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what the police told me.” And then I got out the notes I’d made in the train and handed them to him. “But if Briffe was dead, how do you explain that?”
    He smoothed the sheet of paper out on the bar top and read it through slowly and carefully.
    â€œThey’re all references from my father’s radio log,” I said.
    He nodded, frowning as he read.
    I watched him turn the sheet over. He had reached the final message now. “Does it sound as though he was mad?” I said.
    He didn’t say anything. He had read through the notes now and I watched him turn the sheet over again, staring down at it, still frowning.
    â€œThat’s what the authorities think,” I added. “They’re not going to resume the search. I had a letter from them this morning.”
    He still didn’t say anything and I began to wish I hadn’t told him. The men were reported dead. That alone would convince him that my father had imagined it all. And then his blue eyes were looking straight at me. “And you think the search should be resumed—is that it?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    He stared at me for a moment. “Have you got the log books or do the police still hold them?”
    â€œNo, I’ve got them.” I said it reluctantly because I didn’t want him to see them. But instead of asking for them he began putting a lot of questions to me. And when he had got the whole story out of me, he fell silent again, hunched over the sheet of paper, staring at it. I thought he was reading it through again, but maybe he was just considering the situation, for he suddenly looked across at me. “And what you’ve told me is the absolute truth?” He was leaning slightly forward, watching my face.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œAnd the log books look crazy unless all the contacts are isolated, the way they are here?” He tapped the sheet of paper.
    I nodded. “I thought if I could find out a little more about the three direct contacts my father made with Ledder … what Ledder’s reaction to my father was …”
    â€œThe thing that gets me,” he muttered, “is how your father could possibly have picked up this transmission.” He was frowning and his tone was puzzled. “As I recollect it, all Briffe had was a forty-eight set. I’m sure I read that somewhere. Yes, and operated by a hand generator at that. It just doesn’t seem possible.”
    He was making the same point that the Flight Lieutenant had made. “But surely,” I said, “there must be certain conditions in which he could have picked it up?”
    â€œMaybe. I wouldn’t know about that. But the old forty-eight set is a transmitter of very limited range—I do know that.” He gave a slight shrug. “Still, it’s just possible, I suppose. You’d have to check with somebody like this guy Ledder to make certain.”
    He had picked up the sheet of paper again, and he stared at it for so long that I felt sure he wasn’t going to help me and was only trying to think out how to tell me so. He was my only hope of making effective contact with Ledder. If he wouldn’t help, then there was nobody else I could go to—and I felt I had to settle this thing, one way or the other. If my father had made that message up—well, all right—but I had to know. I had to be absolutely certain for my own peace of mind that those two men really were dead.
    And then Farrow put the sheet of paper down and turned to me. “You know,” he said, “I think you ought to go to Goose and have a word with Ledder yourself.”
    I stared at him, unable to believe that I’d heard him correctly. “Go to Goose Bay? You mean fly there—myself?”
    He half smiled. “You won’t get into Goose, any other way.”
    It was such an incredible suggestion that for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. He