and hasn't
left the horizontal in her berth since we set sail from Bremen. That dark
fellow sitting next to Hahlstroem seems to be something like, well, let us
say, her fiance."

"By the way, what do you do for seasickness?" Frederick asked hastily, to
conceal his dismay and turn the conversation.

IX

"You here, Doctor von Kammacher? I can scarcely trust my eyes." At the
bottom of the companionway Frederick felt Hahlstroem tackle him, just as
he was about to mount to deck.

"Why, Mr. Hahlstroem, what a peculiar coincidence! It's as if the whole
of Berlin had agreed to emigrate to America!" Frederick exclaimed,
simulating surprise with somewhat forced liveliness.

"May I present Mr. Achleitner? Mr. Achleitner is an architect from
Vienna."

The man with the piercing eyes smiled with an air of interest, holding
fast to the brass balustrade to keep from being hurled against the wall.

The door of a rather gloomy saloon opened on the first landing. It bore
the misleading sign "smoking-room," misleading because the smokers never
used it, far preferring the cosey little saloon on deck. A brown
upholstered bench ran around the brown, wainscoted walls. Kneeling on the
bench one could look out through three or four port-holes upon the
seething and boiling of the waves. The entire floor space between the
benches was taken up by a table finished in a dark stain.

"This room is a horrid hole," said Hahlstroem. "It positively makes me
creepy."

A loud, trumpet-like, laughing voice called out from inside the room:

"I say, Hahlstroem, if this sort of weather holds out, neither your
daughter nor I will keep the first day of our engagement with Webster
and Forster. We're not even making eight knots. Perhaps I'll be able
to manage. A big dose of salt water doesn't hurt me. To-day is the
twenty-fifth. If we reach Hoboken at eight o'clock the evening of the
first of February, I can appear for my act in perfect serenity at nine
o'clock; but that frail blossom of yours can't. She will certainly need
a few days to recover from the hardships of this trip."

The three men entered the smoking-room. Frederick had already recognised
the voice as belonging to the man without arms, who, he learned later,
from Hahlstroem, was a world-renowned celebrity. For more than ten years
the bill-boards of every great city in the world had been displaying
simply his name, Arthur Stoss, which alone sufficed to draw throngs to
the theatres