mptly. "And we'd be suckers if we
weren't."

He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.

"Run over to the plant on the North Shore with me to-morrow if you have
the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace
yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over
about two o'clock. Will you?"

"Sure. I'll take time," Thompson agreed.

"Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the _Alert_," Tommy
went on. "That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two
o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man."

"Good night."

The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a
long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began
pencilling figures.

Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on
three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose.
The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial
Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.

Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months?
Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.

Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that
ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight
philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning
money on it.

And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright,
because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following
pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.

He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.

CHAPTER XXIV

--AND THE MATCH THAT LIT THE FUSE--

At a minute or two of ten the next morning Thompson stopped his car
before the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bolt-studded doors were still
closed, and so he kept his seat behind the steering column, glancing
idly along Hastings at the traffic that flowed about the gray stone pile
of the post-office, while he waited the bank's opening for business.

A tall young man, a bit paler-faced perhaps than a normal young fellow
should be, but otherwise a fine-looking specimen of manhood, sauntered
slowly around the corner of the bank, and came to a stop on the curb
just abreast the fore end of Thompson's motor. He took out a cigarette
and lighted it with slow, deliberate motions. And as he stood there,
gazing with