It was as if she were sinking. The moonlight flickered through the leaves like waves. She could hear the shlop shlop of her kidnappers’ shoes as they hurried through the mud. A veil of moss passed over her face. It tasted like cobwebs. She sensed a weight in her stomach where her father had kicked her, knotted like a stone.

The teeth marks on her arm began to scream. Miss Waldron heard them and started to fight. She struggled and flailed and punched and bit. She was a full-grown woman now, and it took all the strength of the three detectives to keep possession of her.

There were shadows overhead. She knew that somewhere in them there were limbs to hang on to. Miss Waldron stretched, hoping to catch a branch. She imagined the trees reaching back for her. Long arms giving chase through the darkness. Her fingertips touched bark, touched fur, touched skin. Then she felt something take hold of her hands and she was lifted into the canopy.

Miss Waldron was missing. So was the slave. Willoughby Lowe searched the jungle, tearing through creepers, behind every bush, underneath every gathering of leaves. He was inconsolable. The scientists were convinced the monkey bite had made Miss Waldron mad.

For several weeks the private detectives staked out Willoughby’s camp, hoping to catch her again. They trailed the expedition’s search party and even learned to climb trees, boosting each other on their shoulders and clinging to vines. They dusted the forest for fingerprints. They hunted all day and into the night until finally, nervous, they informed her father of the escape. The detectives received an immediate reply: NO MORE BANANAS STOP YOU ARE FIRED.

They decided to continue the search.

The private detectives contacted other private detectives. They called on spies; they called in favors. They got in touch with infiltrators and double agents, bounty hunters and Boy Scouts, anyone who might see something and report it. They cast their nets wide and waited.

They got a tip. Miss Waldron had been seen on a camel, going toward Egypt. The detectives donned their fedoras and headed out of the jungle, but when they reached the desert, her trail had turned to dust. A few weeks later Miss Waldron was sighted near a Hindu temple in Kashmir. A month afterward she was in Papua New Guinea. Six months passed and she was sledding through the Yukon, wrapped in furs, urging her team of dogs on with a smile and an occasional kick of the boot.