ss. "Perhaps I can help you. Hold the line."

Thompson waited. Presently he was being addressed again.

"My husband believes Mr. Carr still owns this place. We lease through an
agent, however, Lyng and Salmon, Credit Foncier Building. Probably they
will be able to give you the required information."

"Thanks," Thompson said.

He found Lyng and Salmon's number in the telephone book. But the lady
was mistaken. Carr had sold the place. Nor did Lyng and Salmon know his
whereabouts.

Tommy would know. But Tommy was out of town. Still there were other
sources of information. A man like Carr could not make his home in a
place no larger than Vancouver and drop out of sight without a ripple.
Thompson stuck doggedly to the telephone, sought out numbers and called
them up. In the course of an hour he was in possession of several facts.
Sam Carr was up the coast, operating a timber and land undertaking for
returned soldiers. The precise location he could not discover, beyond
the general one of Toba Inlet.

They still maintained a residence in town, an apartment suite. From the
caretaker of that he learned that Sophie spent most of her time with her
father, and that their coming and going was uncertain and unheralded.

The latter facts were purely incidental, save one. Tommy Ashe had that
morning cleared the _Alert_ for a coastwise voyage.

Sam Carr and Sophie were up the coast. Tommy was up the coast. Thompson
sat for a time in deep study. Very well, then. He, too, would journey up
the coast. He had not come six thousand miles to loaf in a hotel lobby
and wear out shoe leather on concrete walks.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FAIR WINDS

Within a gunshot of the heart of Vancouver lies a snug tidal basin where
yachts swing to their moorings, where a mosquito fleet of motor craft
lies along narrow slips, with the green woods of Stanley Park for a
background. Thompson knew Coal Harbor well. He knew the slips and the
boats and many of the men who owned them. He had gone on many a week-end
cruise out of that basin with young fellows who looked their last on the
sea when they crossed the English Channel. So he had picked up a working
fund of nautical practice, a first-hand knowledge of the sea and the
manner of handling small sail.

From the Granada he went straight to Coal Harbor. While the afternoon
was yet young he had chartered a yawl, a true one-man craft, carrying
plenty of canvas for her inches, but not too much. She had a