outh and speak! Say anything! Say pip!
if you like--only say _something_!"

The young man nodded, bewildered, and his mouth remained open.

"All right, all right--as long as you _do_ notice it," yelled the city
editor, "it looks safe for you; I guess _you_ both will come back, all
right--in case any of these suffragettes have become desperate and have
started kidnapping operations."

Langdon was rather thin; he glanced sideways at Sayre, who wore glasses
and whose locks were prematurely scant.

"Go on, William," he said, with a crisp precision of diction which
betrayed irritation and Harvard.

Sayre examined his notes, and presently read from them:

"The fourth and last victim of the Adirondack wilderness disappeared very
recently--May 24th. His name was Alphonso W. Green, a wealthy amateur
artist. When last seen he was followed by his valet, who carried a white
umbrella, a folding stool, a box of colours, and several canvases. After
luncheon the valet went back to the Gilded Dome Hotel to fetch some
cigarettes. When he returned to where he had left his master painting a
picture of something, which he thinks was a tree, but which may have been
cows in bathing, Mr. Green had vanished. . . . Hum--hum!--ahem! He was
young, well built, handsome, and----"

"Kill it!" thundered the city editor, purple with passion.

"But it's the official descrip----"

"I don't believe it! I won't! I can't! How the devil can a whole bunch of
perfect Apollos disappear that way? There are not four such men in this
State, anyway--outside of fiction and the stage----"

"I'm only reading you the official----"

Mr. Trinkle gulped; the chewing muscles worked in his cheeks, then
calmness came, and his low and anxiously lined brow cleared.

"All right," he said. "Show me, that's all I ask. Go ahead and find just
one of these disappearing Apollos. That's all I ask."

He shook an inky finger at them impressively, timing its wagging to his
parting admonition:

"We want two things, do you understand? We want a story, and we want to
print it before any other paper. Never mind reporting progress and the
natural scenery; never mind telegraphing the condition of the local
colour or the dialect of northern New York, or your adventures with
nature, or how you went up against big game, or any other kind of game. I
don't want to hear from you until you've got something to say. All you're
to do is to prowl and mouse and slink and lurk and hunt and