And when, some two hours later, after a short warning rap on the door, the individual who served as Mr. Torrance's attendant entered his room, he was confronted, not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried, but by an empty room, a stripped bed, an open window, and a rope of sheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath. That was at seven o'clock in the evening. CHAPTER II _The Crash_ At a few minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfway through, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning, he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. The cigarette dropped right out of his mouth as he cried: "Ken! Ken Torrance!" "Thank God you're here!" said Kenneth Torrance. "I gambled on it. Steve, I've got to borrow your own personal plane." "What?" gasped Steve Chapman. "What--what--?" "Listen, Steve. I haven't been with the whaling company lately; been resting, down here--secluded. Didn't know that submarine, the _Peary_, was missing. I just learned. And I know damned well what's happened to it. I've got to get to it, quick is I can, and I've got to have a plane." Steve Chapman said rather faintly: "But--where was the _Peary_ when they last heard from her?" "Some twelve hundred miles from the Pole." "And you want to get there in a plane? From here?" "Must!" "Boy, you stand about one chance in twenty!" "Have to take it. Time's precious, Steve. I've got to stop in at the Alaska Whaling Company's outpost at Point Christensen, then right on up. I can't even begin unless I have a plane. You've got to help me on my one chance of bringing the _Peary's_ men out alive! You'll probably never see the plane again, Steve, but--" "To hell with the plane, if you come through with yourself and those men," said the pilot. "All right, kid, I don't get it all, but I'm playing with you. You're taking my own ship." He led Ken to a hangar wherein stood a trim five-passenger amphibian; and very soon that amphibian was roaring out her deep-throated song of power on the line, itching for the air, and Steve Chapman was shouting a few last words up to the muffled figure in the enclosed control cockpit. "Fuel'll last around forty hours," he finished. "You'll find two hundred per, easy, and twenty-five hours should take you clear to Point Christensen. I put gun and maps in the right pocket; food in that flap behind you. Go to it, Ken!" Ken Torrance gripped the hand outstretched to his and held it tight. He could say nothing, could only nod--this was a real friend. He gave the ship the gun.