All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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6 ALL-STORY WEEKLY. was slender. Only his shoulders were broad. With. a quick and graceful movement he lifted the girl from the ground and placed her on the platform of the ruined chuko. Whatever his color, race, or costume, he was the doctor now. He seemed to have forgotten all else— what had brought him here, what might have brought the girl here, who she might be, the solitude around them, the mystery of the fate that had thus brought them to- gether. CHAPTER IV. LOST. T was a mystery that had its other aspects in the world this girl had come from. Where was she? What had happened to her? Was she alive or dead? News- papers in faraway Oregon and Texas had carried the story. Some of them had print- ed her picture: MURIEL SANGREE, MISSING HEIRESS, LOST IN THE EVERGLADES In Florida, where the season was on, it was the only thing they talked about, tour- ists and natives. Talk of the girl’s disap- pearance wafted through the big hotels like a cold breeze. It reminded the idlers that if here, at hand, was palatial luxury, just over there—within the rim of the horizon always—was a wilderness unchanged since the days of Columbus. ‘““It makes me shiver,” said a dowager on the porch of the Royal Magnolia. “TI saw her at a dance here less than a fortnight ago.” “Tell me about it,” said the other. “We've been fly-by-nights—motoring ever since we left Aikland—”’ “ They tell the most dreadful stories. It appears that the whole country back from the coast is full of all sorts of wild creatures from panthers to pirates.” ‘* Pirates!” ‘“So Henry was telling me—outlaws— escapéd convicts—Indians. The girl may have fallen into their hands. They may be holding her for ransom—or worse.” “ How did it all come about?” “Her father is president of some new land company, or other—a million acres of swamp, or something like that. Although I can’t see, for the life of me, what any one would want it for, when there is so much good land in the country lying about still undeveloped. Enoch Sangree! You’ve heard of him. His wife was a Miltoon, of Washington and Newport. The daughter’s like her—a girl to make the men stare.”’ ‘IT know the sort. I detest them.” “Muriel wasn’t so bad. They say that she was devoted to ther father, and her father to her. He’s distracted. He’s of- fered five thousand dollars reward for any news concerning her.” 7 “But these bandits—”’ “They may be waiting until the reward is increased. The Governor has warned him of that danger. But there have been per- sons lost in those horrid swamps before— many of them, it appears. And at least some of them have never been heard from again.” “ But how in the world—’’ “It seems that her father had organized quite a party to visit his new holdings. They left on the Semiramis II1I—that’s the Sangree house-boat—a gorgeous affair—five or six days ago. They went around to the west coast—up among the Ten Thousand Islands—there’s never been a map made of the place—and up one of those lost rivers running back toward the Everglades. We made a trip like that two yéars ago, and I shall never forget it, nor go again. Jun- gle! You would have thought it was in the heart of Africa—jungle and water, orchids, snakes, alligators.” ‘ Horrors!” “* Horrors,’ describes it, unless you have nerves for that sort of thing. And ali with- in a day or two of all this.” The dowager waved a hand that glittered with jewels to indicate the broad porch, the lawns and tropic gardens, a spangling patch of white beach and blue ocean. Somewhere near an orchestra panted softly through the latest dance, lazy, lulling, sensuous. There was the usual drift of people about. Most of these were like caged birds—overfed and richly plumaged, but bored, and with no morals to speak of. comiclboolk C©