A Honeymoon in Space | Page 9

excuse me putting the question so directly, I should like
to know what you just do mean to do----"
Lord Redgrave saw that she was going to add "with us," but before he
had time to say anything, Miss Zaidie turned round, walked
deliberately towards her chair, sat down, poured herself out a fresh cup
of coffee, added the milk and sugar with deliberation, and then after a
preliminary sip said, with her cup poised half-way between her dainty
lips and the table:
"Mrs. Van, I've got an idea. I suppose it's inherited, for dear old Pop
had plenty. Anyhow we may as well get back to common-sense
subjects. Now look here," she went on, switching an absolutely
convincing glance straight into her host's eyes, "my father may have
been a dreamer, but still he was a Sound Money man. He believed in
honest dealings. He didn't believe in borrowing a hundred dollars gold
and paying back in fifty dollars silver. What's your opinion, Lord
Redgrave; you don't do that sort of thing in England, do you? Uncle

Russell is a Sound Money man too. He's got too much gold locked up
to want silver for it."
"My dear Zaidie," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, "what have democratic and
republican politics and bimetalism got to do with----"
"With a trip in this wonderful vessel which Pop told me years ago
could go up to the stars if it ever was made? Why just this, Lord
Redgrave is an Englishman and too rich to believe in anything but
sound money, so is Uncle Russell, and there you have it, or should
have."
"I think I see what you mean, Miss Rennick," said their host, leaning
back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, as steamboat
travellers are wont to do when seas are smooth and skies are blue. "The
Astronef might come down like a vision from the clouds and preach the
Gospel of Gold in electric rays of silver through the commonplace
medium of the Morse Code. How's that for poetry and practice?"
"I quite agree with his lordship as regards the practice," said Mrs. Van
Stuyler, talking somewhat rudely across him to Zaidie. "It would be an
excellent use to put this wonderful invention to. And then, I am sure his
lordship would land us in Central Park, so that we could go to your
Uncle's house right away."
"No, no, I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me there, Mrs. Van
Stuyler," said Redgrave, with a change of tone which Miss Zaidie
appreciated with a swiftly veiled glance. "You see, I have placed
myself beyond the law. I have, as you have been good enough to
intimate, abducted--to put it brutally--two ladies from the deck of an
Atlantic liner. Further, in doing so I have selfishly spoiled the prospects
of one of the ladies. But, seriously, I really must go to Washington
first----"
"I think, Lord Redgrave," interrupted Mrs. Van Stuyler, ignoring the
last unfinished sentence and assuming her best Knickerbocker dignity,
"if you will forgive me saying so, that that is scarcely a subject for
discussion here."

"And if that's so," interrupted Miss Zaidie, "the less we say about it the
better. What I wanted to say was this. We all want the Republicans in,
at least all of us that have much to lose. Now, if Lord Redgrave was to
use this wonderful air-ship of his on the right side--why there wouldn't
be any standing against it."
"I must say that until just now I had hardly contemplated turning the
Astronef into an electioneering machine. Still, I admit that she might be
made use of in a good cause, only I hope----"
"That we shan't want you to paste her over with election bills, eh?--or
start handbill-snowstorms from the deck--or kidnap Croker and Bryan
just as you did us, for instance?"
"If I could, I'm quite sure that I shouldn't have as pleasant guests as I
have now on board the Astronef. What do you think, Mrs. Van
Stuyler?"
"My dear Lord Redgrave," she replied, "that would be quite impossible.
The idea of being shut up in a ship like this which can soar not only
from earth, but beyond the clouds, with people who would find out
your best secrets and then perhaps shoot you so as to be the only
possessors of them--well, that would be foolishness indeed."
"Why, certainly it would," said Zaidie; "the only use you could have for
people like that would be to take them up above the clouds and drop
them out. But suppose we--I mean Lord Redgrave--took the Astronef
down over New York and signalled messages from the sky at night
with a searchlight----"
"Good," said their host, getting up from his deck-chair and stretching
himself up