Mr. Melnor glared at him.
"You do what I tell you," he growled. "You start in and slam 'em around
the way they say Belasco slammed Leslie Carter! I'll have no nepotism
here!"
He went out by a private entrance, walking with the jaunty energy that
characterised him. Mr. Trinkle looked after him. "Talk of nepotism!" he
muttered, then struck the desk savagely.
To the overzealous young man who came in with an exuberant step he
snarled:
"Showemin! And don't you go volplaning around this office or I'll destroy
you!"
A moment afterward the youthful nephews of the great Mr. Melnor appeared.
They closed and locked the door behind them as they were tersely bidden,
then stood in a row, politely and attentively receptive--well-bred,
pleasant-faced, expensive-looking young fellows, typical of the
metropolis. Mr. Trinkle eyed them with disfavour.
"So at last you're ready to start, eh?" he rasped out. "I thought perhaps
you'd gone to Newport for the summer to think it over. You are ready, are
you not?"
"Yes, sir, we hope to----"
"Well, dammit! 'yes' is enough! Cut out the 'we hope to'! And try not to
look at me patiently, Mr. Sayre. I don't want anybody to be patient with
me. I dislike it. I prefer to incite impatience in people. Impatience is
a form of energy. I like energy! Energy is important in this business.
The main thing is to get a move on; and then, first you know, you'll
begin to hustle. Try it for a change."
He continued to inspect them gloomily for a few moments; then:
"To successfully cover this story," he continued, "you both _ought_ to be
expert woodsmen, thoroughly inured to hardship, conversant with woodcraft
and nature. Are you?"
"We've been reading up," began Langdon confidently; "we have a dozen
pocket volumes to take into the woods with us."
"Haven't I already warned you that every ounce of superfluous luggage
will weigh a ton in the woods?" interrupted the city editor scornfully.
"Are you two youthful guys under the impression that you can stroll
through the wilderness loaded down with a five-foot shelf of assorted
junk?"
"Sayre arranged that," said Langdon. "He has invented a wonderful
system, Mr. Trinkle. You know that thin, white stuff, which resembles
sheets of paper, that they give goldfish to eat. Well, Sayre and I tasted
it; and it wasn't very bad; so we had them make up twelve thousand sheets
of it, flavoured with vanilla, and then we got Dribble & Co., the
publishers, to print one set of their Nature Library on the sheets and
bind 'em up in edible cassava covers. As soon as we thoroughly master a
volume we can masticate it, pages, binding, everything. William, show Mr.
Trinkle your note-book," he added, turning to Sayre, who hastily produced
a pad and displayed it with pardonable pride.
"Made entirely of fish food, sugar, pemmican, and cassava," he said
modestly. "Takes pencil, ink, stylograph, indelible pencil, crayon,
chalk--"
The city editor regarded the two young men and then the edible pad in
amazement.
"What?" he barked. "Say it again!"
"It's made of perfectly good fish-wafer, Mr. Trinkle. We had it analysed
by Professor Smawl, and he says it is mildly nutritious. So we added
other ingredients----"
"You mean to say that this pad is fit to eat?"
"Certainly," said Langdon. "Bite into it, William, and show him."
Sayre bit out a page from the pad and began to masticate it. The city
editor regarded him with intense hostility.
"Oh, very well," he said. "I haven't any further suggestions to offer.
Your uncle has picked you for the job. But it's my private opinion that
here is where you make good or hunt another outlet for your genius--even
if your uncle does own the _Star_."
Then he rose and laid his hands on their shoulders:
"It's a wild and desolate region," he said, with an irony they did not
immediately perceive; "nothing but woods and rocks and air and earth and
mountains and madly rushing torrents and weird, silent lakes--nothing but
trails, macadam roads, and sign-posts and hotels and camps and tourists,
and telephones. If you find yourself in any very terrible solitudes,
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 excellent physical condition."
Sayre turned the page outward so that Mr. Trinkle could see it.
"Here's his photograph," he said, "and his dimensions."
Mr. Trinkle nodded: "Go on," he said; and Sayre resumed, turning the
page:
"May 8th: James Carrick, a minor poet, young, well built, handsome, and
in excellent physical condition, disappeared from a boat on Dingman's
Pond. The boat was found. It contained a note-book in which was neatly
written the following graceful poem:
"While gliding o'er thy fair expanse
And gazing at the shore beyond,
What simple joys the soul entrance
Evoked by rowing on Dingman's Pond.
The joy I here have found shall be
Dear to my heart till life forsake,
And often shall I think of thee,
Thou mildly beauteous Dingman's Lake."
"Stop!" said Mr. Trinkle, infuriated. Sayre looked up.
"The poem gets the hook!" he snarled. "Go on!"
"The next," continued young Sayre, referring to his edible note-book, "is
the case of De Lancy Smith. On May 16th he left his camp, taking with him
his rod with the intention of trying for some of the larger, wilder, and
more dangerous trout which it is feared still infest the remoter streams
of the State forest.
"His luncheon, consisting of truffled patés and champagne, was found by a
searching party, but De Lancy Smith has never again been seen or heard
of. He was young, well built, handsome, and----"
"In excellent physical condition!" snapped Mr. Trinkle. "That's the third
Adonis you've described. Quit it!"
"But that is the exact description of those three young men----"
"Every one of 'em?"
"Every one. They all seem to have been exceptionally handsome and
healthy."
"Well, does that suggest any clue to you? Think! Use your mind. Do you
see any clue?"
"In what?"
"In the probably similar fate of so much masculine beauty?"
The young men looked at him, perplexed, silent.
Mr. Trinkle waved his hands in desperation.
"Wake up!" he shouted. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that every one of
them so far has been Gibsonian perfection itself? Doesn't that seem
funny? Doesn't it suggest some connection with the present Franchise
strike?"
"It _is_ odd," said Langdon, thoughtfully.
"You notice," bellowed Mr. Trinkle, "that no young man
disappears who isn't a physical Adonis, do you? No thin-shanked,
stoop-shouldered, scant-haired highbrow has yet vanished. You notice
that, don't you, Sayre? Open your mouth 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 snoop and
explore those woods until you find one or more of these Adonises; and
then get the story to us by chain-lightning, if," he added indifferently,
"it breaks both your silly necks to do it."
They passed out with calm dignity, saying "Good-bye, sir," in haughtily
modulated voices.
As they closed the door they heard him grunt a parting injury.
"What an animal!" observed Sayre. "If it wasn't for the glory of being on
the _N. Y. Star_----"
"Sure," said Langdon, "it's a great paper; besides, we've got to--if we
want to remain next to Uncle Augustus."
It _was_ a great newspaper; for ethical authority its editorials might
be compared only to the _Herald's_; for disinterested principle the _Sun_
alone could compare with it; it had all the lively enterprise and virile,
restless energy of the _Tribune_; all the gay, inconsequent, and frothy
sparkle of the _Evening Post_; all the risky popularity of the _Outlook_.
It was a very, very great New York daily. What on earth has become of it!
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