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 reached the Great Northern docks, he found that his steamer had sailed two hours before he stepped from his sleeper.

His one remaining resource was a Canadian Pacific steamer from Victoria. This, he figured out, would get him to Hong Kong even earlier than the steamer which he had already missed. He had a hunch that Hong Kong was the port he wanted. Just why, he could not explain. But he felt sure that Binhart would not drop off at Manila. Once on the run, he would keep out of American quarters. It was a gamble; it was a rough guess. But then all life was that. And Blake had a dogged and inarticulate faith in his "hunches."

Crossing the Sound, he reached Victoria in time to see the Empress of China under way, and heading out to sea. Blake hired a tug and overtook her. He reached the steamer's deck by means of a Jacob's ladder that swung along her side plates like a mason's plumbline along a factory wall.

Binhart, he told himself, was by this time in mid-Pacific, untold miles away, heading