"Is there anything else?" he asked.
"You have watched the wireless?"
"Yes."
"It must be watched even more closely. No message in cipher, nor any that is at all questionable, must be sent or delivered. If there are complaints afterwards, the failure can be explained as an oversight."
Again Hausmann bowed.
"And finally," said Pachmann, "I have here a message, which I would ask you to have sent at once."
It was in cipher and a long one, and it took half an hour to transmit, for the wireless man at the Cape Cod station was required to repeat it for verification. Then it was hurried on by telegraph to New York, and finally delivered at the German consulate, where the chief of the German secret service, to whom it was addressed, read it with great care.
Miss Vard, meanwhile, was finding the hours long. The Prince had furnished a slight divertissement the day before; but to-day there was no such relief in sight, and she found herself singularly restless. This was, in part, a reflection of her father's mood, for she had never known him so nervous and irritable. The lines in his face had deepened, his eyes were brighter than ever, and he waved her impatiently away whenever she ventured to address him. Plainly, a crisis was at hand, and, as she saw how her father was affected, she awaited it with foreboding.
She tried to read and gave it up, for she could not fix her attention on the page; she sat for a long time looking at the sea, and then turned her eyes away, for its restlessness increased her own; she went for a walk about the deck, but it seemed to her in every pair of eyes turned upon her there was suspicion and aversion. How glad she was that the voyage was almost ended! It had started happily enough, and then, quite suddenly, it had become wearisome and hateful.