sends it to her: a most reliable man, Lechlane; a man who could be trusted to always do the right thing. Pilotage Peter Denniston proposes to Sheila Wallace; he knew her four years ago, and has a job in Hong Kong with his uncle, as a maritime solicitor. He drops in on the Wallaces while supposedly on a walking tour, but as Jimmie Wallace says: Whoever heard of a man taking a dinner-jacket with him on a walking tour?. She turns him down, saying she could not live in China. So Denniston returns to London for a week solo on the yacht Irene that he shares with Lanard. In the Solent he collides with Sir David Fisher’s large yacht the Clematis which fails to give way to him. Fisher, who as skipper was steering her realises that he was in the wrong. So Fisher takes him on board the Clematis to recover, and gets the Irene repaired. Rawdon and Morris are also on board, discussing a secret aeronautical venture. Morris is married to Helen, though most of their family think that she has married badly. He is described as lean or cadaverous, and says to Denniston that he also knows the Wallaces of Little Tinney, Berkshire. The secret venture is a proposed transatlantic urgent cargo service; a ship carries a flying boat carrying 500 pounds of urgent cargo which is catapulted off when within range (950 to 1000 miles) of the destination so reducing the transit time from 7 days to 5. The trial flight from New York to Padstow, Cornwall with Morris as pilot and Dennison as navigator is awaited by Rawdon and Wallace, with Helen who is accompanied by Sheila. As it is overdue and will have used all the petrol they fear the worst, but the plane which has taken off 963 miles away but strikes a headwind has landed in Ireland. They refuel with the extra petrol which Morris has taken at the last minute as he had the wind up instead of a dummy load of 500 lbs of firebars. So the scheme appears commercial but is to go to Milford Haven not Padstow. Sheila tells her brother has refused to go with Dennison to Hong Kong as she knows he will not like it there, not just because she won’t like it. But Dennison regards her acceptance as a test – so she was