A Ticket to Adventure / A Mystery Story for Girls

A Mystery Story for Girls
By ROY J. SNELL
The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago
COPYRIGHT 1937 BY THE REILLY & LEE CO. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
Mary Hughes had walked the entire length of the long dock at Anchorage, Alaska. Now, having rounded a great pile of merchandise, tents, tractors, groceries, hammers, axes, and boxes of chocolate bars she came quite suddenly upon the oddest little man she had ever seen. Even for a girl in her late teens, Mary was short and slender. This man was no larger than she.
“A Japanese,” she thought as her surprised eyes took in his tight-fitting black suit, his stiff collar and bright tie. “But no, a Jap wouldn’t look like that.” She was puzzled and curious. At that particular moment, she had nothing to do but indulge her curiosity.
Together with hundreds of other “home-seekers”—she smiled as she thought of herself as a home-seeker—she had been dumped into the bleak Arctic morning. Some of the goods that were being hoisted by a long steel crane from the depths of a ship, belonged to Mary, to Mark her brother, and to Florence Huyler her cousin. There was, for the time, nothing they could do about that. So—
“I am Mister Il-ay-ok.”
To her surprise, she heard the little man addressing her.
“Oh,” she breathed. She was thinking, “Now perhaps I am to know about this little man.” She was, but not too much—at least not for some time.
“Oh! So you are Mr. Il-ay-ok,” she encouraged. “Is this your home?”
“Oh no, no indeed!” He spoke as if he were reading from a book. “My home is quite distant. North,” he pointed away.