think of how the steward saw
you and told the captain, and of how they searched your baggage that
dreadful day--"
"It didn't matter a brass farden!" I hastened to assure her, for she had
paused and was gazing at me, large-eyed and pale. "Don't think of that
any more. Suppose we skip to Paris! Blenheim followed you there, hoping
he was on the scent of the vanished papers; and when you arrived at the
rue St.-Dominique, there was still no news of the duke."
"No news," she mourned; "not a word. And Enid was ill and hopeless;
from the very first she had felt sure that Jean was dead. But I wouldn't
admit it. I said we must try to find him. All the way over in the
steamer I had been making a sort of plan.
"You see, one of the papers had described how the French had found
Jean's airship lying in the forest of La Fay, as if he had abandoned it
from choice.
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