“The air route.”
“H’mph.” The inspector evinced a sudden interest. “Yes, that would be practical for scouring the whole country back of here. But where are you going to get an airplane and an airman?”
“There’s an old scouting single-seater in Kam City in fairly good shape. I happened to see it in the armouries while I was rambling around the city a couple of days before I first came out here. It’s the property of the government. That’s why I came to you; as head of the Mounted Police you could no doubt induce the government authorities to lend us the machine for this purpose.”
“But your airman?”
For answer Hammond threw back the lapel of his coat displaying the airman’s wings which he modestly wore over his left vest-pocket. “I can take care of that part of it,” he suggested. “I saw three years’ hard work in the air overseas, two years of which I put in playing tag with Fritz.”
“Good enough!” Proof that Hammond had been a fighting airman seemed to dissipate the inspector’s last doubt.
“There’ll be no harm in giving this thing a try,” he decided, “and by Jove, we’ll get busy right off. We’ll send you over to Kam City in one of the police motorboats to-morrow morning. I’ll give you a wire to file to Major Lynn at Ottawa, and he’ll get things through for us without unnecessary red tape. But look you, Hammond, when you go up to the Cup you have only instructions to look around, get the lay of the land and come right back here to me. Then we’ll act!”
The inspector glanced at his watch. “Now, by the way,” he suggested, “I’ve some confounded routine to look after that will keep me busy for the best part of a couple of hours. But after tea drop in for an hour or so, old chap, and we’ll have a pipe and talk over the details of this thing.”
Hammond went away highly elated. At last he was to get a real chance to do some active work in ferreting out the mystery of the Nannabijou Limits, and—he fervently hoped—to meet again Josephine Stone, the girl with the high-arched eyebrows, and the woman of his dreams.