"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!"