“He scraped together three hundred dollars some way, the Lord only knows how, engaged a berth for San Francisco, and inside three days had made all preparations for the trip. When I found that nothing I could say or do made any difference, I gave up arguing and helped him all I could.
“He knew what he wanted, though, so much better than I that the only practical assistance I gave him was of the financial kind. I arranged credit for him at the British bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and furnished all the money needed for his traveling expenses.
“He purchased a complete Chinese disguise from a Washington costumer, and when one night, before leaving, he appeared before me, a long black cue hanging down his back, his face stained, and chattering the disjointed dialect he had learned during his two years’ stay in Peking, I felt a little hope that his scheme, daring as it was, might succeed.
“I heard from him several times each day, all along the journey to San Francisco. Every time he grew tired or lonesome he called me up and told me of the country he was passing through, while I kept him informed of what was going on back here in Washington.
“For a whole week after he left San Francisco I didn’t hear a word from him, though I kept the seismaphone with me all the time, and I was growing terribly worried, when one night he signaled and I heard a weak voice saying, ‘Oh, Lord, I’ve been so seasick, I didn’t care for one while whether there was any such place as China or not, and the thought of the seismaphone never entered my head.’
“After landing at Hong Kong he had to wait two days before starting for Shanghai, but he had to be resigned, and I never spent a pleasanter afternoon in my life than that day when I sat in the patent office and heard him describing his trip about Victoria, that beautiful possession of the British crown.
“He put on the megaphone attachment while he was being wheeled about in a little jinrikisha, and I could hear him talking to the coolie who pulled it, and the squeaking of the wheels, as plainly as the scratching of the pens over where the clerks sat writing in my office.
“All the men at the office thought me crazy, and I don’t know as I blame them, for of course I hadn’t taken any of them into my confidence, and it is rather an unusual sight to see a man stop in the midst of a conversation with you, put an unconnected receiver up to his ear, then start talking apparently with the empty air.
“I had to take Nellie into the secret after a while, though, for she, too, thought I must be insane, and smuggled a couple of doctors up to the house to dinner one night to watch me. I told Bradley, and he submitted to the necessary evil, as he called it.
“So, while he was in Shanghai, describing one of the Chinese pagodas to me (at twelve o’clock at night, mind you) I awakened her and let her take the seismaphone, and you never saw a more excited woman. She sat up all the rest of the night, listening to Bradley and asking him questions.