“At the speed you have secured and with the protected car the _Ocean Flyer_ carries, why don’t you cross the Atlantic?”
Ned eyed his questioner a moment and then, with a glance at his two chums, broke out laughing.
“And make good our name?” he asked, apparently glad to get into his usual vein of joviality.
“And make good your name,” repeated the editor.
“Perhaps we may,” went on Ned impulsively. “Now that you’ve betrayed me into that confession, whatever you do with your story of our new machine, I hope you’ll say nothing of this. That is our object.”
“To reassure you,” answered the editor, “I have only to tell you that I hope your secret will be the _Herald’s_.”
“You _can_ cross the Atlantic, you _ought_ to cross the Atlantic and I hope you _will_ cross the Atlantic—for the New York _Herald_.”
“For the _Herald_?” exclaimed Bob. “For a prize?”
“Not for a prize,” he replied soberly, “but on a news assignment—the biggest news ‘beat’ ever pulled off by a newspaper.”
The Airship Boys forgot the irritation of their abrupt summons, the chagrin over their stolen secret and all the languor the late hour had been working on them. With hurried glances at each other they faced the managing editor wonderingly. In the silence a book dropped from the table with a crash. Night city editor Latimer had fallen against it and stood with bulging eyes and mouth agape. Not until that moment did even he suspect the plans of his chief.
“A news assignment?” mumbled Ned finally.
“I don’t know how much thought you have given the possibilities before you,” answered the editor, “but I have thought very hard on the subject for an hour. As I understand it, your metal airship can maintain a speed of one hundred and eighty miles an hour for a protracted period. It is, in a direct great circle course, a little over three thousand miles from this city to London.”
“Which we could cover in seventeen hours,” boasted Alan.
“Precisely,” went on the editor. “In other words, for our purposes, you can cross over in twenty-two hours and come back in twelve hours or less.”
“Twelve hours or less?” exclaimed Mr. Latimer speaking for the first time.
“Certainly, in a way,” laughed Ned. “There is a difference in time you know of five hours coming west. We gain that. We’d be in the air seventeen hours actual time but by the clock not over twelve hours.”