“The Russian!”

“The Russian?” Hanada snatched the telescope from him.

As Johnny watched he saw the man leap just as the platform lurched backward.  The two men at the other tower had reversed the motor, but they were too late.

The next moment the outer tower toppled into the sea; the cable cut the water with a resounding swish.  Johnny saw the Russian leap from ice cake to ice cake until at last he disappeared behind a giant pile, safe on a broad field of solid ice.

Hanada sat down.  His face was white.

“Gone!” he muttered hoarsely.

“A boat?” suggested Johnny.

“No good.  The ice floe’s two miles wide, forty miles long and all piled up.  Couldn’t find him.  He’d never give himself up.  But he’ll come back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but he’ll come.  You’ll see.  He’s a devil, that one.  But we’ll get him yet.”

“And the thousand,” suggested Johnny.

Hanada looked at him in disgust.  “A thousand dollars!  What is that?”

“Is it as bad as that?” Johnny smiled in spite of himself.

“Yes, and worse, many times worse.  I tell you, we must get that man!  When the time comes, we must get him, or it will be worse for your country and mine.”

“Ours is the same country,” suggested Johnny.

“Huh!” Hanada shrugged his shoulders.  “I am Hanada, your old schoolmate, now a member of the Japanese Secret Police, and you are Johnny Thompson.  Whatever else you are, I don’t know.  The Russian has left us for a time.  Let’s talk about those old school days, and forget.”

And they did.

CHAPTER XIII

BACK TO OLD CHICAGO

In the spring all the ice from upper Behring Sea passes through Behring Strait.  One by one, like squadrons of great ships, floes from the shores of Cape York, Cape Nome and the Yukon flats drift majestically through that narrow channel to the broad Arctic Ocean.

So it happened that in due time the ice floe on which the Russian had sought refuge drifted past the Diomede Islands and farther out, well into the Arctic Ocean, met the floe on which the Jap girl had been lost as it circled to the east.

All ignorant of the passenger it carried, the girl welcomed this addition to her broad domain of ice.  She had lived on the floe for days, killing seal for her food and melting snow to quench her thirst.  But of late the cakes had begun to drift apart.  There was danger that the great pan on which she had established herself would drift away from the others, and, in that case, if no seals came, she would starve.  This new floe crowded upon hers and made the one on which she camped a solid mass again.

Spying some strange, dark spots on the newly arrived floe, she hurried over to the place and was surprised to find that it was a great heap of rubbish carted from some city.  Though she did not know it, she guessed that city was Nome.