FullReads

“The attempt to make a sensational connection between the loss and a controversy which is now going on with a foreign government is greatly to be deplored and is emphatically asserted to be utterly baseless. It bears traces of the jingoism of those ‘interests’ which are urging naval increases.

“There is usually very little about a battle-ship that is not known before her keel is laid, or even before the signing of the contracts. At any rate, when it is asserted that the plans represent the dernier cri in some form of war preparation, it is well to remember that a ‘last cry’ is last only until there is a later. Naval secrets are few, anyway, and as it takes some years to apply them, this loss cannot be of superlative value to any one. Still, there is, of course, a market for such information in spite of the progress toward disarmament, but the rule in this case will be the rule as in a horse trade, ‘Caveat emptor.'”

“So there you are,” I concluded. “You pay your penny for a paper, and you take your choice.”

“And the Star,” inquired Kennedy, coming to the door and adding with an aggravating grin, “the infallible?”

“The Star,” I replied, unruffled, “hits the point squarely when it says that whether the plans were of immediate importance or not, the real point is that if they could be stolen, really important things could be taken also. For instance, ‘The thought of what the thief might have stolen has caused much more alarm than the knowledge of what he has succeeded in taking.’ I think it is about time those people in Washington stopped the leak if–“

The telephone rang insistently.

“I think that’s for me,” exclaimed Craig, bounding out of his room and forgetting his quiz of me. “Hello–yes–is that you, Burke? At the Grand Central–half an hour–all right. I’m bringing Jameson. Good-bye.”

Kennedy jammed down the receiver on the hook.