"You are a remarkably observant fellow, Baron. I quite appreciate your difficulty. Still, with a club foot, eh?—and spectacles instead of my eyeglasses——"
"Oh, no doubt something could be managed," Peter interrupted. "You're really in earnest about this, are you?"
"Absolutely," Sogrange declared. "Come here."
He drew Peter to the window. They were on the twelfth story, and to a European there was something magnificent in that tangled mass of buildings threaded by the elevated railway, with its screaming trains, the clearness of the atmosphere, and in the white streets below, like polished belts through which the swarms of people streamed like insects.
"Imagine it all lit up!" Sogrange exclaimed. "The sky-signs all ablaze, the flashing of fire from those cable wires, the lights glittering from those tall buildings! This is a wonderful place, Baron. We must see it. Ring for the bill. Order one of those magnificent omnibuses. Press the button, too, for the personage whom they call the valet. Perhaps, with a little gentle persuasion, he could be induced to pack our clothes."
With his finger upon the bell, Peter hesitated. He, too, loved adventures, but the gloom of a presentiment had momentarily depressed him.
"We are marked men, remember, Sogrange," he said. "An escapade of this sort means a certain amount of risk, even in New York."
Sogrange laughed.
"Bernadine caught the midday steamer. We have no enemies here that I know of."
Peter pressed the button. An hour or so later the Marquis de Sogrange and Peter, Baron de Grost, took their leave of New York.