had
begun to worry me a great deal.

For it was, perhaps, the wildest goose chase and the most absurdly
hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by the
Bronx Park authorities.

Nothing is more dreaded by scientists than ridicule; and it was in spite
of this terror of ridicule that I summoned sufficient courage to organize
an exploring party and start out in search of something so extraordinary,
so hitherto unheard of, that I had not dared reveal to Kemper by letter
the object of my quest.

No, I did not care to commit myself to writing just yet; I had merely
sent Kemper a letter to join me on Sting-ray Key.

He telegraphed me from Tampa that he would join me at the rendezvous; and
I started directly from Bronx Park for Heliatrope City; arrived there in
three days; found the waitress all ready to start with me; inquired about
a guide and discovered the man Grue in his hut off Pelican Light; made my
bargain with him; and set sail for Sting-ray Key, the most excited and
the most nervous young man who ever had dared disaster in the sacred
cause of science.

Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, fortune. For,
as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the great
Bronx Park Zooelogical Society, I was perfectly aware that no scientific
reputation can survive ridicule.

Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat
containing one beachcombing cracker, one hotel waitress, a pile of
camping kit and special utensils, and myself!

How was I going to tell Kemper? How was I going to confess to him that I
was staking my reputation as an anthropologist upon a letter or two and
a personal interview with a young girl--a waitress at the Hotel Gardenia
in Heliatrope City?

* * * * *

I lowered my sea-glasses and glanced sideways at the waitress. She was
still chewing the end of her pencil, reflectively.

She was a pretty girl, one Evelyn Grey, and had been a country
school-teacher in Massachusetts until her health broke.

Florida was what she required; but that healing climate was possible to
her only if she could find there a self-supporting position.

Also she had nourished an ambition for a postgraduate education, with
further aspirations to a Government appointment in the Smithsonian
Institute.

All very worthy, no doubt--in fact, particularly commendable because the
wages she saved as waitress in a Flori