her did he neglect the hotels and ferries. Then he quietly lunched
at Martenelli's with the much-honored but most-uncomfortable Wolf
Yonkholm, who promptly suspended his "dip" operations at the Beaches
out of respect to Blake's sudden call.

Nothing of moment, however, was learned from the startled Wolf, and at
Coppa's six hours later, Blake dined with a Chink-smuggler named Goldie
Hopper. Goldie, after his fifth glass of wine and an adroit decoying
of the talk along the channels which most interested his portly host,
casually announced that an Eastern crook named Blanchard had got away,
the day before, on the Pacific mail steamer _Manchuria_. He was clean
shaven and traveled as a clergyman. That struck Goldie as the height
of humor, a bank sneak having the nerve to deck himself out as a
gospel-spieler.

His elucidation of it, however, brought no answering smile from the
diffident-eyed Blake, who confessed that he was rounding up a couple of
nickel-coiners and would be going East in a day or two.

Instead of going East, however, he hurriedly consulted maps and
timetables, found a train that would land him in Portland in twenty-six
hours, and started north. He could eventually save time, he found, by
hastening on to Seattle and catching a Great Northern steamer from that
port. When a hot-box held his train up for over half an hour, Blake
stood with his timepiece in his hand, watching the train crew in their
efforts to "freeze the hub." They continued to lose time, during the
night. At Seattle, when he 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 factor