nor desire for salary moved them.

I waited until the last moment, hoping against hope. Then, with a
groan of despair, I seized luggage and raincoat, made for the door and
flung it open, only to find myself face to face with an attractive
young girl, apparently on the point of pressing the electric button.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I have a train to catch."

She was noticeably attractive in her storm-coat and pretty hat, and I
really was sorry--so sorry that I added:

"I have about twenty-seven seconds to place at your service before I
go."

"Twenty will be sufficient," she replied, pleasantly. "I saw your
advertisement for a stenographer--"

"We require a man," I interposed, hastily.

"Have you engaged him?"

"N-no."

We looked at each other.

"You wouldn't accept, anyway," I began.

"How do you know?"

"You wouldn't leave town, would you?"

"Yes, if you required it."

"What? Go to Florida?"

"Y-yes--if I must."

"But think of the alligators! Think of the snakes--big, bitey snakes!"

"Gracious!" she exclaimed, eyes growing bigger.

"Indians, too!--unreconciled, sulky Seminoles! Fevers! Mud-puddles!
Spiders! And only fifty dollars a week--"

"I--I'll go," she stammered.

"Go?" I repeated, grimly; "then you've exactly two and three-quarter
seconds left for preparations."

Instinctively she raised her little gloved hand and patted her hair.
"I'm ready," she said, unsteadily.

"One extra second to make your will," I added, stunned by her
self-possession.

"I--I have nothing to leave--nobody to leave it to," she said,
smiling; "I am ready."

I took that extra second myself for a lightning course in reflection
upon effects and consequences.

"It's silly, it's probably murder," I said, "but you're engaged! Now
we must run for it!"

And that is how I came to engage the services of Miss Helen Barrison
as stenographer.

XIV

At noon on the second day I disembarked from the train at Citron City
with all paraphernalia--cage, chemicals, arsenal, and stenographer; an
accumulation of very dusty impedimenta--all but the stenographer. By
three o'clock our hotel livery-rig was speeding along the beach at
False Cape towards the tall lighthouse looming above the dunes.

The abode of a gentleman named Slunk was my goal. I sat brooding in
the rickety carriage, still dazed by the rapidity of my flight from
New York; the stenographer sat beside me, blue eyes bright with
excitement, fair hair