s,
abandon everything and make for the nearest fashionable five-dollar-a-day
igloo. It may be almost a mile away, but try to reach it, and God bless
you."

As the dawning suspicion that they were being trifled with became an
embarrassed certainty, the city editor's grim visage cracked into a
grimmer grin.

"_I_ don't think that you young gentlemen are cut out for a newspaper
career, but _you_ do, and others higher up say to let you try it. So
you're going in to find at least one of those four men, dead or alive.
The police haven't been able to find them, but you will, of course. The
game-wardens, fire-wardens, guides, constables, farmers, lumbermen,
sheriffs, can't discover hair or hide of them; but no doubt you can. The
wild and dismal state forest is now full of detectives, amateur and
professional; it's full of hotel keepers, trout fishermen, and private
camps which are provided with elevators, electric light, squash courts,
modern plumbing, and footmen in knee-breeches; and all of these dinky
ginks are hunting for four young and wealthy men who have, at regular
intervals of one week each, suddenly and completely disappeared from the
face of nature and the awful solitudes of the Adirondacks. I take it for
granted that you have the necessary data concerning their several and
respective vanishings?"

"Yes, sir," said Langdon, who was becoming redder and redder under the
bland flow of the Desk's irony.

"Suppose you run over the main points before you dash recklessly out into
the woods via Broadway."

"William," said Langdon with boyish dignity, "would you be kind enough to
run over your notes for Mr. Trinkle?"

"It will afford me much pleasure to do so," replied Sayre, also very red
and dignified.

Out of his pocket he drew what appeared to be an attenuated ham sandwich.
Opening it with a slight smile of triumph, as Mr. Trinkle's eyes
protruded, he turned a page of fish-wafer paper and read aloud the
pencilled memoranda:

"May 1st, 1910.

"Reginald Willett, a wealthy amateur, author of _Rough Life
Photography_, _Snapshots at Trees_, _Hunting the Wild Bat with the
Camera_, etc., etc., left his summer camp on the Gilded Dome, taking
with him his kodak for the purpose of securing photographs of the wilder
flowers of the wilderness.

"He never returned. His butler and second man discovered his camera in
the trail.

"No other trace of him has yet been discovered. He was young, well built,
handsome, and in e