"What's dat? Is it some schoolhouse lot?"
"It's detective headquarters, Rusty. And it is about me."
"About you-all!" Rusty was wide awake by this time, in all truth. He had an instinctive suspicion of anything connected with brass buttons and detectives.
"Yes. It warns Scotland Yard that a man named Warren, on this steamship, is wanted by the New York police, and that I should be arrested before the passengers can leave."
"Who signed dat mizzable contraption?"
"It isn't signed, Rusty. The only person who writes Spanish and who could be so deeply interested in my wickedness is that high and mighty relative of the Princess. He wrote it in Spanish so the wireless operator probably wouldn't notice or understand the message."
"Well, Marse Warren, dis is a ship—dey alluz has ropes. Can't you climb overboard when she is hitched to de wharfboat?"
Jarvis was thinking rapidly. He looked at his watch.
"The detectives will come on with the pilot boat, Rusty, which I understand meets the Mauretania about eight or ten miles offshore. There won't be any chance on the wharfboat. But that gives me a good idea—however, it doesn't seem right to make the Duke of Alva waste his hard-earned coin on wireless messages. There's no free list with Marconi, you know."
Jarvis was walking up and down the stateroom nervously by this time.