The Lost Mine of the Amazon: A Hal Keen Mystery Story

Two weeks later, Hal was sitting with his uncle, under the cooling shade of a palm tree. It was early afternoon and most of _Manaos_ was under cover for the siesta period. A lig...

Hal lay rigid in his deck chair and watched from under half-closed lids. The dapper little man came toward them soundlessly and approached Denis Keen’s chair with all the slinki...

“Aw, Rodriguez, you’re just feeling kind of low down, that’s all,” Hal soothed him. “In the morning you’ll be shipshape, you’ll see. Things are just sort of looking black to you.”

Hal got out of the car at the edge of _San Gabriel_ aviation field and looked about. Leveled from the surrounding jungle, it was situated at the extreme end of the city and here...

“He swore up and down that he wasn’t near this deck,” Hal declared vehemently, when he got back to his uncle’s cabin ten minutes later. “No one in the steerage saw him come up o...

Hal had not time to consider this at all, for in a moment, it seemed, the natives had swarmed up from the clearing and surrounded him. And the native lying before the hut had go...

Before Hal had recovered from his astonishment, there burst into the cabin, the sailor, who was leading a cringing, ratlike little man. Behind them came the captain, wringing hi...

They turned off the _Pallida Mors_ and into a narrower stream. Small cataracts sprayed down over rocky cliffs, sending a continuous foam over the surface of the water. On the wh...

They bumped across the field, then rose into the air, hesitated a moment as if they were going to fly straight for the jungle, then soared high into the blue. Hal nodded with sa...

Instinctively they sat down together on the bank. Hal, though weary, was not hungry nor suffering pain of any kind, and if he had been, he secretly thought that just talking to...

The black vault of heaven with its twinkling stars could be seen in narrow strips through the entangled tops of closely growing trees. Hal looked up at it longingly from time to...

Suddenly the swish of paddles sounded and, with a creaking noise, the canoe pushed out of the clay and back into the stream. Hal held his breath listening for them to reveal som...

“It’s got to look downright serious, Unk,” Hal said, after entering their rooms in the hotel. “It’s not just a coincidence, my meeting him like that, or he wouldn’t have pulled...

Within a flash he had slid from behind the wheel, reached over in the corner and dragged Rodriguez by the collar, pulling him into the cabin with a swift jerk. That accomplished...

Hal kept his fire going until the red glare of dawn forced its light through the jungle mists. Gradually the awful gloom lifted and he was able to take stock of his surroundings...

Hal took no stock in that, of course, but, during the long nights of the week following, he was more than once inclined to be credulous in the matter. Not a night passed that he...

By sheer determination, Hal forced the stubborn craft back into position and, paddling with his bare hands, he managed to emerge safely at the other end. Once there, he had no h...

Hal was sick when daylight seeped in through the trees; he felt much too sick to do anything but stay right where he was. But the nearness of the pond housing an alligator, and...

Joaquim’s tongue loosed in rapid-fire Portuguese for fully two minutes. Felice sat tense, her hands clenching the tablecloth and her face noticeably pale. And the old man, thoug...

It rained terrifically that night, lashing this way and that through the clearing. Truly, it was a night to deter the most venturesome, but as Hal had high regard for Señor Gonc...

After a few more minutes’ observation, twenty-five naked savages crawled out of the brush, crept up to Hal’s prostrate body and held a noisy conference. Then they took turns fee...

Hal helped Big Boy paddle for two hours, but he was so completely exhausted at the end of that period that he had to stretch himself out in the bottom of the craft. The Indian n...

Hal awakened at the witching hour of midnight to find that he was being deluged in a rainstorm, his fire was out and he couldn’t see anything but the radium-faced dial of his wr...

As they undressed for bed they heard the throb of the engines cease and, after the captain gave some orders in blatant Portuguese, the boat slowed down and stopped. An obliging...

Marcellus Pemberton, the third, greeted Hal courteously, yet coldly. White-haired and rugged, he welcomed his guest with all the pompous grace of the old southern aristocracy. H...

The guards marched Hal to a hut not far from the river trail and with a push thrust him into the gloomy interior. Suddenly he felt a hand reach out and touch his shoulder.

They departed from the main stream and proceeded up the black waters of the _Rio Negro_ just after sunrise. _Manaos_, with its modern buildings, crowded streets and electric lig...

Hal reveled in the luxury of a hammock that long afternoon and slept the sleep of the righteous. He awakened, feeling fresh and stronger than any time since the plane wreck. And...

“Renan Carmichael Pemberton, that is his full name,” said Old Marcellus proudly. “We’ve always called him Rene for short. But what are you going to do about him, Mr. Hal? You ar...

Hal went back to his hammock without having come to any definite decision. After all, it was difficult to distinguish one’s voice through layers of mud and thatch, especially wh...

By nightfall they had wormed their way out of the Narrows and came at last to the main stream of the Amazon River. Hal had his first glimpse of it shortly after evening coffee w...

Hal groped his way through another jungle day and just as the shadows began to creep through the forest he came upon an almost overgrown trail. He was overjoyed, for it was the...

The massacre of the _Pallidas_ will come down in history, for a massacre it was. Renan and Hal leading the rebel volunteers were met that morning with a rain of poisoned arrows...

Hal was witness to a miracle that midnight. It was one of those rare occasions when a vast body of men are all inspired with one thought, one motive at one time. And Renan, that...

After a long, solemn conference in the Pemberton hut next morning, it was decided that Goncalves had been effectually squelched by the ruse which Hal had so cleverly executed. N...

Hal acquainted Felice Pemberton with the facts of his acquaintance with the spies, Goncalves and Pizella. Then he launched onto the topic of his meeting with Rene Carmichael, an...