A pencil of sunlight has struggled through the heavy draperies at the windows and laid a tiny straight line across the carpet in the comfortable apartments of Jack Ashley on West Thirty-fourth Street. The oriole timepiece on the mantel chimes the hour of 9 when that individual awakens with a series of prodigious yawns.
Fifteen minutes more and Ashley’s toilet is complete, and with heels elevated to a comfortable angle, he proceeds to scan the pages of his morning paper. His own story of the French ball first claims his attention, and with a comment of satisfaction on the size of the headlines with which it is introduced, he runs his eye approvingly over the dozen or so illustrations with which the article is embellished.
A scare head of the largest size catches his eye, and with awakening interest he reads the sensational headlines. “Gaining Ground—Cuban Revolutionists Driving Spaniards before Them—Hemisphere’s Exclusive Interview with Senor Manada Creates Excitement in Washington—United States Man-of-War to Be Sent to Cuba to protect American Interests,” and much more of the same tenor. As Jack skims over the voluminous dispatches that follow the head, he reads with interest one brief item, dated Santiago de Cuba, via Nassau, N. P. It is as follows:
“The Government is redoubling its efforts to suppress the news, and is apparently determined that the press of the United States and elsewhere shall not learn the exact state of affairs on the island. Nine-tenths of the local newspaper men have been fined by the press censor. Several editions of the leading papers have been seized, and telegrams for transmission abroad from eastern Cuba are now absolutely forbidden. It is also a fact that foreign correspondents have been threatened with expulsion. The Spanish authorities allege that the mysterious steamer fired upon by the warship Galicia was not the American ward liner Santiago, but a rebel vessel which the insurrectionists have purchased in the United States and fitted up as a gunboat. A blockade of all the ports of the island, as previously intimated, has been formally announced.”
“It looks as if the paper would be obliged to send a man down there,” Ashley reflects, as he struggles into his topcoat. “What a superb day for the trial trip,” as he opens the street door and steps into the sunlight. “And this is the day, too, that Barker is to arrest Felton. He didn’t specify any time, probably not till afternoon, anyway. I almost wish I wasn’t assigned to that trial trip. I should like to interview him after the arrest. However, my story is all written up and I can get the details of the arrest from Barker after I return from the America. I wonder how Miss Hathaway will take the affair,” a softer light shining in his eyes as his thoughts revert to the beautiful ward of Cyrus Felton. “She treats him with the utmost deference and respect, but I cannot think that she cares especially for him. Heigho! Now for a cup of coffee and then for another tete-a-tete with the beautiful unknown of the Raymond hotel.”
It is on the stroke of 10 as Ashley saunters up to the clerk’s desk in the Kensington and requests that his card, upon which he has penciled a few lines explaining his identity, be taken to Mrs. Winthrop.
“Mrs. Winthrop?” the urbane clerk repeats. “There is no such lady stopping here, to my knowledge.”
Ashley is nonplused. So he has been duped, he thinks, by the fair unknown. But why has not Barker kept his agreement? A nice sort of a shadow if he cannot follow as striking-looking a woman as “Mrs. Winthrop.” But stay! Perhaps she has given a fictitious name, but is actually stopping at the Kensington after all. Barker could not have slipped upon a simple matter like that.
Abstractedly twirling his glove, Jack leans over the desk and says in a low tone to the clerk, an old acquaintance: “Is there a rather striking-looking young woman, with dark eyes and midnight hair, stopping at the house?”
The clerk smiles.