The editor nodded his head.
“Not for a prize,” he replied soberly, “but on a news assignment—the biggest news ‘beat’ ever pulled off by a newspaper.”
The Airship Boys forgot the irritation of their abrupt summons, the chagrin over their stolen secret and all the languor the late hour had been working on them. With hurried glances at each other they faced the managing editor wonderingly. In the silence a book dropped from the table with a crash. Night city editor Latimer had fallen against it and stood with bulging eyes and mouth agape. Not until that moment did even he suspect the plans of his chief.
“A news assignment?” mumbled Ned finally.
“I don’t know how much thought you have given the possibilities before you,” answered the editor, “but I have thought very hard on the subject for an hour. As I understand it, your metal airship can maintain a speed of one hundred and eighty miles an hour for a protracted period. It is, in a direct great circle course, a little over three thousand miles from this city to London.”
“Which we could cover in seventeen hours,” boasted Alan.
“Precisely,” went on the editor. “In other words, for our purposes, you can cross over in twenty-two hours and come back in twelve hours or less.”
“Twelve hours or less?” exclaimed Mr. Latimer speaking for the first time.
“Certainly, in a way,” laughed Ned. “There is a difference in time you know of five hours coming west. We gain that. We’d be in the air seventeen hours actual time but by the clock not over twelve hours.”
“For instance,” interpolated the managing editor, “if the Ocean Flyer left London at two o’clock in the afternoon and came to New York at the rate of one hundred and eighty miles an hour it would reach this city in seventeen hours. Allowing five hours for the difference in time, instead of reaching here at seven o’clock the next morning it would arrive when our clock hands were pointing to two o’clock.”