"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: