“No more he could. So I’ve got to find out for myself. Here’s the way I figure it out: The two men have been engaged in some out-of-door work that is extra hazardous. So much we know. Harvey Craig has, I’m afraid, succumbed to it. Otherwise he’d have sent some word to Professor Gehren. He may be dead or he may only be disabled by the dangerous character of the work, whatever it was. In any case our mysterious foreign friend has probably skipped out hastily. Now, I propose to find the railroad station they passed through, coming and going, and interview the ticket agent.” “You’ve got a fine large contract on your hands to find it.” “Not so large, either. All we have to do is to look for a place that is very isolated and yet quite near New York.” “How do you know it is quite near New York?” “Because Harvey Craig went there and back between noon and two o’clock, Professor Gehren says. Now, we’ve got to find such a place which is near a stretch of deserted, swampy ground, very badly infested with mosquitoes. I’d thought of the Hackensack Meadows, just across the river in Jersey.” “That is all very well,” said Bertram; “but why mosquitoes?” “Why, the poisoned and swollen face and hands both of them suffered from,” explained Average Jones. “What else could it be?” “I’d thought of poison-ivy or some kind of plant they’d been grubbing at.” “So had I. But I happened to think that anything of that sort, if it had poisoned them once, would keep on poisoning them, while mosquitoes they could protect themselves against, if they didn’t become immune, as they most likely would. As there must have been a lot of ‘skeeters’ to do the kind of job that ‘Smith’s’ face showed, I naturally figured on a swamp.” “Average,” said Bertram solemnly, “there are times when I conceive a sort of respect for your commonplace and plodding intellect. Now, let me have my little inning. I used to commute—on the Jersey and Delaware Short Line. There’s a station on that line, Pearlington by name, that’s a combination of Mosquitoville, Lonesomehurst and Nutting Doon. It’s in the mathematical center of the ghastliest marsh anywhere between Here and Somewhere else. I think that’s our little summer resort, and I’m yours for the nine A. M. train to-morrow.” Dismounting from that rather casual accommodation on the following day, the two friends found Pearlington to consist of a windowed packing-box inhabited by a hermit in a brass-buttoned blue. This lonely official readily identified the subjects of Average Jones’ inquiry. “I guess I know your friends, all right. The dago was tall and thin and had white hair; almost snow-white. No, he wasn’t old, neither. He talked very soft and slow. Used to stay off in the reeds three and four days at a time. No, ain’t seen him for near a week; him nor his boat nor the young fellow that was with him. Sort of bugologists, or something, wasn’t they.” “Have you any idea where we could find their camp?” The railroad man laughed.