“Mr. Francis Delavan aboard?” hailed one of the young men, just as the young skipper’s feet touched the pier.
“Why do you want to know?” Halstead cross-questioned.
“I’m from the New York ‘Herald’,” replied the young man. “I am here to interview Mr. Delavan.”
“I’m from the ‘World’,” added another young man. Halstead at once understood that this group was made up of reporters.
“Mr. Delavan didn’t go out with us this morning,” replied Captain Tom, while Eben Moddridge surveyed the reporters, uneasily. Seeing a cab up the road, Halstead signaled it vigorously.
“Where is Mr. Delavan?” demanded the “World” representative.
“That’s Mr. Delavan’s business. I can’t tell you,” replied Tom, a bit stiffly.
“Is his friend, Mr. Moddridge, aboard? Is _that_ Mr. Moddridge?” asked another of the reporters. The nervous man, under the concentrated gaze of six reporters, became more nervous than ever.
“Gentlemen,” went on Halstead, hurriedly, drawing out his watch just as the vehicle rolled down to the pier and stopped, “it’s twenty-five minutes of three, and the Stock Exchange in New York closes at three o’clock. That is Mr. Moddridge on board, but he is in a rush to reach the telephone office, and he can’t lose even a second until he has talked with New York.”
Halstead almost led the nervous one from the boat to the cab, helping him inside, and getting in with him.
“Wait here, gentlemen, if you wish to talk with Mr. Moddridge,” coaxed Tom. As the cab started one of the reporters bounded up onto the step, from which he was adroitly yanked by Jed Prentiss. Then the driver whipped his horses forward, and the reporters were distanced for the time being.
Yet one of the press scribes, as he ran along in the vain effort to overtake the cab, shouted:
“There’s a mysterious report in New York that everything is wrong with the P. & Y., and that Delavan has absconded to some other country. Can you say anything to that, Mr. Moddridge?”
If Moddridge could, he didn’t. Instead, his jaw dropped. He reeled to one side as though about to fall from the seat. Tom hastily changed to the same seat, supporting the worried man.
“So the news has already reached New York and Wall Street?” he asked, faintly.
“If it has,” whispered Halstead, watching to see whether the driver was trying to listen, “then it’s because the crowd back of the trouble took pains to send word in early this morning. Mr. Moddridge, the news must have been known hours ago, since reporters have had time to get away out here from the city.”