said mockingly.

There was something grim in the upthrust lines of her jaw. "I can't make you out, Webb," she said quietly. "Sometimes I think there's good stuff in you—and then I think Madge was right!"

Fallon's dark oval face went ugly, and he didn't speak again until Bjarnsson's house came in sight.

CHAPTER THREE

Bjarnsson's Submarine

Fallon stopped the car and got out stiffly, feeling suddenly tired and disinterested. He hesitated. Why bother with a crazy hunch? The rolling crash of gunfire was getting closer. Why not forget the whole thing and go while the going was good?

He realized that Joan was watching him with sapphire eyes grown puzzled and hard. "Damn it!" he snarled. "Stop looking at me as though I were a bug under glass!"

Joan said, "Is that Bjarnsson in the doorway?"

For the third time Fallon's hands clenched in anger. Then he turned sharply, white about the lips with the pain it cost him, and strode up to the small rustic cabin.

Einar Bjarnsson remembered him. He stood aside, a tall stooped man with massive shoulders and a gaunt, cragged face. Coarse fair hair shot with grey hung in his eyes, which were small and the color of frozen sea-water.

He said, in a deep, slow voice, "Come in. I have been watching through my telescope. Most interesting. But it gets too close now. I am surprised you are here. Duty to your paper, eh?"

Fallon let it pass. He might get more out of Bjarnsson if the explorer thought he was still with the Observer. And then the thought struck him—what was he going to do if his hunch was right?

Nothing. He had no influence. The statesmen were handling things. Suppose Japan did take the Pacific States? Suppose there was a war? He couldn't do anything about it. Let the big boys worry. There'd be a beach somewhere that he could comb in peace.

He made a half turn to go out again. Then he caught sight of a map on the far wall—a map of the Pacific.

Something took him to it. He put his finger on a spot north and east of the Hawaiian Islands. And even 

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