"N'York."
"But I haven't money enough to go to New York!" protested Stuart.
"Who said anything about money? That's up to the paper. Your expenses both ways, and your expenses while you're in N'York, will all be paid."
"Are you sure?"
"Seeing that I'll pay your trip up there myself, and charge it up on my own expense account, of course I'm sure. There's a boat going tomorrow."
"But you couldn't get a berth for tomorrow," protested Stuart, though he was weakening. He had never been to New York, and the idea of a voyage there, with his fare and all his expenses paid, tempted him. Besides, as the reporter had suggested, it would be almost impossible for him to continue the quest of Manuel, Leborge and Cecil alone. More than that, the boy felt that, if he could get a big metropolitan paper to back him, he would be in a position to find and rescue his father.
"Can't get a berth? Watch me!" said the reporter, who was anxious to impress upon the lad the importance of the press. And, sure enough, he came back an hour later, with a berth arranged for Stuart in the morrow's steamer. He also advanced money enough to the boy for a complete outfit of clothes. An afternoon spent in a Turkish bath restored to the erstwhile disguised lad his formerly white skin.
One sea-voyage is very much like another. Stuart made several acquaintances on board, one of them a Jamaican, and from his traveling companion, Stuart learned indirectly that Great Britain's plan of welding her West India possessions into a single colony was still a live issue. The boy, himself, remembering how easily he had been pumped by Dinville, was careful not to say a word about the purpose of his trip.
Thanks to Dinville's exact instructions, Stuart found the newspaper office without difficulty. The minute he stepped out of the elevator and on the floor, a driving expectancy possessed him. The disorderliness, the sense of tension, the combination of patient waiting and driving speed, the distant and yet perceptible smell of type metal and printers' ink, in short, the atmosphere of a newspaper, struck him with a sense of desire.
Although Stuart's instructions were to see the Managing Editor, the young fellow who came out to see what he wanted, brought him up to the City Editor's desk. The latter looked up quickly.