He was almost breathless when he arrived. But he managed to blurt out enough to make Big Jack hastily grab the paper.
"Great Scott!" he exclaimed as the big headlines caught his eye. He read them aloud.
No need to recite them in detail here. They were pointedly to the effect that the Peace Conference had struck a serious snag; that Japan was suspicious; her envoys obdurate; that a virtual ultimatum had been pronounced, and in such a way as to threaten a new war worse even than that which had just ended.
"Well, what do you think of that?" Don ejaculated, more to himself than anyone else.
"Looks as though it might stop the flight, even if it doesn't develop into anything worse," said Andy, who immediately had forgotten his painful knuckles.
Big Jack was still reading the balance of the story, which was under a London date line. There was no question but that a very serious situation existed. Within an hour all Halifax was so agog with it that no one seemed to miss Henryson, or to mention it if he did.
Even Captain Allerson gave way to new sensations as he measured the possibilities of a new war, and he merely reported briefly that Henryson had been "deported," and with instructions to the conductor not to let him off the train within the next two hundred miles.
That night half a dozen other would-be Transatlantic contestants dropped into the hut which had come to be known as "Big Jack's." There were lengthy discussions and all sorts of predictions, but all they could do was to await the morning papers, which might contain further and more definite news.