For the time being, Hal Dane wanted to follow out a clew entirely on his own. In the dusk of yesterday, as he clung to the drifting, upside-down canoe, and the lights from the launch had played over it, the name painted on the battered derelict had seemed to sear into his brain. The letters had been inverted and he had read them but subconsciously at first, then their meaning had suddenly seemed to burn into his brain in letters of fire. "M-a-l-d-e-n, Malden"--the name of the hotel where Mrs. Wiljohn and Jacky had stayed. This was a boat from that riverside resort. Malden was miles below where he and the drifting boat had collided yester evening. So that meant someone had gone up-river in the canoe and let it get away to come drifting back down. That someone could be the Wiljohns. What had happened to them? Were they alive after all this time? More likely, dead!