“My traveling laboratory,” he remarked, with pride.

I peered in more closely.  It was a well-stocked armamentarium, as the doctors would have called it.  I shall not make any attempt to describe its contents.  They were too varied and too numerous, a little bit of everything, it seemed.  In fact, Craig seemed to have epitomized the sciences and arts.  It was not that he had anything so wonderful, or even comparable to the collection of his laboratory.  But as I ran my eye over the box I would have wagered that from the contents he might have made shift to duplicate in some makeshift form almost anything that he might need.  It was truly amazing, representing in miniature his study of crime for years.

“Then you are going with Burke to St. Thomas?” I queried, realizing the significance of it.

Kennedy nodded.  “I’ve been thinking of what I would do if an important case ever called me away.  Burke’s proposal hurried me, that’s all.  And you are going, also,” he added.  “You have until noon to break the news to the Star.”

I did not say anything more, fearful lest he might change his mind.  I knew he needed the rest, and that no matter what the case was in the islands he could not work as hard as he was doing in New York.

Accordingly my own arrangements with the Star were easily made.  I had a sort of roving commission, anyhow, since my close association with Kennedy.  Moreover, the possibility of turning up something good in the islands, which were much in the news at the time, rather appealed to the managing editor.  If Kennedy could arrange his affairs, I felt that the least I could do was to arrange my own.

Thus it came about that Craig and I found ourselves in the forenoon in a taxicab, on the front of which was loaded the precious box as well as our other hastily packed luggage, and we were on our way over to Brooklyn to the dock from which the Arroyo sailed.

Already the clearance papers had been obtained, and there was the usual last-moment confusion among the passengers as the hour for sailing approached.  It seemed as if we had scarcely boarded the ship when Kennedy was as gay as a school-boy on an unexpected holiday.  I realized at once what was the cause.  The change of scene, the mere fact of cutting loose, were having their effect.

As we steamed slowly down the bay, I ran my eye over the other passengers at the rail, straining their eyes to catch the last glimpse of the towers of New York.  There were Burke and Sydney, but they were not together, and, to all appearances, did not know each other.  Sydney, of course, could not conceal his identity, nor did he wish to, no matter how beset with unseen perils might be his mission.  But Burke was down on the passenger-list as, and had assumed the role of, a traveling salesman for a mythical novelty-house in Chicago.  That evidently was part of the plan they had agreed on between themselves.  Kennedy took the cue.