"What's the matter with you?" she asked severely. Assuming a conventional position again, and walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, he told us the cause of his excitement.
"It's Jimmy Larkin in the News Building. He's got a big job on. Got to go south and wait for orders. He's got a pal in the Navy at Norfolk, and he's phoned that they'd just received a wireless from a cruiser in the West Indies somewhere to say she'd spoken an aeroplane going north-west. They think it's that chap—you know?—and Lord Cholme of the Morning's springing something on us. Anyhow, Jimmy's got the assignment and he's put me in too, to do some hurry-up sketches on the spot if we're lucky."
"Not to-night!" said Bill, aghast.
"Sure, to-night. I'll have to take the trolley into Newark and join Jimmy on the New Orleans Limited there."
"Then," I said, "this is a wild-goose chase after our neighbour's brother?"
Mac is an extremely practical man, and he merely shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe, old man. Whether it's him or somebody else, the story has to be covered, and we're away to cover it. It might mean a staff job later for the News, eh?"
"It's quite a romance," I remarked.
"Romance nothing—it's bread and butter, man! Where's my grip? Oh yes, I remember." And he pranced away upstairs to the studio to pack the tools of his craft. His wife, who was looking out linen and hosiery and all the things a woman firmly believes a man can never remember for himself, and without which he is a mere shivering forked radish, found time to order me to bed, but was drawn away immediately into an argument concerning the climate in the south. My friend, evidently viewing underwear, remarked that he was going south, not north to Labrador, and where was his seersucker suit. He was informed that his seersucker suit had been in the rag-basket for years, and, anyway, her husband wasn't going on a trip without adequate clothing. I reached for my boots and put them on. It seemed to me it was my duty to see him safely into his berth on the Limited. After some ten minutes of vigorous packing and debate, they came down, and found me ready.
"You aren't going too?" cried Bill.
"To the train," I said. "He might fall asleep on the road."