“And I want to thank you too, Professor—and wish you good luck!”
Then, with a hasty handshake, and a last smile of gratitude for Diane, he flung open the door and departed, unconscious that two young blue eyes followed his broad shoulders wistfully till they disappeared from view.
But Larry was unaware that he had made a favorable impression on Diane. He felt it was the reverse. As he headed toward the subway, that vivid blond goddess of the chase was uppermost in his thoughts.
Soon she’d be off in the Nereid, bound for the mysterious regions under the Sargasso Sea, while in a few moments he’d be in the subway, bound under the prosaic East River for New York.
No—damned if he would!
Suddenly, with a wild inspiration, the young reporter altered his course, dove into the nearest phone booth and got his city editor on the wire.
Scoop? This was just the first installment. He’d get a scoop that would fill a book!
And his city editor tacitly O. K.’d the idea.
With the result that when the Nereid drew away from her wharf that night, on the start of her unparalleled voyage, Larry Hunter was a stowaway.