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Title: The Tracer of Lost Persons

Author: Robert W. Chambers

Release Date: August 15, 2004 [EBook #13180]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "'Then in charity say that word!'"]

THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS

BY R. W. CHAMBERS



TO MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM A. HALL


1906



     _For the harmony of the world, like that of a harp, is made up of
     discords._

     --HERACLITUS.



THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS


CHAPTER I


He was thirty-three, agreeable to look at, equipped with as much culture
and intelligence as is tolerated east of Fifth Avenue and west of
Madison. He had a couple of elaborate rooms at the Lenox Club, a larger
income than seemed to be good for him, and no profession. It follows
that he was a pessimist before breakfast. Besides, it's a bad thing for
a man at thirty-three to come to the conclusion that he has seen all the
most attractive girls in the world and that they have been vastly
overrated. So, when a club servant with gilt buttons on his coat tails
knocked at the door, the invitation to enter was not very cordial. He of
the buttons knocked again to take the edge off before he entered; then
opened the door and unburdened himself as follows:

"Mr. Gatewood, sir, Mr. Kerns's compliments, and wishes to know if 'e
may 'ave 'is coffee served at your tyble, sir."

Gatewood, before the mirror, gave a vicious twist to his tie, inserted a
pearl scarf pin, and regarded the effect with gloomy approval.

"Say to Mr. Kerns that I am--flattered," he replied morosely; "and tell
Henry I want him."

"'Enry, sir? Yes, sir."

The servant left; one of the sleek club valets came in, softly sidling.

"Henry!"

"Sir?"

"I'll wear a white waistcoat, if you don't object."

The valet laid out half a dozen.

"Which one do you usually wear when I'm away, Henry? Which is _your_
favorite?"

"Sir?"

"Pick it out and don't look injured, and _don't_ roll up your eyes. I
merely desire to borrow it for one day."

"Very good, sir."

"And, Henry, hereafter always help yourself to my _best_ cigars. Those I
smoke may injure you. I've attempted to conceal the keys, but you will,
of course, eventually discover them under that loose tile on the
hearth."

"Yes, sir; thanky', sir," returned the valet gravely.

"And--Henry!"

"Sir?" with martyred dignity.

"When you are tired of searching for my olivine and opal pin, just find
it, for a change. I'd like to wear that pin for a day or two if it would
not inconvenience you."

"Very good, sir; I will 'unt it hup, sir."

Gatewood put on his coat, took hat and gloves from the unabashed valet,
and sauntered down to the sunny breakfast room, where he found Kerns
inspecting a morning paper and leisurely consuming grapefruit with a
cocktail on the side.

"Hullo," observed Kerns briefly.

"I'm not on the telephone," snapped Gatewood.

"I beg your pardon; how are you, dear friend?"

"_I_ don't know how I am," retorted Gatewood irritably; "how the devil
should a man know how he is?"

"Everything going to the bowwows, _as_ usual, dear friend?"

"_As_ usual. Oh, read your paper, Tommy! You know well enough I'm not
one of those tail-wagging imbeciles who wakes up in the morning singing
like a half-witted lark. Why should I, with this taste in my mouth, and
the laundress using vitriol, and Henry sneering at my cigars?" He yawned
and cast his eyes toward the ceiling. "Besides, there's too much gilt
all over this club! There's too much everywhere. Half the world is
stucco, the rest rococo. Where's that Martini I bid for?"

Kerns, undisturbed, applied himself to cocoa and toasted muffins.
Grapefruit and an amber-tinted accessory were brought for the other and
sampled without mirth. However, a little later Gatewood said: "Well, are
you going to read your paper all day?"

"What you need," said Kerns, laying the paper aside, "is a job--any old
kind would do, dear friend."

"I don't want to make any more money."

"I don't want you to. I mean a job where you'd lose a lot and be scared
into thanking Heaven for carfare. _You're_ a nice object for the
breakfast table!"

"Bridge. I will be amiable enough by noon time."

"Yes, you're endurable by noon time, as a rule. When you're forty you
may be tolerated after five o'clock; when you're fifty your wife and
children might even venture to emerge from the cellar after dinner--"

"Wife!"

"I said wife," replied Kerns, as he calmly watched his man.

He had managed it well, so far, and he was wise enough not to overdo it.
An interval of silence was what the situation required.

"I wish I _had_ a wife," muttered Gatewood after a long pause.

"Oh, haven't you said that every day for five years? Wife! Look at the
willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town. Isn't
this borough a bower of beauty--a flowery thicket where the prettiest
kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors? And what do you do?
You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies,
growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you've even given that up. Now you
only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully
that you never have seen your ideal. _I_ know _you_."

"I never have seen my ideal," retorted Gatewood sulkily, "but I know she
exists--somewhere between heaven and Hoboken."

"You're sure, are you?"

"Oh, _I'm_ sure. And, rich or poor, good or bad, she was fashioned for
me alone. That's a theory of mine; _you_ needn't accept it; in fact,
it's none of your business, Tommy."

"All the same," insisted Kerns, "did you ever consider that if your
ideal does exist somewhere, it is morally up to you to find her?"

"Haven't I inspected every debutante for ten years? You don't expect me
to advertise for an ideal, do you--object, matrimony?"

Kerns regarded him intently. "Now, I'm going to make a vivid suggestion,
Jack. In fact, that's why I subjected myself to the ordeal of
breakfasting with you. It's none of my business, as you so kindly put
it, but--_shall_ I suggest something?"

"Go ahead," replied Gatewood, tranquilly lighting a cigarette. "I know
what you'll say."

"No, you don't. Firstly, you are having such a good time in this world
that you don't really enjoy yourself--isn't that so?"

"I--well I--well, let it go at that."

"Secondly, with all your crimes and felonies, you have one decent trait
left: you really would like to fall in love. And I suspect you'd even
marry."

"There are grounds," said Gatewood guardedly, "for your suspicions. _Et
apres?_"

"Good. Then there's a way! I know--"

"Oh, don't tell me you 'know a girl,' or anything like that!" began
Gatewood sullenly. "I've heard that before, and I won't meet her."

"I don't want you to; I don't know anybody. All I desire to say is this:
I do know a way. The other day I noticed a sign on Fifth Avenue:


                        KEEN & CO.
                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS

It was a most extraordinary sign; and having a little unemployed
imagination I began to speculate on how Keen & Co. might operate, and I
wondered a little, too, that, the conditions of life in this city could
enable a firm to make a living by devoting itself exclusively to the
business of hunting up missing people."

Kerns paused, partly to light a cigarette, partly for diplomatic
reasons.

"What has all this to do with me?" inquired Gatewood curiously; and
diplomacy scored one.

"Why not try Keen & Co.?"

"Try them? Why? I haven't lost anybody, have I?"

"You haven't, precisely _lost anybody_, but the fact remains that you
can't _find somebody_," returned Kerns coolly. "Why not employ Keen &
Co. to look for her?"

"Look for whom, in Heaven's name?"

"Your ideal."

"Look for--for my ideal! Kerns, you're crazy. How the mischief can
anybody hunt for somebody who doesn't exist?"

"You _say_ that she _does_ exist."

"But I can't prove it, man."

"You don't have to; it's up to Keen & Co. to prove it. That's why you
employ them."

"What wild nonsense you talk! Keen & Co. might, perhaps, be able to
trace the concrete, but how are they going to trace and find the
abstract?"

"She isn't abstract; she is a lovely, healthy, and youthful concrete
object--if, as you say, she _does_ exist."

"How can I _prove_ she exists?"

"You don't have to; they do that."

"Look here," said Gatewood almost angrily, "do you suppose that if I
were ass enough to go to these people and tell them that I wanted to
find my ideal--"

"_Don't_ tell them _that_!"

"But how--"

"There is no necessity for going into such trivial details. All you
need say is: 'I am very anxious to find a young lady'--and then describe
her as minutely as you please. Then, when they locate a girl of that
description they'll notify you; you will go, judge for yourself whether
she is the one woman on earth--and, if disappointed, you need only shake
your head and murmur: 'Not _the_ same!' And it's for them to find
another."

"I won't do it!" said Gatewood hotly.

"Why not? At least, it would be amusing. You haven't many mental
resources, and it might occupy you for a week or two."

Gatewood glared.

"You have a pleasant way of putting things this morning, haven't you?"

"I don't want to be pleasant: I want to jar you. Don't I care enough
about you to breakfast with you? Then I've a right to be pleasantly
unpleasant. I can't bear to watch your mental and spiritual
dissolution--a man like you, with all your latent ability and capacity
for being nobody in particular--which is the sort of man this nation
needs. Do you want to turn into a club-window gazer like Van Bronk? Do
you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the
avenue--a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?--the pompous obsequies of a
dead intellect?--a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of
all that should be deathless in a man? Why, Jack, I'd rather see you in
bankruptcy--I'd rather see you trying to lead a double life in a single
flat on seven dollars and a half a week--I'd almost rather see you every
day at breakfast than have it come to that!

"Wake up and get jocund with life! Why, you could have all good citizens
stung to death if you chose. It isn't that I want you to make money; but
I want you to worry over somebody besides yourself--not in Wall
Street--a fool and its money are soon parted. But in your own home,
where a beautiful wife and seven angel children have you dippy and close
to the ropes; where the housekeeper gets a rake off, and the cook is
red-headed and comes from Sligo, and the butler's cousin will bear
watching, and the chauffeur is a Frenchman, and the coachman's uncle is
a Harlem vet, and every scullion in the establishment lies, drinks,
steals, and supports twenty satiated relatives at your expense. That
would mean the making of you; for, after all, Jack, you are no
genius--you're a plain, non-partisan, uninspired, clean-built, wholesome
citizen, thank God!--the sort whose unimaginative mission is to pitch in
with eighty-odd millions of us and, like the busy coral creatures,
multiply with all your might, and make this little old Republic the
greatest, biggest, finest article that an overworked world has ever yet
put up! . . . Now you can call for help if you choose."

Gatewood's breath returned slowly. In an intimacy of many years he had
never suspected that sort of thing from Kerns. That is why, no doubt,
the opinions expressed by Kerns stirred him to an astonishment too
innocent to harbor anger or chagrin.

And when Kerns stood up with an unembarrassed laugh, saying, "I'm going
to the office; see you this evening?" Gatewood replied rather vacantly:
"Oh, yes; I'm dining here. Good-by, Tommy."

Kerns glanced at his watch, lingering. "Was there anything you wished to
ask me, Jack?" he inquired guilelessly.

"Ask you? No, I don't think so."

"Oh; I had an idea you might care to know where Keen & Co. were to be
found."

"_That_," said Gatewood firmly, "is foolish."

"I'll write the address for you, anyway," rejoined Kerns, scribbling it
and handing the card to his friend.

Then he went down the stairs, several at a time, eased in conscience,
satisfied that he had done his duty by a friend he cared enough for to
breakfast with.

"Of course," he ruminated as he crawled into a hansom and lay back
buried in meditation--"of course there may be nothing in this Keen & Co.
business. But it will stir him up and set him thinking; and the longer
Keen & Co. take to hunt up an imaginary lady that doesn't exist, the
more anxious and impatient poor old Jack Gatewood will become, until
he'll catch the fever and go cantering about with that one fixed idea in
his head. And," added Kerns softly, "no New Yorker in his right mind can
go galloping through these five boroughs very long before he's roped,
tied, and marked by the 'only girl in the world'--the _only_ girl--if
you don't care to turn around and look at another million girls
precisely like her. O Lord!--precisely like her!"

Here was a nice exhorter to incite others to matrimony.




CHAPTER II


Meanwhile, Gatewood was walking along Fifth Avenue, more or less soothed
by the May sunshine. First, he went to his hatters, looked at straw
hats, didn't like them, protested, and bought one, wishing he had
strength of mind enough to wear it home. But he hadn't. Then he entered
the huge white marble palace of his jeweler, left his watch to be
regulated, caught a glimpse of a girl whose hair and neck resembled the
hair and neck of his ideal, sidled around until he discovered that she
was chewing gum, and backed off, with a bitter smile, into the avenue
once more.

Every day for years he had had glimpses of girls whose hair, hands,
figures, eyes, hats, carriage, resembled the features required by his
ideal; there always was something wrong somewhere. And, as he strolled
moodily, a curious feeling of despair seized him--something that, even
in his most sentimental moments, even amid the most unexpected
disappointment, he had never before experienced.

"I do want to love _somebody_!" he found himself saying half aloud; "I
want to marry; I--" He turned to look after three pretty children with
their maids--"I want several like those--several!--seven--ten--I don't
care how many! I want a house to worry me, just as Tommy described it; I
want to see the same girl across the breakfast table--or she can sip her
cocoa in bed if she desires--" A slow, modest blush stole over his
features; it was one of the nicest things he ever did. Glancing up, he
beheld across the way a white sign, ornamented with strenuous crimson
lettering:

                        KEEN & CO.
                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS

The moment he discovered it, he realized he had been covertly hunting
for it; he also realized that he was going to climb the stairs. He
hadn't quite decided what he meant to do after that; nor was his mind
clear on the matter when he found himself opening a door of opaque glass
on which was printed in red:

                        KEEN & CO.

He was neither embarrassed nor nervous when he found himself in a big
carpeted anteroom where a negro attendant bowed him to a seat and took
his card; and he looked calmly around to see what was to be seen.

Several people occupied easy chairs in various parts of the room--an old
woman very neatly dressed, clutching in her withered hand a photograph
which she studied and studied with tear-dimmed eyes; a young man wearing
last year's most fashionable styles in everything except his features:
and soap could have aided him there; two policemen, helmets resting on
their knees; and, last of all, a rather thin child of twelve, staring
open-mouthed at everybody, a bundle of soiled clothing under one arm.
Through an open door he saw a dozen young women garbed in black, with
white cuffs and collars, all rattling away steadily at typewriters.
Every now and then, from some hidden office, a bell rang decisively, and
one of the girls would rise from her machine and pass noiselessly out of
sight to obey the summons. From time to time, too, the darky servant
with marvelous manners would usher somebody through the room where the
typewriters were rattling, into the unseen office. First the old woman
went--shakily, clutching her photograph; then the thin child with the
bundle, staring at everything; then the two fat policemen, in portentous
single file, helmets in their white-gloved hands, oiled hair glistening.

Gatewood's turn was approaching; he waited without any definite
emotion, watching newcomers enter to take the places of those who had
been summoned. He hadn't the slightest idea of what he was to say; nor
did it worry him. A curious sense of impending good fortune left him
pleasantly tranquil; he picked up, from the silver tray on the table at
his elbow, one of the firm's business cards, and scanned it with
interest:

     KEEN & CO.

     TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS

     _Keen & Co. are prepared to locate the whereabouts of anybody on
     earth. No charges will be made unless the person searched for is
     found._

     _Blanks on application._

     WESTREL KEEN, _Manager_.

"Mistuh Keen will see you, suh," came a persuasive voice at his elbow;
and he rose and followed the softly moving colored servant out of the
room, through a labyrinth of demure young women at their typewriters,
then sharply to the right and into a big, handsomely furnished office,
where a sleepy-looking elderly gentleman rose from an armchair and
bowed. There could not be the slightest doubt that he _was_ a
gentleman; every movement, every sound he uttered, settled the fact.

"Mr. Keen?"

"Mr. Gatewood?"--with a quiet certainty which had its charm. "This is
very good of you."

Gatewood sat down and looked at his host. Then he said: "I'm searching
for somebody, Mr. Keen, whom you are not likely to find."

"I doubt it," said Keen pleasantly.

Gatewood smiled. "If," he said, "you will undertake to find the person
_I_ cannot find, I must ask you to accept a retainer."

"We don't require retainers," replied Keen. "Unless we find the person
sought for, we make no charges, Mr. Gatewood."

"I must ask you to do so in my case. It is not fair that you should
undertake it on other terms. I desire to make a special arrangement with
you. Do you mind?"

"What arrangement had you contemplated?" inquired Keen, amused.

"Only this: charge me in advance exactly what you would charge if
successful. And, on the other hand, do not ask me for detailed
information--I mean, do not insist on any information that I decline to
give. Do you mind taking up such an extraordinary and unbusinesslike
proposition, Mr. Keen?"

The Tracer of Lost Persons looked up sharply:

"About how much information _do_ you decline to give, Mr. Gatewood?"

"About enough to incriminate and degrade," replied the young man,
laughing.

The elderly gentleman sat silent, apparently buried in meditation. Once
or twice his pleasant steel-gray eyes wandered over Gatewood as an
expert, a connoisseur, glances at a picture and assimilates its history,
its value, its artistic merit, its every detail in one practiced glance.

"I think we may take up this matter for you, Mr. Gatewood," he said,
smiling his singularly agreeable smile.

"But--but you would first desire to know something about me--would you
not?"

Keen looked at him: "You will not mistake me--you will consider it
entirely inoffensive--if I say that I know something about you, Mr.
Gatewood?"

"About _me_? How can you? Of course, there is the social register and
the club lists and all that--"

"And many, many sources of information which are necessary in such a
business as this, Mr. Gatewood. It is a necessity for us to be almost
as well informed as our clients' own lawyers. I could pay you no
sincerer compliment than to undertake your case. I am half inclined to
do so even _without_ a retainer. Mind, I haven't yet said that I _will_
take it."

"I prefer to regulate any possible indebtedness in advance," said
Gatewood.

"As you wish," replied the older man, smiling. "In that case, suppose
you draw your check" (he handed Gatewood a fountain pen as the young man
fished a check-book from his pocket)--"your check for--well, say for
$5,000, to the order of Keen & Co."

Gatewood met his eye without wincing; he was in for it now; and he was
always perfectly game. He had brought it upon himself; it was his own
proposition. Not that he would have for a moment considered the sum as
high--or any sum exorbitant--if there had been a chance of success; one
cannot compare and weigh such matters. But how could there be any chance
for success?

As he slowly smoothed out the check and stub, pen poised, Keen was
saying: "Of course, we should succeed sooner or later--if we took up
your case. We might succeed to-morrow--to-day. That would mean a large
profit for us. But we might not succeed to-day, or next month, or even
next year. That would leave us little or no profit; and, as it is our
custom to go on until we do succeed, no matter how long it may require,
you see, Mr. Gatewood, I should be taking all sorts of chances. It might
even cost us double your retainer before we found her--"

"Her? How did--_why_ do you say '_her_'?"

"Am I wrong?" asked Keen, smiling.

"No--you are right."

The Tracer of Lost Persons sank into abstraction again. Gatewood waited,
hoping that his case might be declined, yet ready to face any music
started at his own request.

"She is young," mused Keen aloud, "very beautiful and accomplished. _Is_
she wealthy?" He looked up mildly.

Gatewood said: "I don't know--the truth is I don't care--" And stopped.

"O-ho!" mused Keen slowly. "I--think--I understand. Am I wrong, Mr.
Gatewood, in surmising that this young lady whom you seek is, in your
eyes, very--I may say ideally gifted?"

"She is my ideal," replied the young man, coloring.

"_Ex_actly. And--her general allure?"

"Charming!"

"_Ex_actly; but to be a trifle more precise--if you could give me a
sketch, an idea, a mere outline delicately tinted, now. _Is_ she more
blond than brunette?"

"Yes--but her eyes are brown. I--I insist on that."

"Why should you not? _You_ know her; I don't," said Keen, laughing. "I
merely wished to form a mental picture. . . . You say her hair is--is--"

"It's full of sunny color; that's all I can say."

"_Ex_actly--I see. A rare and lovely combination with brown eyes and
creamy skin, Mr. Gatewood. I fancy she might be, perhaps, an inch or two
under your height?"

"Just about that. Her hands should be--_are_ beautiful--"

"_Ex_actly. The ensemble is most vividly portrayed, Mr. Gatewood;
and--you have intimated that her lack of fortune--er--we might almost
say her pecuniary distress--is more than compensated for by her
accomplishments, character, and very unusual beauty. . . . _Did_ I so
understand you, Mr. Gatewood?"

"That's what I meant, anyhow," he said, flushing up.

"You _did_ mean it?"

"I did: I do."

"Then we take your case, Mr. Gatewood. . . . No haste about the check,
my dear sir--pray consider us at your service."

But Gatewood doggedly filled in the check and handed it to the Tracer of
Lost Persons.

"I wish you happiness," said the older man in a low voice. "The lady you
describe exists; it is for us to discover her."

"Thank you," stammered Gatewood, astounded.

Keen touched an electric button; a moment later a young girl entered the
room.

"Miss Southerland, Mr. Gatewood. Will you be kind enough to take Mr.
Gatewood's dictation in Room 19?"

For a second Gatewood stared--as though in the young girl before him the
ghost of his ideal had risen to confront him--only for a second; then he
bowed, matching her perfect acknowledgment of his presence by a bearing
and courtesy which must have been inbred to be so faultless.

And he followed her to Room 19.

What had Keen meant by saying, "The lady you describe exists!" Did this
remarkable elderly gentleman suspect that it was to be a hunt for an
ideal? Had he deliberately entered into such a bargain? Impossible!

His disturbed thoughts reverted to the terms of the bargain, the entire
enterprise, the figures on his check. His own amazing imbecility
appalled him. What idiocy! What sudden madness had seized him to
entangle himself in such unheard-of negotiations! True, he had played
bridge until dawn the night before, but, on awaking, he had discovered
no perceptible hold-over. It must have been sheer weakness of intellect
that permitted him to be dominated by the suggestions of Kerns. And now
the game was on: the jack declared, cards dealt, and his ante was up.
Had he openers?

Room 19, duly labeled with its number on the opaque glass door,
contained a desk, a table and typewriter, several comfortable chairs,
and a window opening on Fifth Avenue, through which the eastern sun
poured a stream of glory, washing curtain, walls, and ceiling with
palest gold.

And all this time, preoccupied with new impressions and his own growing
chagrin, he watched the girl who conducted him with all the unconscious
assurance and grace of a young chatelaine passing through her own domain
under escort of a distinguished guest.

When they had entered Room 19, she half turned, but he forestalled her
and closed the door, and she passed before him with a perceptible
inclination of her finely modeled head, seating herself at the desk by
the open window. He took an armchair at her elbow and removed his
gloves, looking at her expectantly.




CHAPTER III


"This is a list of particular and general questions for you to answer,
Mr. Gatewood," she said, handing him a long slip of printed matter. "The
replies to such questions as you are able or willing to answer you may
dictate to me." The beauty of her modulated voice was scarcely a
surprise--no woman who moved and carried herself as did this tall young
girl in black and white could reasonably be expected to speak with less
distinction--yet the charm of her voice, from the moment her lips
unclosed, so engrossed him that the purport of her speech escaped him.

"Would you mind saying it once more?" he asked.

She did so; he attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeeded
sufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained in
him. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of two
deliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental process once more.

"I _beg_ your pardon," he said hastily; "what were you saying, Miss
Southerland?"

"Nothing, Mr. Gatewood. I did not speak." And he realized, hazily, that
she had not spoken--that it was the subtle eloquence of her youth and
loveliness that had appealed like a sudden voice--a sound faintly
exquisite echoing his own thought of her.

Troubled, he looked at the slip of paper in his hand; it was headed:

                    SPECIAL DESCRIPTION BLANK
                         (_Form K_)

And he read it as carefully as he was able to--the curious little clamor
of his pulses, the dazed sense of elation, almost of expectation,
distracting his attention all the time.

"I wish you would read it to me," he said; "that would give me time to
think up answers."

"If you wish," she assented pleasantly, swinging around toward him in
her desk chair. Then she crossed one knee over the other to support the
pad, and, bending above it, lifted her brown eyes. She could have done
nothing in the world more distracting at that moment.

"What is the sex of the person you desire to find, Mr. Gatewood?"

"Her sex? I--well, I fancy it is feminine."

She wrote after "Sex" the words "She is probably feminine"; looked at
him absently, glanced at what she had written, flushed a little, rubbed
out the "she is probably," wondering why a moment's mental wandering
should have committed her to absurdity.

"Married?" she asked with emphasis.

"No," he replied, startled; then, vexed, "I beg your pardon--you mean to
ask if _she_ is married!"

"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, Mr. Gatewood; it's the next question, you
see"--she held out the blank toward him. "Is the person you are looking
for married?"

"Oh, no; she isn't married, either--at least--trust--not--because if she
_is_ I don't want to find her!" he ended, entangled in an explanation
which threatened to involve him deeper than he desired. And, looking up,
he saw the beautiful brown eyes regarding him steadily. They reverted to
the paper at once, and the white fingers sent the pencil flying.

"He trusts that she is unmarried, but if she _is_ (underlined) married
he doesn't want to find her," she wrote.

"That," she explained, "goes under the head of 'General Remarks' at the
bottom of the page"--she held it out, pointing with her pencil. He
nodded, staring at her slender hand.

"Age?" she continued, setting the pad firmly on her rounded, yielding
knee and looking up at him.

"Age? Well, I--as a matter of fact, I could only venture a surmise. You
know," he said earnestly, "how difficult it is to guess ages, don't you,
Miss Southerland?"

"How old do you _think_ she is? Could you not hazard a guess--judging,
say, from her appearance?"

"I have no data--no experience to guide me." He was becoming involved
again. "Would you, for practice, permit me first to guess your age, Miss
Southerland?"

"Why--yes--if you think that might help you to guess hers."

So he leaned back in his armchair and considered her a very long
time--having a respectable excuse to do so. Twenty times he forgot he
was looking at her for any purpose except that of disinterested delight,
and twenty times he remembered with a guilty wince that it was a matter
of business.

"Perhaps I had better tell you," she suggested, her color rising a
little under his scrutiny.

"Is it eighteen? Just _her_ age!"

"Twenty-one, Mr. Gatewood--and you _said_ you didn't know her age."

"I have just remembered that I _thought_ it might be eighteen; but I
dare say I was shy three years in her case, too. You may put it down at
twenty-one."

For the slightest fraction of a second the brown eyes rested on his, the
pencil hovered in hesitation. Then the eyes fell, and the moving fingers
wrote.

"Did you write 'twenty-one'?" he inquired carelessly.

"I did not, Mr. Gatewood."

"What did you write?"

"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"

"But I _do_ know--"

"You said--" They looked at one another earnestly.

"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and place
of birth?' Can you answer any part of _that_ question?"

"I trust I may be able to--some day. . . . What _are_ you writing?"

"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that what
you said?"

"Yes, I did say that. I--I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."

She passed to the next question:

"Height?"

"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.

"Hair?"

"More gold than brown--full of--er--gleams--" She looked up quickly; his
eyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at her
hair.

"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.

"It's a sort of delicious mixture--bisque, tinted with a pinkish
bloom--ivory and rose--" He was explaining volubly, when she began to
shake her head, timing each shake to his words.

"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on that
point--unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."

"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who is
my ideal of beauty--"

But she had already gone to the next question:

"Teeth?"

"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closed
like a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.

Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He
did not look like that sort of man; yet _why_ was he watching her so
closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth
when she laughed?

"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, was
plainly a description of herself.

"B-b-b--" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to a
perplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.

"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is--isn't
it?"

She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did was
to rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood,
chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "_Were_ they blue?" he
murmured to himself aloud, "or _were_ they brown? Blue begins with a _b_
and brown begins with a _b_. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a
_b_. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in a
burst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or green
with a _b_!"

Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.

"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began with
the letter _b_?"

"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I _think_ they
_were_--brown."

"If they _were_ brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out
of the window.

"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you
writing?"

"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.

"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.

"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color,
shape, its sensitive beauty, its--_What_ did you write just then?"

"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"

"I don't want you to! I want--"

"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry,
but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction.
Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"

"Oh, I _do_ mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her
figure--"

"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a
glimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, it
could be _only_ a coincidence that this young man should be describing
features peculiar to herself.

"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That is
laconic."

"I could--if it's true. But if you mean it for praise--I--don't think
any modern woman would be flattered."

"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said,
perplexed.

She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on one
lovely white hand, she glanced at the next question:

"Hands?"

"White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded--"

"How _can_ they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?" she protested;
then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily dropped
them and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. _Was_ he
deliberately being rude to her?




CHAPTER IV


As a matter of fact, he was not. Too poor in imagination to invent, on
the spur of the moment, charms and qualities suited to his ideal, he
had, at first unconsciously, taken as a model the girl before him; quite
unconsciously and innocently at first--then furtively, and with a
dawning perception of the almost flawless beauty he was secretly
plagiarizing. Aware, now, that something had annoyed her; aware, too, at
the same moment that there appeared to be nothing lacking in her to
satisfy his imagination of the ideal, he began to turn redder than he
had ever turned in all his life.

Several minutes of sixty seconds each ensued before he ventured to stir
a finger. And it was only when she bent again very gravely over her pad
that he cautiously eased a cramped muscle or two, and drew a breath--a
long, noiseless, deep and timid respiration. He realized the enormity of
what he had been doing--how close he had come to giving unpardonable
offense by drawing a perfect portrait of her as the person he desired to
find through the good offices of Keen & Co.

But there was no such person--unless she had a double: for what more
could a man desire than the ideal traits he had been able to describe
only by using her as his inspiration.

When he ventured to look at her, one glance was enough to convince him
that she, too, had noticed the parallel--had been forced to recognize
her own features in the portrait he had constructed of an ideal. And she
had caught him in absent-minded contemplation of the hands he had been
describing. He knew that his face was the face of a guilty man.

"What is the next question?" he stammered, eager to answer it in a
manner calculated to allay her suspicions.

"The next question?" She glanced at the list, then with a voice of
velvet which belied the eyes, clear as frosty brown pools in November:
"The next question requires a description of her feet."

"Feet! Oh---they--they're rather large--why, her feet are enormous, I
believe--"

She looked at him as though stunned; suddenly a flood of pink spread,
wave on wave, from the white nape of her neck to her hair; she bent low
over her pad and wrote something, remaining in that attitude until her
face cooled.

"Somehow or other I've done it again!" he thought, horrified. "The best
thing I can do is to end it and go home."

In his distress he began to hedge, saying: "Of course, she is rather
tall and her feet are in some sort of proportion--in fact, they are
perfectly symmetrical feet--"

Never in his life had he encountered a pair of such angrily beautiful
eyes. Speech stopped with a dry gulp.

"We now come to 'General Remarks,'" she said in a voice made absolutely
steady and emotionless. "Have you any remarks of that description to
offer, Mr. Gatewood?"

"I'm willing to make remarks," he said, "if I only knew what you wished
me to say."

She mused, eyes on the sunny window, then looked up. "Where did you last
see her?"

"Near Fifth Avenue."

"And what street?"

He named the street.

"Near _here_?"

"Rather," he said timidly.

She ruffled the edges of her pad, wrote something and erased it, bit her
scarlet upper lip, and frowned.

"Out of doors, of course?"

"No; indoors," he admitted furtively.

She looked up with a movement almost nervous.

"Do you dare--I mean, care--to be more concise?"

"I would rather not," he replied in a voice from which he hoped he had
expelled the tremors of alarm.

"As you please, Mr. Gatewood. And would you care to answer any of these
other questions: Who and what are or were her parents? Give all
particulars concerning all her relatives. Is she employed or not? What
are her social, financial, and general circumstances? Her character,
personal traits, aims, interests, desires? Has she any vices? Any
virtues? Talents? Ambitions? Caprices? Fads? Are you in love with her?
Is--"

"Yes," he said, "I am."

"Is she in love with you?"

"No; she hates me--I'm afraid."

"Is she in love with anybody?"

"That is a very difficult--"

The girl wrote: "He doesn't know," with a satisfaction apparently
causeless.

"Is she a relative of yours, Mr. Gatewood?" very sweetly.

"No, Miss Southerland," very positively.

"You--you desire to marry her--you say?"

"I do. But I didn't say it."

She was silent; then:

"What is her name?" in a low voice which started several agreeable
thrills chasing one another over him.

"I--I decline to answer," he stammered.

"On what grounds, Mr. Gatewood?"

He looked her full in the eyes; suddenly he bent forward and gazed at
the printed paper from which she had been apparently reading.

"Why, all those questions you are scaring me with are not there!" he
exclaimed indignantly. "You are making them up?"

"I--I know, but"--she was flushing furiously--"but they are on the other
forms--some of them. Can't you see you are answering 'Form K'? That is a
special form--"

"But why do you ask me questions that are _not_ on Form K?"

"Because it is my duty to do all I can to secure evidence which may lead
to the discovery of the person you desire to find. I--I assure you, Mr,
Gatewood, this duty is not--not always agreeable--and some people make
it harder still."

Gatewood looked out of the window. Various emotions---among them shame,
mortification, chagrin--pervaded him, and chased each other along his
nervous system, coloring his neck and ears a fiery red for the
enlightenment of any observer.

"I--I did not mean to offend you," said the girl in a low voice--such a
gently regretful voice that Gatewood swung around in his chair.

"There is nothing I would not be glad to tell you about the woman I have
fallen in love with," he said. "She is overwhelmingly lovely; and--when
I dare--I will tell you her name and where I first saw her--and where I
saw her last--if you desire. Shall I?"

"It would be advisable. When will you do this?"

"When I dare."

"You--you don't dare--now?"

"No . . . not now."

She absently wrote on her pad: "He doesn't dare tell me now." Then, with
head still bent, she lifted her mischief-making, trouble-breeding brown
eyes to his once more.

"I am to come here, of course, to consult you?" he asked dizzily.

"Mr. Keen will receive you--"

"He may be busy."

"He may be," she repeated dreamily.

"So--I'll ask for you."

"We _could_ write you, Mr. Gatewood."

He said hastily: "It's no trouble for me to come; I walk every
morning."

"But there would be no use, I think, in your coming very soon. All
I--all Mr. Keen could do for a while would be to report progress--"

"That is all I dare look for: progress--for the present."

During the time that he remained--which was not very long--neither of
them spoke until he arose to take his departure.

"Good-by, Miss Southerland. I hope you may find the person I have been
searching for."

"Good-by, Mr. Gatewood. . . . I hope we shall; . . . but
I--don't--know."

And, as a matter of fact, she did not know; she was rather excited over
nothing, apparently; and also somewhat preoccupied with several rather
disturbing emotions the species of which she was interested in
determining. But to label and catalogue each of these emotions
separately required privacy and leisure to think--and she also wished to
look very earnestly at the reflection of her own face in the mirror of
her own chamber. For it is a trifle exciting--though but an innocent
coincidence--to be compared, feature by feature, to a young man's ideal.
As far as that went, she excelled it, too; and, as she stood by the
desk, alone, gathering up her notes, she suddenly bent over and lifted
the hem of her gown a trifle--sufficient to reassure herself that the
dainty pair of shoes she wore, would have baffled the efforts of any
Venus ever sculptured. And she was perfectly right.

"Of course," she thought to herself, "his ideal runaway hasn't enormous
feet. He, too, must have been struck with the similarity between me and
his ideal, and when he realized that I also noticed it, he was
frightened by my frown into saying that her feet were enormous. How
silly! . . . For I didn't _mean_ to frighten him. . . . He frightened
me--once or twice--I mean he irritated me--no, interested me, is what I
_do_ mean. . . . Heigho! I wonder why she ran away? I wonder why he
can't find her? . . . It's--it's silly to run away from a man like that.
. . . Heigho! . . . She doesn't deserve to be found. There is nothing to
be afraid of--nothing to alarm anybody in a man like that."

So she gathered up her notes and walked slowly out and across to the
private office of the Tracer of Lost Persons.

"Come in," said the Tracer when she knocked. He was using the telephone;
she seated herself rather listlessly beside the window, where spring
sunshine lay in gilded patches on the rug and spring breezes stirred
the curtains. She was a little tired, but there seemed to be no good
reason why. Yet, with the soft wind blowing on her cheek, the languor
grew; she rested her face on one closed hand, shutting her eyes.

When they opened again it was to meet the fixed gaze of Mr. Keen.

"Oh--I beg your pardon!"

"There is no need of it, child. Be seated. Never mind that report just
now." He paced the length of the room once or twice, hands clasped
behind him; then, halting to confront her:

"What sort of a man is this young Gatewood?"

"What _sort_, Mr. Keen? Why--I think he is the--the sort--that--"

"I see that you don't think much of him," said Keen, laughing.

"Oh, indeed I did not mean that at all; I mean that he appeared to
be--to be--"

"Rather a cad?"

"Why, _no_!" she said, flushing up. "He is absolutely well-bred, Mr.
Keen."

"You received no unpleasant impression of him?"

"On the contrary!" she said rather warmly--for it hurt her sense of
justice that Keen should so misjudge even a stranger in whom she had no
personal interest.

"You think he looks like an honest man?"

"Honest?" She was rosy with annoyance. "Have you any idea that he is
dishonest?"

"Have you?"

"Not the slightest," she said with emphasis.

"Suppose a man should set us hunting for a person who does not exist--on
our terms, which are no payment unless successful? Would that be
honest?" asked Keen gravely.

"Did--did _he_ do that?"

"No, child."

"I knew he _couldn't_ do such a thing!"

"No, he--er--couldn't, because I wouldn't allow it--not that he tried
to!" added Keen hastily as the indignant brown eyes sparkled ominously.
"Really, Miss Southerland, he must be all you say he is, for he has a
stanch champion to vouch for him."

"All I _say_ he is? I haven't said anything about him!"

Mr. Keen nodded. "_Ex_actly. Let us drop him for a moment. . . . Are you
perfectly well, Miss Southerland?"

"Why, yes."

"I'm glad of it. You are a trifle pale; you seem to be a little
languid. . . . When do you take your vacation?"

"You suggested May, I believe," she said wistfully.

The Tracer leaned back in his chair, joining the tips of his fingers
reflectively.

"Miss Southerland," he said, "you have been with us a year. I thought it
might interest you to know that I am exceedingly pleased with you."

She colored charmingly.

"But," he added, "I'm terribly afraid we're going to lose you."

"Why?" she asked, startled.

"However," he continued, ignoring her half-frightened question with a
smile, "I am going to promote you--for faithful and efficient service."

"O-h!"

"With an agreeable increase of salary, and new duties which will take
you into the open air. . . . You ride?"

"I--I used to before----"

"_Ex_actly; before you were obliged to earn your living. Please have
yourself measured for habit and boots this afternoon. I shall arrange
for horse, saddle, and groom. You will spend most of your time riding
in the Park--for the present."

"But--Mr. Keen--am I to be one of your agents--a sort of detective?"

Keen regarded her absently, then crossed one leg over the other.

"Read me your notes," he said with a smile.

She read them, folded them, and he took them from her, thoughtfully
regarding her.

"Did you know that your mother and I were children together?" he asked.

"No!" She stared. "Is _that_ why you sent for me that day at the school
of stenography?"

"That is why . . . When I learned that my playmate--your mother--was
dead, is it not reasonable to suppose that I should wish her daughter to
have a chance?"

Miss Southerland looked at him steadily.

"She was like you--when she married . . . I never married . . . Do you
wonder that I sent for you, child?"

Nothing but the clock ticking there in the sunny room, and an old man
staring into two dimmed brown eyes, and the little breezes at the open
window whispering of summers past.

"This young man, Gatewood," said the Tracer, clearing his voice of its
hoarseness--"this young man ought to be all right, if I did not
misjudge his father--years ago, child, years ago. And he _is_ all
right--" He half turned toward a big letter-file; "his record is clean,
so far. The trouble with him is idleness. He ought to marry."

"Isn't he trying to?" she asked.

"It looks like it. Miss Southerland, we _must_ find this woman!"

"Yes, but I don't see how you are going to--on such slight
information--"

"Information! Child, I have all I want--all I could desire." He laughed,
passing his hands over his gray hair. "We are going to find the girl he
is in love with before the week ends!"

"Do you really think so?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. But you must do a great deal in this case."

"I?"

"_Ex_actly."

"And--and what am I to do?"

"Ride in the Park, child! And if you see Mr. Gatewood, don't you dare
take your eyes off him for one moment. Watch him; observe everything he
does. If he should recognize you and speak to you, be as amiable to him
as though it were not by my orders."

"Then--then I _am_ to be a detective!" she faltered.

The Tracer did not appear to hear her. He took up the notes, turned to
the telephone, and began to send out a general alarm, reading the
description of the person whom Gatewood had described. The vast,
intricate and delicate machinery under his control was being set in
motion all over the Union.

"Not that I expect to find her outside the borough of Manhattan," he
said, smiling, as he hung up the receiver and turned to her; "but it's
as well to know how many types of that species exist in this Republic,
and who they are--in case any other young man comes here raving of brown
eyes and 'gleams' in the hair."

Miss Southerland, to her own intense consternation, blushed.

"I think you had better order that habit at once," said the Tracer
carelessly.

"Tell me, Mr. Keen," she asked tremulously, "am I to spy upon Mr.
Gatewood? And report to you? . . . For I simply cannot bear to do it--"

"Child, you need report nothing unless you desire to. And when there is
something to report, it will be about the woman I am searching for.
_Don't_ you understand? I have already located her. You will find her
in the Park. And when you are _sure_ she is the right one--and if you
care to report it to me--I shall be ready to listen . . . I am always
ready to listen to you."

"But--I warn you, Mr. Keen, that I have perfect faith in the honor of
Mr. Gatewood. I _know_ that I could have nothing unworthy to report."

"I am sure of it," said the Tracer of Lost Persons, studying her with
eyes that were not quite clear. "Now, I think you had better order that
habit . . . Your mother sat her saddle perfectly . . . We rode very
often--my lost playmate and I."

He turned, hands clasped behind his back, absently pacing the room,
backward, forward, there in the spring sunshine. Nor did he notice her
lingering, nor mark her as she stole from the room, brown eyes saddened
and thoughtful, wondering, too, that there should be in the world so
much room for sorrow.

[Illustration: "'I am sure of it,' said the Tracer of Lost Persons."]




CHAPTER V


Gatewood, burdened with restlessness and gnawed by curiosity, consumed a
week in prowling about the edifice where Keen & Co. carried on an
interesting profession.

His first visit resulted merely in a brief interview with Mr. Keen, who
smilingly reported progress and suavely bowed him out. He looked about
for Miss Southerland as he was leaving, but did not see her.

On his second visit he mustered the adequate courage to ask for her, and
experienced a curiously sickly sensation when informed that Miss
Southerland was no longer employed in the bureau of statistics, having
been promoted to an outside position of great responsibility. His third
visit proved anything but satisfactory. He sidled and side-stepped for
ten minutes before he dared ask Mr. Keen _where_ Miss Southerland had
gone. And when the Tracer replied that, considering the business he had
undertaken for Mr. Gatewood, he really could not see why Mr. Gatewood
should interest himself concerning the whereabouts of Miss Southerland,
the young man had nothing to say, and escaped as soon as possible,
enraged at himself, at Mr. Keen, and vaguely holding the entire world
guilty of conspiracy.

He had no definite idea of what he wanted, except that his desire to see
Miss Southerland again seemed out of all proportion to any reasonable
motive for seeing her. Occasional fits of disgust with himself for what
he had done were varied with moody hours of speculation. Suppose Mr.
Keen did find his ideal? What of it? He no longer wanted to see her. He
had no use for her. The savor of the enterprise had gone stale in his
mouth; he was by turns worried, restless, melancholy, sulky, uneasy. A
vast emptiness pervaded his life. He smoked more and more and ate less
and less. He even disliked to see others eat, particularly Kerns.

And one exquisite May morning he came down to breakfast and found the
unspeakable Kerns immersed in grapefruit, calm, well balanced, and
bland.

"How-de-dee, dear friend?" said that gentleman affably. "Any news from
Cupid this beautiful May morning?"

"No; and I don't want any," returned Gatewood, sorting his mail with a
scowl and waving away his fruit.

"Tut, tut! Lovers must be patient. Dearie will be found some day--"

"Some day," snarled Gatewood, "I shall destroy you, Tommy."

"Naughty! Naughty!" reflected Kerns, pensively assaulting the breakfast
food. "Lovey must _not_ worry; Dovey shall be found, and all will be joy
and gingerbread. . . . If you throw that orange I'll run screaming to
the governors. Aren't you ashamed--just because you're in a love
tantrum!"

"One more word and you get it!"

"May I sing as I trifle with this frugal fare, dear friend? My heart is
_so_ happy that I should love to warble a few wild notes--"

He paused to watch his badgered victim dispose of a Martini.

"I wonder," he mused, "if you'd like me to tell you what a cocktail
before breakfast does to the lining of your stomach? Would you?"

"No. I suppose it's what the laundress does to my linen. What do I
care?"

"_Don't_ be a short sport, Jack."

"Well, I don't care for the game you put me up against. Do you know what
has happened?"

"I really don't, dear friend. The Tracer of Lost Persons has not found
her--_has_ he?"

"He says he has," retorted Gatewood sullenly, pulling a crumpled
telegram from his pocket and casting it upon the table. "I don't want to
see her; I'm not interested. I never saw but one girl in my life who
interested me in the slightest; and she's employed to help in this
ridiculous search."

Kerns, meanwhile, had smoothed out the telegram and was intently
perusing it:

     "_John Gatewood, Lenox Club, Fifth Avenue:_

     "Person probably discovered. Call here as soon as possible.

     W. KEEN."

"_What_ do you make of that?" demanded Gatewood hoarsely.

"Make of it? Why, it's true enough, I fancy. Go and see, and if it's
she, be hers!"

"I won't! I don't want to see any ideal! I don't want to marry. Why do
you try to make me marry somebody?"

"Because it's good for you, dear friend. Otherwise you'll go to the
doggy-dogs. You don't realize how much worry you are to me."

"Confound it! Why don't _you_ marry? Why didn't I ask you that when you
put me up to all this foolishness? What right have you to--"

"Tut, friend! _I_ know there's no woman alive fit to wed me and spend
her life in stealing kisses from me. _I_ have no ideal. _You_ have an
ideal."

"I haven't!"

"Oh, yes, dear friend, there's a stub in your check book to prove it.
You simply bet $5,000 that your ideal existed. You've won. Go and be her
joy and sunshine."

"I'll put an end to this whole business," said Gatewood wrathfully, "and
I'll do it now!"

"Bet you that you're engaged within the week!" said Kerns with a placid
smile.

The other swung around savagely: "What will you bet, Tommy? You may have
what odds you please. I'll make you sit up for this."

"I'll bet you," answered Kerns, deliberately, "an entire silver dinner
service against a saddle horse for the bride."

"That's a fool bet!" snapped Gatewood. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, if you don't care to--"

"What do I want of a silver service? But, all right; I'll bet you
anything."

"_She'll_ want it," replied Kerns significantly, booking the bet. "I may
as well canter out to Tiffany's this morning, I fancy. . . . Where are
you going, Jack?"

"To see Keen and confess what an ass I've been!" returned Gatewood
sullenly, striding across the breakfast room to take his hat and gloves
from the rack. And out he went, mad all over.

On his way up the avenue he attempted to formulate the humiliating
confession which already he shrank from. But it had to be done. He
simply could not stand the prospect of being notified month after month
that a lady would be on view somewhere. It was like going for a fitting;
it was horrible. Besides, what use was it? Within a week or two an
enormous and utterly inexplicable emptiness had yawned before him,
revealing life as a hollow delusion. He no longer cared.

Immersed in bitter reflection, he climbed the familiar stairway and sent
his card to Mr. Keen, and in due time he was ushered into the presence
of the Tracer of Lost Persons.

"Mr. Keen," he began, with a headlong desire to get it over and be done
with it, "I may as well tell you how impossible it is for you, or
anybody, to find that person I described--"

Mr. Keen raised an expostulatory hand, smiling indulgence.

"It is more than possible, Mr. Gatewood, more than probable; it is
almost an accomplished fact. In other words, I think I may venture to
congratulate you and say that she _is_ found."

"Now, _how_ can she be found, when there isn't--"

"Mr. Gatewood, the magician will always wave his magic wand for you and
show you his miracles for the price of admission. But for that price he
does not show you how he works his miracles," said Keen, laughing.

"But I ought to tell you," persisted Gatewood, "that it is utterly
impossible you should find the person I wished to discover, because
she--"

"I can only prove that you are wrong," smiled Keen, rising from his easy
chair.

"Mr. Keen," said the young man earnestly, "I have been more or less of a
chump at times. One of those times was when I came here on this errand.
All I desire, now, is to let the matter rest as it is. I am satisfied,
and you have lost nothing. Nor have you found anything or anybody. You
think you have, but you haven't. I do not wish you to continue the
search, or to send me any further reports. I want to forget the whole
miserable matter--to be free--to feel myself freed from any obligations
to that irritating person I asked you to find."

The Tracer regarded him very gravely.

"Is that your wish, Mr. Gatewood? I can scarcely credit it."

"It is. I've been a fool; I simply want to stop being one if anybody
will permit it."

"And you decline to attempt to identify the very beautiful person we
have discovered to be the individual for whom you asked us to search?"

"I do. She may be beautiful; but I know well enough she can't compare
with--some one."

"I am sorry," said Keen thoughtfully. "We take so much pride in these
matters. When one of my agents discovered where this person was, I was
rather--happy; for I have taken a peculiar personal interest in your
case. However--"

"Mr. Keen," said Gatewood, "if you could understand how ashamed and
mortified I am at my own conduct--"

Keen gazed pensively out of the window. "I also am sorry; Miss
Southerland was to have received a handsome bonus for her discovery--"

"Miss S-S-S-S-outherland!"

"_Ex_actly; without quite so many _S's_," said Keen, smiling.

"Did _she_ discover that--that person?" exclaimed the young man,
startled.

"She thinks she has. I am not sure she is correct; but I am absolutely
certain that Miss Southerland could eventually discover the person you
were in search of. It seems a little hard on her--just on the eve of
success--to lose. But that can't be helped now."

Gatewood, more excited and uncomfortable than he had ever been in all
his life, watched Keen intently.

"Too bad, too bad," muttered the Tracer to himself. "The child needs the
encouragement. It meant a thousand dollars to her--" He shrugged his
shoulders, looked up, and, as though rather surprised to see Gatewood
still there, smiled an impersonal smile and offered his hand in adieu.
Gatewood winced.

"Could I--I see Miss Southerland?" he asked.

"I am afraid not. She is at this moment following my instructions
to--but that cannot interest you now--"

"Yes, it does!--if you don't mind. Where is she? I--I'll take a look at
the person she discovered; I will, really."

"Why, it's only this: I suspected that you might identify a person whom
I had reason to believe was to be found every morning riding in the
Park. So Miss Southerland has been riding there every day. Yesterday she
came here, greatly excited--"

"Yes--yes--go on!"

Keen gazed dreamily at the sunny window. "She thought she had found
your--er--the person. So I said you would meet her on the bridle path,
near--but that's of no interest now--"

"Near where?" demanded Gatewood, suppressing inexplicable excitement.
And as Keen said nothing: "I'll go; I want to go, I really do!
Can't--can't a fellow change his mind? Oh, I know you think I'm a
lunatic, and there's plenty of reason, too!"

Keen studied him calmly. "Yes, plenty of reason, plenty of reason, Mr.
Gatewood. But do you suppose you are the only one? I know another who
was perfectly sane two weeks ago."

The young man waited impatiently; the Tracer paced the room, gray head
bent, delicate, wrinkled hands clasped loosely behind his bent back.

"You have horses at the Whip and Spur Club," he said abruptly. "Suppose
you ride out and see how close Miss Southerland has come to solving our
problem."

Gatewood seized the offered hand and wrung it with a fervor out of all
reason; and it is curious that the Tracer of Lost Persons did not appear
to be astonished.

"You're rather impetuous--like your father," he said slowly. "I knew
him; so I've ventured to trust his son--even when I heard how aimlessly
he was living his life. Mr. Gatewood! May I ask you something--as an old
friend of your father?"

The young man nodded, subdued, perplexed, scarcely understanding.

"It's only this: If you _do_ find the woman you could love--in the
Park--to-day--come back to me some day and let me tell you all those
foolish, trite, tiresome things that I should have told a son of mine. I
am so old that you will not take offense--you will not mind listening to
me, or forgetting the dull, prosy things I say about the curse of
idleness, and the habits of cynical thinking, and the perils of
vacant-minded indulgence. You will forgive me--and you will forget me.
That will be as it should be. Good-by."

Gatewood, sobered, surprised, descended the stairs and hailed a hansom.




CHAPTER VI


All the way to the Whip and Spur Club he sat buried in a reverie from
which, at intervals, he started, aroused by the heavy, expectant beating
of his own pulses. But what did he expect, in Heaven's name? Not the
discovery of a woman who had never existed. Yet his excitement and
impatience grew as he watched the saddling of his horse; and when at
length he rode out into the sunshine and cantered through the Park
entrance, his sense of impending events and his expectancy amounted to a
fever which colored his face attractively.

He saw her almost immediately. Her horse was walking slowly in the
dappled shadows of the new foliage; she, listless in her saddle,
sometimes watching the throngs of riders passing, at moments turning to
gaze into the woodland vistas where, over the thickets of flowering
shrubbery, orioles and robins sped flashing on tinted wings from shadow
to sun, from sun to shadow. But she looked up as he drew bridle and
wheeled his mount beside her; and, "Oh!" she said, flushing in
recognition.

"I have missed you terribly," he said quietly.

It was dreamy weather, even for late spring: the scent of lilacs and
mock-orange hung heavy as incense along the woods. Their voices
unconsciously found the key to harmonize with it all.

She said: "Well, I think I have succeeded. In a few moments she will be
passing. I do not know her name; she rides a big roan. She is very
beautiful, Mr. Gatewood."

He said: "I am perfectly certain we shall find her. I doubted it until
now. But now I know."

"Oh-h, but I _may_ be wrong," she protested.

"No; you cannot be."

She looked up at him.

"You can have no idea how happy you make me," he said unsteadily.

"But--I--but I may be all wrong--dreadfully wrong!"

"Y-es; you may be, but I shall not be. For do you know that I have
already seen her in the Park?"

"When?" she demanded incredulously, then turned in the saddle,
repeating: "Where? Did she pass? How perfectly stupid of me! And _was_
she the--the right one?"

"She _is_ the right one. . . . Don't turn: I have seen her. Ride on: I
want to say something--if I can."

"No, no," she insisted. "I must know whether I was right--"

"You _are_ right--but you don't know it yet. . . . Oh, very well, then;
we'll turn if you insist." And he wheeled his mount as she did, riding
at her bridle again.

"How can you take it so coolly--so indifferently?" she said. "Where has
that woman--where has she gone? . . . Never mind; she must turn and pass
us sooner or later, for she lives uptown. _What_ are you laughing at,
Mr. Gatewood?"--in annoyed surprise.

"I am laughing at myself. Oh, I'm so many kinds of a fool--you can't
think how many, and it's no use!"

She stared, astonished; he shook his head.

"No, you don't understand yet. But you will. Listen to me: this very
beautiful lady you have discovered is nothing to me!"

"Nothing--to you!" she faltered. Two pink spots of indignation burned in
her cheeks. "How--how dare you say that!--after all that has been
done--all that you have said. You said you loved her; you _did_ say
so--to _me_!"

"I don't love her now."

"But you did!" Tears of pure vexation started; she faced him, eye to
eye, thoroughly incensed.

"What sort of man are you?" she said under her breath. "Your friend Mr.
Kerns is wrong. You are not worth saving from yourself."

"Kerns!" he repeated, angry and amazed. "What the deuce has Kerns to do
with this affair?"

She stared, then, realizing her indiscretion, bit her lip, and spurred
forward. But he put his horse to a gallop, and they pounded along in
silence. In a little while she drew bridle and looked around coldly,
grave with displeasure.

"Mr. Kerns came to us before you did. He said you would probably come,
and he begged us to strain every effort in your behalf, because, he
said, your happiness absolutely depended upon our finding for you the
woman you were seeking. . . . And I tried--very hard--and now she's
found. You admit that--and _now_ you say--"

"I say that one of these balmy summer days I'll assassinate Tommy
Kerns!" broke in Gatewood. "What on earth possessed that prince of
butters-in to go to Mr. Keen?"

"To save you from yourself!" retorted the girl in a low, exasperated
voice. "He did not say what threatened you; he is a good friend for a
man to have. But we soon found out what you were--a man well born, well
bred, full of brilliant possibility, who was slowly becoming an idle,
cynical, self-centered egoist--a man who, lacking the lash of need or
the spur of ambition, was degenerating through the sheer uselessness and
inanity of his life. And, oh, the pity of it! For Mr. Keen and I have
taken a--a curiously personal interest in you--in your case. I say, the
pity of it!"

Astounded, dumb under her stinging words, he rode beside her through the
brilliant sunshine, wheeled mechanically as she turned her horse, and
rode north again.

"And now--_now_!" she said passionately, "you turn on the woman you
loved! Oh, you are not worth it!"

"You are quite right," he said, turning very white under her scorn.
"Almost all you have said is true enough, I fancy. I amount to nothing;
I am idle, cynical, selfish. The emptiness of such a life requires a
stimulant; even a fool abhors a vacuum. So I drink--not so very much
yet--but more than I realize. And it is close enough to a habit to worry
me. . . . Yes, almost all you say is true; Kerns knows it; I know
it--now that you have told me. You see, he couldn't tell me, because I
should not have believed him. But I believe you--all you say, except one
thing. And that is only a glimmer of decency left in me--not that I make
any merit of it. No, it is merely instinctive. For I have _not_ turned
on the woman I loved."

Her face was pale as her level eyes met him:

"You said she was nothing to you. . . . Look there! Do you see her? Do
you see?"

Her voice broke nervously as he swung around to stare at a rider bearing
down at a gallop--a woman on a big roan, tearing along through the
spring sunshine, passing them with wind-flushed cheeks and dark,
incurious eyes, while her powerful horse carried her on, away through
the quivering light and shadow of the woodland vista.

"Is _that_ the person?"

"Y-es," she faltered. "Was I wrong?"

"Quite wrong, Miss Southerland."

"But--but you said you had seen her here this morning!"

"Yes, I have."

"Did you speak to her before you met me?"

"No--not before I met you."

"Then you have not spoken to her. Is she still here in the Park?"

"Yes, she is still here."

The girl turned on him excitedly: "Do you mean to say that you will not
speak to her?"

"I had rather not--"

"And your happiness depends on your speaking?"

"Yes."

"Then it is cowardly not to speak."

"Oh, yes, it is cowardly. . . . If you wish me to speak to her I will.
Shall I?"

"Yes . . . Show her to me."

"And you think that such a man as I am has a right to speak of love to
her?"

"I--we believe it will be your salvation. Mr. Kerns says you must marry
her to be happy. Mr. Keen told me yesterday that it only needed a word
from the right woman to put you on your mettle. . . . And--and that is
my opinion."

"Then in charity say that word!" he breathed, bending toward her. "Can't
you see? Can't you understand? Don't you know that from the moment I
looked into your eyes I loved you?"

"How--how dare you!" she stammered, crimsoning.

"God knows," he said wistfully. "I am a coward. I don't know how I
dared. Good-by. . . ."

He walked his horse a little way, then launched him into a gallop,
tearing on and on, sun, wind, trees swimming, whirling like a vision,
hearing nothing, feeling nothing, save the leaden pounding of his pulse
and the breathless, terrible tightening in his throat.

When he cleared his eyes and looked around he was quite alone, his horse
walking under the trees and breathing heavily.

At first he laughed, and the laugh was not pleasant. Then he said aloud:
"It is worth having lived for, after all!"--and was silent. And again:
"I could expect nothing; she was perfectly right to side-step a fool.
. . . And _such_ a fool!"

The distant gallop of a horse, dulled on the soft soil, but coming
nearer, could not arouse him from the bitter depths he had sunk in; not
even when the sound ceased beside him, and horse snorted recognition to
horse. It was only when a light touch rested on his arm that he looked
up heavily, caught his breath.

"Where is the other--woman?" she gasped.

"There never was any other."

"You said--"

"I said I loved my ideal. I did not know she existed--until I saw you."

"Then--then we were searching for--"

"A vision. But it was your face that haunted me. . . . And I am not
worth it, as you say. And I know it, . . . for you have opened my eyes."

He drew bridle, forcing a laugh. "I cut a sorry figure in your life; be
patient; I am going out of it now." And he swung his horse. At the same
moment she did the same, making a demi-tour and meeting him halfway,
confronting him.

"Do you--you mean to ride out of my life without a word?" she asked
unsteadily.

"Good-by." He offered his hand, stirring his horse forward; she leaned
lightly over and laid both hands in his. Then, her face surging in
color, she lifted her beautiful dark eyes to his as the horses
approached, nearer, nearer, until, as they passed, flank brushing flank,
her eyes fell, then closed as she swayed toward him, and clung, her
young lips crushed to his.

There was nobody to witness it except the birds and squirrels--nobody
but a distant mounted policeman, who almost fainted away in his saddle.

Oh, it was awful, awful! Apparently she had been kissed speechless, for
she said nothing. The man fool did all the talking, incoherently enough,
but evidently satisfactory to her, judging from the way she looked at
him, and blushed and blushed, and touched her eyes with a bit of cambric
at intervals.

All the policeman heard as they passed him was; "I'm going to give you
this horse, and Kerns is to give us our silver; and what do you think,
my darling?"

"W-what?"

But they had already passed out of earshot; and in a few moments the
shady, sun-flecked bridle path was deserted again save for the birds and
squirrels, and a single mounted policeman, rigid, wild eyed, twisting
his mustache and breathing hard.




CHAPTER VII


The news of Gatewood's fate filled Kerns with a pleasure bordering upon
melancholy. It was his work; he had done it; it was good for Gatewood
too--time for him to stop his irresponsible cruise through life, lower
sail, heave to, set his signals, and turn over matters to this charming
pilot.

And now they would come into port together and anchor somewhere east of
Fifth Avenue--which, Kerns reflected, was far more proper a place for
Gatewood than somewhere east of Suez, where young men so often sail.

And yet, and yet there was something melancholy in the pleasure he
experienced. Gatewood was practically lost to him. He knew what might be
expected from engaged men and newly married men. Gatewood's club life
was ended--for a while; and there was no other man with whom he cared to
embark for those brightly lighted harbors twinkling east of Suez across
the metropolitan wastes.

"It's very generous of me to get him married," he said frequently to
himself, rather sadly. "I did it pretty well, too. It only shows that
women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and
finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such
matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ace and a
guarded knave."

He was pleased with himself. He followed Gatewood about explaining how
good he had been to him. An enthusiasm for marrying off his friends
began to germinate within him; he tried it on Darrell, on Barnes, on
Yates, but was turned down and severely stung.

Then one day Harren of the Philippine Scouts turned up at the club, and
they held a determined reunion until daylight, and they told each other
all about it all and what upper-cuts life had handed out to them since
the troopship sailed.

And after the rosy glow had deepened to a more gorgeous hue in the room,
and the electric lights had turned into silver pinwheels; and after they
had told each other the story of their lives, and the last siphon fizzed
impotently when urged beyond its capacity, Kerns arose and extended his
hand, and Harren took it. And they executed a song resembling "Auld Lang
Syne."

"Ole man," said Kerns reproachfully, "there's one thing you have been
deuced careful _not_ to mention, and that is about what happened to you
three years ago--"

"Steady!" said Harren; "there is nothing to tell, Tommy."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I never saw her again. I never shall."

Kerns looked long and unsteadily upon his friend; then very gravely
fumbled in his pocket and drew forth the business card of Westrel Keen,
Tracer of Lost Persons.

"That," he said, "will be about all." And he bestowed the card upon
Harren with magnificent condescension.

And about five o'clock the following afternoon Harren found the card
among various effects of his, scattered over his dresser.

It took him several days to make up his mind to pay any attention to the
card or the suggestion it contained. He scarcely considered it seriously
even when, passing along Fifth Avenue one sunny afternoon, he chanced to
glance up and see the sign

                        KEEN & CO.
                  TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS

staring him in the face.

He continued his stroll, but that evening, upon mere impulse, he sat
down and wrote a letter to Mr. Keen.

The next morning's mail brought a reply and an appointment for an
interview on Wednesday week. Harren tossed the letter aside, satisfied
to let the matter go, because his leave expired on Tuesday, and the
appointment was impossible.

On Sunday, however, the melancholy of the deserted club affected his
spirits. A curious desire to see this Tracer of Lost Persons seized him
with a persistence unaccountable. He slept poorly, haunted with visions.

On Monday he went to see Mr. Keen. It could do no harm; it was too late
to do either harm or good, for his leave expired the next day at noon.

The business of Keen & Co., Tracers of Lost Persons, had grown to
enormous proportions; appointments for a personal interview with Mr.
Keen were now made a week in advance, so when young Harren sent in his
card, the gayly liveried negro servant came back presently, threading
his way through the waiting throng with pomp and circumstance, and
returned the card to Harren with the date of appointment rewritten in
ink across the top. The day named was Wednesday. On Tuesday Harren's
leave expired.

"That won't do," said the young man brusquely; "I must see Mr. Keen
to-day. I wrote last week for an appointment."

The liveried darky was polite but obdurate.

"Dis here am de 'pintment, suh," he explained persuasively.

"But I want to see Mr. Keen at once," insisted Harren.

"Hit ain't no use, suh," said the darky respectfully; "dey's mi'ions an'
mi'ions ob gemmen jess a-settin' roun' an' waitin' foh Mistuh Keen. In
dis here perfeshion, suh, de fustest gemman dat has a 'pintment is de
fustest gemman dat kin see Mistuh Keen. You is a military gemman
yohse'f, Cap'm Harren, an' you is aware dat precedence am de rigger."

The bronzed young man smiled, glanced at the date of appointment written
on his card, which also bore his own name followed by the letters
U.S.A., then his amused gray eyes darkened and he glanced leisurely
around the room, where a dozen or more assorted people sat waiting their
turns to interview Mr. Keen: all sorts and conditions of people--smartly
gowned women, an anxious-browed business man or two, a fat German truck
driver, his greasy cap on his knees, a surly policeman, and an old
Irishwoman, wearing a shawl and an ancient straw bonnet. Harren's eyes
reverted to the darky.

"You will explain to Mr. Keen," he said, "that I am an army officer on
leave, and that I am obliged to start for Manila to-morrow. This is my
excuse for asking an immediate interview; and if it's not a good enough
excuse I must cancel this appointment, that is all."

The darky stood, irresolute, inclined to argue, but something in the
steel-gray eyes of the man set him in involuntary motion, and he went
away once more with the young man's message. Harren turned and walked
back to his seat. The old woman with the faded shawl was explaining
volubly to a handsomely gowned woman beside her that she was looking for
her boy, Danny; that her name was Mrs. Regan, and that she washed for
the aristocracy of Hunter's Point at a liberal price per dozen, using no
deleterious substances in the suds as Heaven was her witness.

The German truck driver, moved by this confidence, was stirred to begin
an endless account of his domestic misfortunes, and old Mrs. Regan,
becoming impatient, had already begun to interrupt with an account of
Regan's recent hoisting on the wings of a premature petard, when the
dark servant reappeared.

"Mistuh Keen will receive you, suh," he whispered, leading the way into
a large room where dozens of attractive young girls sat very busily
engaged at typewriting machines. Door after door they passed, all
numbered on the ground-glass panes, then swung to the right, where the
darky bowed him into a big, handsomely furnished room flooded with the
morning sun. A tall, gray man, faultlessly dressed in a gray frock suit
and wearing white spats, turned from the breezy, open window to inspect
him; the lean, well groomed, rather lank type of gentleman suggesting a
retired colonel of cavalry; unmistakably well bred from the ends of his
drooping gray mustache to the last button on his immaculate spats.

"Captain Harren?" he said pleasantly.

"Mr. Keen?"

They bowed. Young Harren drew from his pocket a card. It was the
business card of Keen & Co., and, glancing up at Mr. Keen, he read it
aloud, carefully:

     KEEN & CO.

     TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS

     Keen & Co. are prepared to locate the whereabouts of anybody on
     earth. No charges will be made unless the person searched for is
     found.

     _Blanks on Application._

     WESTREL KEEN, Manager.

Harren raised his clear, gray eyes. "I assume this statement to be
correct, Mr. Keen?"

"You may safely assume so," said Mr. Keen, smiling.

"Does this statement include _all_ that you are prepared to undertake?"

The Tracer of Lost Persons inspected him coolly. "What more is there,
Captain Harren? I undertake to find lost people. I even undertake to
find the undiscovered ideals of young people who have failed to meet
them. What further field would you suggest?" Harren glanced at the card
which he held in his gloved hand; then, very slowly, he re-read, "the
whereabouts of anybody _on earth_," accenting the last two words
deliberately as he encountered Keen's piercing gaze again.

"Well?" asked Mr. Keen laughingly, "is not that sufficient? Our clients
could scarcely expect us to invade heaven in our search for the
vanished."

"There are other regions," said Harren.

"_Ex_actly. Sit down, sir. There is a row of bookcases for your
amusement. Please help yourself while I clear decks for action."

Harren stood fingering the card, his gray eyes lost in retrospection;
then he sauntered over to the bookcases, scanning the titles. The
Searcher for Lost Persons studied him for a moment or two, turned, and
began to pace the room. After a moment or two he touched a bell. A
sweet-faced young girl entered; she was gowned in black and wore a white
collar, and cuffs turned back over her hands.

"Take this memorandum," he said. The girl picked up a pencil and pad,
and Mr. Keen, still pacing the room, dictated in a quiet voice as he
walked to and fro:

"Mrs. Regan's Danny is doing six months in Butte, Montana. Break it to
her as mercifully as possible. He is a bad one. We make no charge. The
truck driver, Becker, can find his wife at her mother's house, Leonia,
New Jersey. Tell him to be less pig-headed or she'll go for good some
day. Ten dollars. Mrs. M., No. 36001, can find her missing butler in
service at 79 Vine Street, Hartford, Connecticut. She may notify the
police whenever she wishes. His portrait is No. 170529, Rogues' Gallery.
Five hundred dollars. Miss K. (No. 3679) may send her letter, care of
Cisneros & Co., Rio, where the person she is seeking has gone into the
coffee business. If she decides that she really does love him, he'll
come back fast enough. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Mr. W. (No. 3620)
must go to the morgue for further information. His repentance is too
late; but he can see that there is a decent burial. The charge: one
thousand dollars to the Florence Mission. You may add that we possess
his full record."

The Tracer paused and waited for the stenographer to finish. When she
looked up: "Who else is waiting?" he asked.

The girl read over the initials and numbers.

"Tell that policeman that Kid Conroy sails on the _Carania_ to-morrow.
Fifty dollars. There is nothing definite in the other cases. Report
progress and send out a general alarm for the cashier inquired for by
No. 3608. You will find details in vol. xxxix under B."

"Is that all, Mr. Keen?"

"Yes. I'm going to be very busy with"--turning slowly toward
Harren--"with Captain Harren, of the Philippine Scouts, until
to-morrow--a very complicated case, Miss Borrow, involving cipher codes
and photography--"




CHAPTER VIII


Harren started, then walked slowly to the center of the room as the
pretty stenographer passed out with a curious level glance at him.

"Why do you say that photography plays a part in my case?" he asked.

"Doesn't it?"

"Yes. But how--"

"Oh, I only guessed it," said Keen with a smile. "I made another guess
that your case involved a cipher code. Does it?"

"Y-es," said the young man, astonished, "but I don't see--"

"It also involves the occult," observed Keen calmly. "We may need Miss
Borrow to help us."

Almost staggered, Harren stared at the Tracer out of his astonished gray
eyes until that gentleman laughed outright and seated himself, motioning
Harren to do likewise.

"Don't be surprised, Captain Harren," he said. "I suppose you have no
conception of our business, no realization of its scope--its network of
information bureaus all over the civilized world, its myriad sources of
information, the immensity of its delicate machinery, the endless data
and the infinitesimal details we have at our command. You, of course,
have no idea of the number of people of every sort and condition who are
in our employ, of the ceaseless yet inoffensive surveillance we
maintain. For example, when your letter came last week I called up the
person who has charge of the army list. There you were, Kenneth Harren,
Captain Philippine Scouts, with the date of your graduation from West
Point. Then I called up a certain department devoted to personal detail,
and in five minutes I knew your entire history. I then touched another
electric button, and in a minute I had before me the date of your
arrival in New York, your present address, and"--he looked up
quizzically at Harren--"and several items of general information, such
as your peculiar use of your camera, and the list of books on Psychical
Phenomena and Cryptograms which you have been buying--"

Harren flushed up. "Do you mean to say that I have been spied upon, Mr.
Keen?"

"No more than anybody else who comes to us as a client. There was
nothing offensive in the surveillance." He shrugged his shoulders and
made a deprecating gesture. "Ours is a business, my dear sir, like any
other. We, of course, are obliged to know about people who call on us.
Last week you wrote me, and I immediately set every wheel in motion; in
other words, I had you under observation from the day I received your
letter to this very moment."

"You learned much concerning me?" asked Harren quietly.

"_Ex_actly, my dear sir."

"But," continued Harren with a touch of malice, "you didn't learn that
my leave is up to-morrow, did you?"

"Yes, I learned that, too."

"Then why did you give me an appointment for the day after to-morrow?"
demanded the young man bluntly.

The Tracer looked him squarely in the eye. "Your leave is to be
extended," he said.

"What?"

"_Ex_actly. It has been extended one week."

"How do you know that?"

"You applied for extension, did you not?"

"Yes," said Harren, turning red, "but I don't see how you knew that I--"

"By cable?"

"Y-yes."

"There's a cablegram in your rooms at this very moment," said the
Tracer carelessly. "You have the extension you desired. And now, Captain
Harren," with a singularly pleasant smile, "what can I do to help you to
a pursuit of that true happiness which is guaranteed for all good
citizens under our Constitution?"

Captain Harren crossed his long legs, dropping one knee over the other,
and deliberately surveyed his interrogator.

"I really have no right to come to you," he said slowly. "Your
prospectus distinctly states that Keen & Co. undertake to find _live_
people, and I don't know whether the person I am seeking is alive
or--or--"

His steady voice faltered; the Tracer watched him curiously.

"Of course, that is important," he said. "If she _is_ dead--"

"_She_!"

"Didn't you say 'she,' Captain?"

"No, I did not."

"I beg your pardon, then, for anticipating you," said the Tracer
carelessly.

"Anticipating? _How_ do you know it is not a man I am in search of?"
demanded Harren.

"Captain Harren, you are unmarried and have no son; you have no father,
no brother, no sister. Therefore I infer--several things--for example,
that you are in love."

"I? In love?"

"Desperately, Captain."

"Your inferences seem to satisfy you, at least," said Harren almost
sullenly, "but they don't satisfy me--clever as they appear to be."

"_Ex_actly. Then you are _not_ in love?"

"I don't know whether I am or not."

"I do," said the Tracer of Lost Persons.

"Then you know more than I," retorted Harren sharply.

"But that is my business--to know more than you do," returned Mr. Keen
patiently. "Else why are you here to consult me?" And as Harren made no
reply: "I have seen thousands and thousands of people in love. I have
reduced the superficial muscular phenomena and facial symptomatic aspect
of such people to an exact science founded upon a schedule approximating
the Bertillon system of records. And," he added, smiling, "out of the
twenty-seven known vocal variations your voice betrays twenty-five
unmistakable symptoms; and out of the sixteen reflex muscular symptoms
your face has furnished six, your hands three, your limbs and feet six.
Then there are other superficial symptoms--"

"Good heavens!" broke in Harren; "how can you prove a man to be in love
when he himself doesn't know whether he is or not? If a man isn't in
love no Bertillon system can make him so; and if a man doesn't know
whether or not he is in love, who can tell him the truth?"

"I can," said the Tracer calmly.

"What! When I tell you I myself don't know?"

"_That_," said the Tracer, smiling, "is the final and convincing
symptom. _You_ don't know. _I_ know because you _don't_ know. That is
the easiest way to be sure that you are in love, Captain Harren, because
you always are when you are not sure. You'd know if you were _not_ in
love. Now, my dear sir, you may lay your case confidently before me."

Harren, unconvinced, sat frowning and biting his lip and twisting his
short, crisp mustache which the tropical sun had turned straw color and
curly.

"I feel like a fool to tell you," he said. "I'm not an imaginative man,
Mr. Keen; I'm not fanciful, not sentimental. I'm perfectly healthy,
perfectly normal--a very busy man in my profession, with no time and no
inclination to fall in love."

"Just the sort of man who does it," commented Keen. "Continue."

Harren fidgeted about in his chair, looked out of the window, squinted
at the ceiling, then straightened up, folding his arms with sudden
determination.

"I'd rather be boloed than tell you," he said. "Perhaps, after all, I
_am_ a lunatic; perhaps I've had a touch of the Luzon sun and don't know
it."

"I'll be the judge," said the Tracer, smiling.

"Very well, sir. Then I'll begin by telling you that I've seen a ghost."

"There are such things," observed Keen quietly.

"Oh, I don't mean one of those fabled sheeted creatures that float about
at night; I mean a phantom--a real phantom--in the sunlight--standing
before my very eyes in broad day! . . . Now do you feel inclined to go
on with my case, Mr. Keen?"

"Certainly," replied the Tracer gravely. "Please continue, Captain
Harren."

"All right, then. Here's the beginning of it: Three years ago, here in
New York, drifting along Fifth Avenue with the crowd, I looked up to
encounter the most wonderful pair of eyes that I ever beheld--that any
living man ever beheld! The most--wonderfully--beautiful--"

He sat so long immersed in retrospection that the Tracer said: "I am
listening, Captain," and the Captain woke up with a start.

"What was I saying? How far had I proceeded?"

"Only to the eyes."

"Oh, I see! The eyes were dark, sir, dark and lovely beyond any power of
description. The hair was also dark--very soft and thick and--er--wavy
and dark. The face was extremely youthful, and ornamental to the
uttermost verges of a beauty so exquisite that, were I to attempt to
formulate for you its individual attractions, I should, I fear,
transgress the strictly rigid bounds of that reticence which becomes a
gentleman in complete possession of his senses."

"_Ex_actly," mused the Tracer.

"Also," continued Captain Harren, with growing animation, "to attempt to
describe her figure would be utterly useless, because I am a practical
man and not a poet, nor do I read poetry or indulge in futile novels or
romances of any description. Therefore I can only add that it was a
figure, a poise, absolutely faultless, youthful, beautiful, erect,
wholesome, gracious, graceful, charmingly buoyant and--well, I cannot
describe her figure, and I shall not try."

"_Ex_actly; don't try."

"No," said Harren mournfully, "it is useless"; and he relapsed into
enchanted retrospection.

"Who was she?" asked Mr. Keen softly.

"I don't know."

"You never again saw her?"

"Mr. Keen, I--I am not ill-bred, but I simply could not help following
her. She was so b-b-beautiful that it hurt; and I only wanted to look at
her; I didn't mind being hurt. So I walked on and on, and sometimes I'd
pass her and sometimes I'd let her pass me, and when she wasn't looking
I'd look--not offensively, but just because I _couldn't_ help it. And
all the time my senses were humming like a top and my heart kept jumping
to get into my throat, and I hadn't a notion where I was going or what
time it was or what day of the week. She didn't see me; she didn't dream
that I was looking at her; she didn't know me from any of the thousand
silk-hatted, frock-coated men who passed and repassed her on Fifth
Avenue. And when she went into St. Berold's Church, I went, too, and I
stood where I could see her and where she couldn't see me. It was like a
touch of the Luzon sun, Mr. Keen. And then she came out and got into a
Fifth Avenue stage, and I got in, too. And whenever she looked away I
looked at her--without the slightest offense, Mr. Keen, until, once, she
caught my eye--"

He passed an unsteady hand over his forehead.

"For a moment we looked full at one another," he continued. "I got red,
sir; I felt it, and I couldn't look away. And when I turned color like a
blooming beet, she began to turn pink like a rosebud, and she looked
full into my eyes with such a wonderful purity, such exquisite
innocence, that I--I never felt so near--er--heaven in my life! No, sir,
not even when they ambushed us at Manoa Wells--but that's another
thing--only it is part of this business."

He tightened his clasped hands over his knee until the knuckles
whitened.

"_That's_ my story, Mr. Keen," he said crisply.

"All of it?"

Harren looked at the floor, then at Keen: "No, not all. You'll think me
a lunatic if I tell you all."

"Oh, you saw her again?"

"N-never! That is--"

"Never?"

"Not in--in the flesh."

"Oh, in dreams?"

Harren stirred uneasily. "I don't know what you call them. I have seen
her since--in the sunlight, in the open, in my quarters in Manila,
standing there perfectly distinct, looking at me with such strange,
beautiful eyes--"

"Go on," said the Tracer, nodding.

"What else is there to say?" muttered Harren.

"You saw her--or a phantom which resembled her. Did she speak?"

"No."

"Did you speak to her?"

"N-no. Once I held out my--my arms."

"What happened?"

"She wasn't there," said Harren simply.

"She vanished?"

"No--I don't know. I--I didn't see her any more."

"Didn't she fade?"

"No. I can't explain. She--there was only myself in the room."

"How many times has she appeared to you?"

"A great many times."

"In your room?"

"Yes. And in the road under a vertical sun; in the forest, in the paddy
fields. I have seen her passing through the hallway of a friend's
house--turning on the stair to look back at me! I saw her standing just
back of the firing-line at Manoa Wells when we were preparing to rush
the forts, and it scared me so that I jumped forward to draw her back.
But--she wasn't there, Mr. Keen. . . .

"On the transport she stood facing me on deck one moonlit evening for
five minutes. I saw her in 'Frisco; she sat in the Pullman twice between
Denver and this city. Twice in my room at the Vice-Regent she has sat
opposite me at midday, so clear, so beautiful, so real that--that I
could scarcely believe she was only a--a--" He hesitated.

"The apparition of her own subconscious self," said the Tracer quietly.
"Science has been forced to admit such things, and, as you know, we are
on the verge of understanding the alphabet of some of the unknown forces
which we must some day reckon with."

Harren, tense, a trifle pale, gazed at him earnestly.

"Do _you_ believe in such things?"

"How can I avoid believing?" said the Tracer. "Every day, in my
profession, we have proof of the existence of forces for which we have
as yet no explanation--or, at best, a very crude one. I have had case
after case of premonition; case after case of dual and even multiple
personality; case after case where apparitions played a vital part in
the plot which was brought to me to investigate. I'll tell you this,
Captain: I, personally, never saw an apparition, never was obsessed by
premonitions, never received any communications from the outer void. But
I have had to do with those who undoubtedly did. Therefore I listen with
all seriousness and respect to what you tell me."

"Suppose," said Harren, growing suddenly red, "that I should tell you I
have succeeded in photographing this phantom."

The Tracer sat silent. He was astounded, but, he did not betray it.

"You have that photograph, Captain Harren?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"In my rooms."

"You wish me to see it?"

Harren hesitated. "I--there is--seems to be--something almost sacred to
me in that photograph. . . . You understand me, do you not? Yet, if it
will help you in finding her--"

"Oh," said the Tracer in guileless astonishment, "you desire to find
this young lady. Why?"

Harren stared. "Why? Why do I want to find her? Man, I--I can't live
without her!"

"I thought you were not certain whether you really could be in love."

The hot color in the Captain's bronzed cheeks mounted to his hair.

"_Ex_actly," purred the Tracer, looking out of the window. "Suppose we
walk around to your rooms after luncheon. Shall we?"

Harren picked up his hat and gloves, hesitating, lingering on the
threshold. "You _don't_ think she is--a--dead?" he asked unsteadily.

"No," said Mr. Keen, "I don't."

"Because," said Harren wistfully, "her apparition is so superbly healthy
and--and glowing with youth and life--"

"That is probably what sent it half the world over to confront you,"
said the Tracer gravely; "youth and life aglow with spiritual health. I
think, Captain, that she has been seeing you, too, during these three
years, but probably only in her dreams--memories of your encounters with
her subconscious self floating over continents and oceans in a quest of
which her waking intelligence is innocently unaware."

The Captain colored like a schoolboy, lingering at the door, hat in
hand. Then he straightened up to the full height of his slim but
powerful figure.

"At three?" he inquired bluntly.

"At three o'clock in your room, Hotel Vice-Regent. Good morning,
Captain."

"Good morning," said Harren dreamily, and walked away, head bent, gray
eyes lost in retrospection, and on his lean, bronzed, attractive face an
afterglow of color wholly becoming.




CHAPTER IX


When the Tracer of Lost Persons entered Captain Harren's room at the
Hotel Vice-Regent that afternoon he found the young man standing at a
center table, pencil in hand, studying a sheet of paper which was
covered with letters and figures.

The two men eyed one another in silence for a moment, then Harren
pointed grimly to the confusion of letters and figures covering dozens
of scattered sheets lying on the table.

"That's part of my madness," he said with a short laugh. "Can you make
anything of such lunatic work?"

The Tracer picked up a sheet of paper covered with letters of the
alphabet and Roman and Arabic numerals. He dropped it presently and
picked up another comparatively blank sheet, on which were the following
figures:

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]

He studied it for a while, then glanced interrogatively at Harren.

"It's nothing," said Harren. "I've been groping for three years--but
it's no use. That's lunatics' work." He wheeled squarely on his heels,
looking straight at the Tracer. "_Do_ you think I've had a touch of the
sun?"

"No," said Mr. Keen, drawing a chair to the table. "Saner men than you
or I have spent a lifetime over this so-called Seal of Solomon." He laid
his finger on the two symbols--

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]

Then, looking across the table at Harren: "What," he asked, "has the
Seal of Solomon to do with your case?"

"_She_--" muttered Harren, and fell silent.

The Tracer waited; Harren said nothing.

"Where is the photograph?"

Harren unlocked a drawer in the table, hesitated, looked strangely at
the Tracer.

"Mr. Keen," he said, "there is nothing on earth I hold more sacred than
this. There is only one thing in the world that could justify me in
showing it to a living soul--my--my desire to find--her--"

"No," said Keen coolly, "that is not enough to justify you--the mere
desire to find the living original of this apparition. Nothing could
justify your showing it unless you love her."

Harren held the picture tightly, staring full at the Tracer. A dull
flush mounted to his forehead, and very slowly he laid the picture
before the Tracer of Lost Persons.

Minute after minute sped while the Tracer bent above the photograph, his
finely modeled features absolutely devoid of expression. Harren had
drawn his chair beside him, and now sat leaning forward, bronzed cheek
resting in his hand, staring fixedly at the picture.

"When was this--this photograph taken?" asked the Tracer quietly.

"The day after I arrived in New York. I was here, alone, smoking my pipe
and glancing over the evening paper just before dressing for dinner. It
was growing rather dark in the room; I had not turned on the electric
light. My camera lay on the table--there it is!--that kodak. I had taken
a few snapshots on shipboard; there was one film left."

He leaned more heavily on his elbow, eyes fixed upon the picture.

"It was almost dark," he repeated. "I laid aside the evening paper and
stood up, thinking about dressing for dinner, when my eyes happened to
fall on the camera. It occurred to me that I might as well unload it,
let the unused film go, and send the roll to be developed and printed;
and I picked up the camera--"

"Yes," said the Tracer softly.

"I picked it up and was starting toward the window where there remained
enough daylight to see by--"

The Tracer nodded gently.

"Then I saw _her_!" said Harren under his breath.

"Where?"

"There--standing by that window. You can see the window and curtain in
the photograph."

The Tracer gazed intently at the picture.

"She looked at me," said Harren, steadying his voice. "She was as real
as you are, and she stood there, smiling faintly, her dark, lovely eyes
meeting mine."

"Did you speak?"

"No."

"How long did she remain there?"

"I don't know--time seemed to stop--the world--everything grew still.
. . . Then, little by little, something began to stir under my stunned
senses--that germ of misgiving, that dreadful doubt of my own sanity.
. . . I scarcely knew what I was doing when I took the photograph;
besides, it had grown quite dark, and I could scarcely see her." He drew
himself erect with a nervous movement. "How on earth could I have
obtained that photograph of her in the darkness?" he demanded.

"N-rays," said the Tracer coolly. "It has been done in France."

"Yes, from living people, but--"

"What the N-ray is in living organisms, we must call, for lack of a
better term, the subaura in the phantom."

They bent over the photograph together. Presently the Tracer said: "She
is very, very beautiful?"

Harren's dry lips unclosed, but he uttered no sound.

"She is beautiful, is she not?" repeated the Tracer, turning to look at
the young man.

"Can you not see she is?" he asked impatiently.

"No," said the Tracer.

Harren stared at him.

"Captain Harren," continued the Tracer, "I can see nothing upon this bit
of paper that resembles in the remotest degree a human face or figure."

Harren turned white.

"Not that I doubt that _you_ can see it," pursued the Tracer calmly. "I
simply repeat that I see absolutely nothing on this paper except a part
of a curtain, a window pane, and--and--"

"What! for God's sake!" cried Harren hoarsely.

"I don't know yet. Wait; let me study it."

"Can you not see her face, her eyes? _Don't_ you see that exquisite slim
figure standing there by the curtain?" demanded Harren, laying his
shaking finger on the photograph. "Why, man, it is as clear, as clean
cut, as distinct as though the picture had been taken in sunlight! Do
you mean to say that there is nothing there--that I am crazy?"

"No. Wait."

"Wait! How can I wait when you sit staring at her picture and telling me
that you can't see it, but that it is doubtless there? Are you deceiving
me, Mr. Keen? Are you trying to humor me, trying to be kind to me,
knowing all the while that I'm crazy--"

"Wait, man! You are no more crazy than I am. I tell you that I can see
something on the window pane--"

He suddenly sprang up and walked to the window, leaning close and
examining the glass. Harren followed and laid his hand lightly over the
pane.

"Do you see any marks on the glass?" demanded Keen.

Harren shook his head.

"Have you a magnifying glass?" asked the Tracer.

Harren pointed back to the table, and they returned to the photograph,
the Tracer bending over it and examining it through the glass.

"All I see," he said, still studying the photograph, "is a corner of a
curtain and a window on which certain figures seem to have been cut.
. . . Look, Captain Harren, can you see them?"

"I see some marks--some squares."

"You can't see anything written on that pane--as though cut by a
diamond?"

"Nothing distinct."

"But you see _her_?"

"Perfectly."

"In minute detail?"

"Yes."

The Tracer thought a moment: "Does she wear a ring?"

"Yes; can't you see?"

"Draw it for me."

They seated themselves side by side, and Harren drew a rough sketch of
the ring which he insisted was so plainly visible on her hand:

[Illustration: Ring with an X]

"Oh," observed the Tracer, "she wears the Seal of Solomon on her ring."

Harren looked up at him. "That symbol has haunted me persistently for
three years," he said. "I have found it everywhere--on articles that I
buy, on house furniture, on the belts of dead ladrones, on the hilts of
creeses, on the funnels of steamers, on the headstalls of horses. If
they put a laundry mark on my linen it's certain to be this! If I buy a
box of matches the sign is on it. Why, I've even seen it on the
brilliant wings of tropical insects. It's got on my nerves. I dream
about it."

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

"And you buy books about it and try to work out its mystical meaning?"
suggested the Tracer, smiling.

But Harren's gray eyes were serious. He said: "_She_ never comes to me
without that symbol somewhere about her. . . . I told you she never
spoke to me. That is true; yet once, in a vivid dream of her, she did
speak. I--I was almost ashamed to tell you of that."

"Tell me."

"A--a dream? Do you wish to know what I dreamed?"

"Yes--if it was a dream."

"It was. I was asleep on the deck of the _Mindinao_, dead tired after a
fruitless hike. I dreamed she came toward me through a young woodland
all lighted by the sun, and in her hands she held masses of that wild
flower we call Solomon's Seal. And she said--in the voice I know must be
like hers: 'If you could only read! If you would only understand the
message I send you! It is everywhere on earth for you to read, if you
only would!'

"I said: 'Is the message in the seal? Is that the key to it?'

"She nodded, laughing, burying her face in the flowers, and said:

"'Perhaps I can write it more plainly for you some day; I will try very,
very hard.'

"And after that she went away--not swiftly--for I saw her at moments far
away in the woods; but I must have confused her with the glimmering
shafts of sunlight, and in a little while the woodland grew dark and I
woke with the racket of a Colt's automatic in my ears."

He passed his sun-bronzed hand over his face, hesitated, then leaned
over the photograph once more, which the Tracer was studying intently
through the magnifying glass.

"There is something on that window in the photograph which I'm going to
copy," he said. "Please shove a pad and pencil toward me."

Still examining the photograph through the glass which he held in his
right hand, Mr. Keen picked up the pencil and, feeling for the pad,
began very slowly to form the following series of symbols:

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]

"What on earth are you doing?" muttered Captain Harren, twisting his
short mustache in perplexity.

"I am copying what I see through this magnifying glass written on the
window pane in the photograph," said the Tracer calmly. "Can't you see
those marks?"

"I--I do now; I never noticed them before particularly--only that there
were scratches there."

When at length the Tracer had finished his work he sat, chin on hand,
examining it in silence. Presently he turned toward Harren, smiling.

"Well?" inquired the younger man impatiently; "do those scratches
representing Solomon's Seal mean anything?"

"It's the strangest cipher I ever encountered," said Mr. Keen--"the
strangest I ever heard of. I have seen hundreds of
ciphers--hundreds--secret codes of the State Department, secret military
codes, elaborate Oriental ciphers, symbols used in commercial
transactions, symbols used by criminals and every species of malefactor.
And every one of them can be solved with time and patience and a little
knowledge of the subject. But this"--he sat looking at it with eyes half
closed--"this is _too_ simple."

"Simple!"

"Very. It's so simple that it's baffling."

"Do you mean to say you are going to be able to find a meaning in
squares and crosses?"

"I--I don't believe it is going to be so very difficult to translate
them."

"Great guns!" said the Captain. "Do you mean to say that you can
ultimately translate that cipher?"

The Tracer smiled. "Let's examine it for repetitions first. Here we have
this symbol

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

repeated five times. It's likely to be the letter E. I think--" His
voice ceased; for a quarter of an hour he pored over the symbols, pencil
in hand, checking off some, substituting a letter here and there.

"No," he said; "the usual doesn't work in this case. It's an absurdly
simple cipher. I have a notion that numbers play a part in it--you see
where these crossed squares are bracketed--those must be numbers
requiring two figures--"

He fell silent again, and for another quarter of an hour he remained
motionless, immersed in the problem before him, Harren frowning at the
paper over his shoulder.




CHAPTER X


"Come!" said the Tracer suddenly; "this won't do. There are too few
symbols to give us a key; too few repetitions to furnish us with any key
basis. Come, Captain, let us use our intellects; let us talk it over
with that paper lying there between us. It's a simple cipher--a
childishly simple one if we use our wits. Now, sir, what I see repeated
before us on this sheet of paper is merely one of the forms of a symbol
known as Solomon's Seal. The symbol is, as we see, repeated a great many
times. Every seal has been dotted or crossed on some one of the lines
composing it; some seals are coupled with brackets and armatures."

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

"What of it?" inquired Harren vacantly.

"Well, sir, in the first place, that symbol is supposed to represent the
spiritual and material, as you know. What else do you know about it?"

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

"Nothing. I bought a book about it, but made nothing of it."

"Isn't it supposed," asked Mr. Keen, "to contain within itself the nine
numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and even the zero symbol?"

"I believe so."

"_Ex_actly. Here's the seal

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

Now I'll mark the one, two, and three by crossing the lines, like this:

one,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

two,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

three,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

Now, eliminating all lines not crossed there remains

the one,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

the two,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

the three,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

And here is the entire series:

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbols]

and the zero--"

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

A sudden excitement stirred Harren; he leaned over the paper, gazing
earnestly at the cipher; the Tracer rose and glanced around the room as
though in search of something.

"Is there a telephone here?" he asked.

"For Heaven's sake, don't give this up just yet," exclaimed Harren.
"These things mean numbers; don't you see? Look at that!" pointing to a
linked pair of seals,

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

"That means the number nineteen! You can form it by using only the
crossed lines of the seal.

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

Don't you see, Mr. Keen?"

"Yes, Captain Harren, the cipher is, as you say, very plain; quite as
easy to read as so much handwriting. That is why I wish to use your
telephone--at once, if you please."

"It's in my bedroom; you don't mind if I go on working out this cipher
while you're telephoning?"

"Not in the least," said the Tracer blandly. He walked into the
Captain's bedroom, closing the door behind him; then he stepped over to
the telephone, unhooked the receiver, and called up his own
headquarters.

"Hello. This is Mr. Keen. I want to speak to Miss Borrow."

In a few moments Miss Borrow answered: "I am here, Mr. Keen."

"Good. Look up the name Inwood. Try New York first--Edith Inwood is the
name. Look sharp, please; I am holding the wire."

He held it for ten full minutes; then Miss Borrow's low voice called him
over the wire.

"Go ahead," said the Tracer quietly.

"There is only one Edith Inwood in New York, Mr. Keen--Miss Edith
Inwood, graduate of Barnard, 1902--left an orphan 1903 and obliged to
support herself--became an assistant to Professor Boggs of the Museum of
Inscriptions. Is considered an authority upon Arabian cryptograms. Has
written a monograph on the Herati symbol--a short treatise on the
Swastika. She is twenty-four years of age. Do you require further
details?"

"No," said the Tracer; "please ring off."

Then he called up General Information. "I want the Museum of
Inscriptions. Get me their number, please." After a moment: "Is this the
Museum of Inscriptions?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Is Professor Boggs there?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Is this Professor Boggs?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Could you find time to decipher an inscription for me at once?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Of course I know you are extremely busy, but have you no assistant who
could do it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"What did you say her name is? Miss Inwood?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Oh! And will the young lady translate the inscription at once if I send
a copy of it to her by messenger?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Thank you very much, Professor. I will send a messenger to Miss Inwood
with a copy of the inscription. Good-by."

He hung up the receiver, turned thoughtfully, opened the door again, and
walked into the sunlit living room.

"Look here!" cried the Captain in a high state of excitement. "I've got
a lot of numbers out of it already."

"Wonderful!" murmured the Tracer, looking over the young man's broad
shoulders at a sheet of paper bearing these numbers:

9--14--5--22--5--18--19--1--23--25--15--21--2--21--20--15--14--3--5--
9--12--15--22--5--25--15--21--5--4--9--20--8--9--14--23--15--15--4.

"Marvelous!" repeated the Tracer, smiling. "Now what _do_ you suppose
those numbers can stand for?"

"Letters!" announced the Captain triumphantly. "Take the number nine,
for example. The ninth letter in the alphabet is I! Mr. Keen, suppose we
try writing down the letters according to that system!"

"Suppose we do," agreed the Tracer gravely.

So, counting under his breath, the young man set down the letters in the
following order, not attempting to group them into words:

INEVERSAWYOUBUTONCEILOVEYOUEDITHINWOOD.

Then he leaned back, excited, triumphant.

"There you are!" he said; "only, of course, it makes no sense." He
examined it in silence, and gradually a hopeless expression effaced the
animation. "How the deuce am I going to separate that mass of letters
into words?" he muttered.

"This way," said the Tracer, smilingly taking the pencil from his
fingers, and he wrote: I--NEVER--SAW--YOU--BUT--ONCE. I--LOVE--YOU.
EDITH INWOOD.

Then he laid the pencil on the table and walked to the window.

Once or twice he fancied that he heard incoherent sounds behind him.
And after a while he turned, retracing his steps leisurely. Captain
Harren, extremely pink, stood tugging at his short mustache and studying
the papers on the desk.

"Well?" inquired the Tracer, amused.

The young man pointed to the translation with unsteady finger. "W-what
on earth does that mean?" he demanded shakily. "Who is Edith Inwood?
W-what on earth does that cryptogram mean on the window pane in the
photograph? How did it come there? It isn't on my window pane, you see!"

The Tracer said quietly: "That is not a photograph of your window."

"What!"

"No, Captain. Here! Look at it closely through this glass. There are
sixteen small panes in that sash; now count the panes in your
window--eight! Besides, look at that curtain. It is made of some figured
stuff like chintz. Now, look at your own curtain yonder! It is of plain
velour."

"But--but I took that photograph! She stood there--there by that very
window!"

The Tracer leaned over the photograph, examining it through the glass.
And, studying it, he said: "Do you still see _her_ in this photograph,
Captain Harren?"

"Certainly. Can you not see her?"

"No," murmured the Tracer, "but I see the window which she really stood
by when her phantom came here seeking you. And that is sufficient. Come,
Captain Harren, we are going out together."

The Captain looked at him earnestly; something in Mr. Keen's eyes seemed
to fascinate him.

"You think that--that it's likely we are g-going to see--_her_!" he
faltered.

"If I were you," mused the Tracer of Lost Persons, joining the tips of
his lean fingers meditatively--"If I were you I should wear a silk hat
and a frock coat. It's--it's afternoon, anyhow," he added deprecatingly,
"and we are liable to make a call."

Captain Harren turned like a man in a dream and entered his bedroom. And
when he emerged he was dressed and groomed with pathetic precision.

"Mr. Keen," he said, "I--I don't know why I am d-daring to hope for all
s-sorts of things. Nothing you have said really warrants it. But somehow
I'm venturing to cherish an absurd notion that I may s-see her."

"Perhaps," said the Tracer, smiling.

"Mr. Keen! You wouldn't say that if--if there was no chance, would you?
You wouldn't dash a fellow's hopes--"

"No, I wouldn't," said Mr. Keen. "I tell you frankly that I expect to
find her."

"To-day?"

"We'll see," said Mr. Keen guardedly. "Come, Captain, don't look that
way! Courage, sir! We are about to execute a turning movement; but you
look like a Russian general on his way to the south front."

Harren managed to laugh; they went out, side by side, descended the
elevator, and found a cab at the _porte-cochere_. Mr. Keen gave the
directions and followed the Captain into the cab.

"Now," he said, as they wheeled south, "we are first going to visit the
Museum of Inscriptions and have this cipher translation verified. Here
is the cipher as I copied it. Hold it tightly, Captain; we've only a few
blocks to drive."

Indeed they were already nearly there. The hansom drew up in front of a
plain granite building wedged in between some rather elaborate private
dwelling-houses. Over the door were letters of dull bronze:

              AMERICAN MUSEUM OF INSCRIPTIONS

and the two men descended and entered a wide marble hall lined with
glass-covered cabinets containing plaster casts of various ancient
inscriptions and a few bronze and marble originals. Several female
frumps were nosing the exhibits.

An attendant in livery stood in the middle distance. The Tracer walked
over to him. "I have an appointment to consult Miss Inwood," he
whispered.

"This way, sir," nodded the attendant, and the Tracer signaled the
Captain to follow.

They climbed several marble stairways, crossed a rotunda, and entered a
room--a sort of library. Beyond was a door which bore the inscription:

                      ASSISTANT CURATOR

"Now," said the Tracer of Lost Persons in a low voice to Captain Harren,
"I am going to ask you to sit here for a few minutes while I interview
the assistant curator. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, I don't mind," said Harren wearily, "only, when are we going to
begin to search for--_her_?"

"Very soon--I may say extremely soon," said Mr. Keen gravely. "By the
way, I think I'll take that sheet of paper on which I copied the cipher.
Thank you. I won't be long."

The attendant had vanished. Captain Harren sat down by a window and
gazed out into the late afternoon sunshine. The Tracer of Lost Persons,
treading softly across the carpeted floor, approached the sanctuary,
turned the handle, and walked in, carefully closing the door behind him.

There was a young girl seated at a desk by an open window; she looked up
quietly as he entered, then rose leisurely.

"Miss Inwood?"

"Yes."

She was slender, dark-eyed, dark-haired--a lovely, wholesome young
creature; gracious and graceful. And that was all--for the Tracer of
Lost Persons could not see through the eyes of Captain Harren, and
perhaps that is why he was not able to discern a miracle of beauty in
the pretty girl who confronted him--no magic and matchless marvel of
transcendent loveliness--only a quiet, sweet-faced, dark-eyed young girl
whose features and figure were attractive in the manner that youth is
always attractive. But then it is a gift of the gods to see through eyes
anointed by the gods.

The Tracer touched his gray mustache and bowed; the girl bowed very
sweetly.

"You are Mr. Keen," she said; "you have an inscription for me to
translate."

"A mystery for young eyes to interpret," he said, smiling. "May I sit
here--and tell my story before I show you my inscription?"

"Please do," she said, seating herself at her desk and facing him, one
slender white hand supporting the oval of her face.

The Tracer drew his chair a little forward. "It is a curious matter," he
said. "May I give you a brief outline of the details?"

"By all means, Mr. Keen."

"Then let me begin by saying that the inscription of which I have a copy
was probably scratched upon a window pane by means of a diamond."

"Oh! Then--then it is not an ancient inscription, Mr. Keen."

"The theme is ancient--the oldest theme in the world--love! The cipher
is old--as old as King Solomon." She looked up quickly. The Tracer,
apparently engrossed in his own story, went on with it. "Three years ago
the young girl who wrote this inscription upon the window pane of
her--her bedroom, I think it was--fell in love. Do you follow me, Miss
Inwood?"

Miss Inwood sat very still--wide, dark eyes fixed on him.

"Fell in love," repeated the Tracer musingly, "not in the ordinary way.
That is the point, you see. No, she fell in love at first sight; fell
in love with a young man whom she never before had seen, never again
beheld--and never forgot. Do you still follow me, Miss Inwood?"

She made the slightest motion with her lips.

"No," mused the Tracer of Lost Persons, "she never forgot him. I am not
sure, but I think she sometimes dreamed of him. She dreamed of him
awake, too. Once she inscribed a message to him, cutting it with the
diamond in her ring on the window pane--"

A slight sound escaped from Miss Inwood's lips. "I beg your pardon,"
said the Tracer, "did you say something?"

The girl had risen, pale, astounded, incredulous.

"Who are you?" she faltered. "What has this--this story to do with me?"

"Child," said the Tracer of Lost Persons, "the Seal of Solomon is a
splendid mystery. All of heaven and earth are included within its
symbol. And more, more than you dream of, more than I dare fathom; and I
am an old man, my child--old, alone, with nobody to fear for, nothing to
dread, not even the end of all--because I am ready for that, too. Yet I,
having nothing on earth to dread, dare not fathom what that symbol may
mean, nor what vast powers it may exert on life. God knows. It may be
the very signet of Fate itself; the sign manual of Destiny."

He drew the paper from his pocket, unrolled it, and spread it out under
her frightened eyes.

"_That!_" she whispered, steadying herself blindly against the arm he
offered. She stood a moment so, then, shuddering, covered her eyes with
both hands. The Tracer of Lost Persons looked at her, turned and opened
the door.

"Captain Harren!" he called quietly. Harren, pacing the anteroom, turned
and came forward. As he entered the door he caught sight of the girl
crouching by the window, her face hidden in her hands, and at the same
moment she dropped her hands and looked straight at him.

"_You!_" she gasped.

The Tracer of Lost Persons stepped out, closing the door. For a moment
he stood there, tall, gaunt, gray, staring vacantly into space.

"She _was_ beautiful--when she looked at him," he muttered.

For another minute he stood there, hesitating, glancing backward at the
closed door. Then he went away, stooping slightly, his top hat held
close against the breast of his tightly buttoned frock coat.




CHAPTER XI


During his first year of wedded bliss, Gatewood cut the club. When Kerns
wanted to see him he had to call like other people or, like other
people, accept young Mrs. Gatewood's invitations.

"Why," said Gatewood scornfully, "should I, thirty-four years of age and
safely married, go to a club? Why should I, at my age, idle with a lot
of idlers and listen to stuffy stories from stuffier individuals? Do you
think that stale tobacco smoke, and the idiotically reiterated click of
billiard balls, and the vacant stare of the fashionably brainless, and
the meaningless exchange of banalities with the intellectually aimless
have any attractions for me?"

Mrs. Gatewood raised her pretty eyes in silence; Kerns returned her
amused gaze rather blankly.

"Clubs!" sniffed Gatewood. "What are clubs but pretexts for wasting
time? What mental, what spiritual stimulus can a man expect to find in a
club? Why, Kerns, when I look back a year and think what I was, and when
I look at you and think what you still are--"

"John," said Mrs. Gatewood softly.

"Oh, he knows it!" insisted her husband, "don't you, Tommy? You know the
sort of life you're leading, don't you? You know what a miserable,
aimless, selfish, unambitious, pitiable existence an unmarried man leads
who lives at his club; don't you?"

"Certainly," said Kerns, blinking into the smiling gaze of Mrs.
Gatewood.

"Then why don't you marry?"

But Kerns had risen and was making his adieus with cheerful decision;
and Mrs. Gatewood was laughing as she gave him her slender hand.

"Now I know a girl--" began Gatewood; but his wife was still speaking to
Kerns, so he circled around them, politely suppressing the excitement of
a sudden idea struggling for utterance.

Mrs. Gatewood was saying: "I do wish John would go to his clubs
occasionally. Because a man is married is no reason for his losing touch
with his clubs--"

"I know a girl," broke in Gatewood excitedly, laying his arm on Kerns's
to detain him; but Kerns slid sideways through the door with a smile so
noncommittal that Mrs. Gatewood laughed again and, linking her arm in
her husband's, faced partly toward him. This maneuver, and the
slightest pressure of her shoulder, obliged her husband to begin a
turning movement, so that Kerns might reasonably make his escape in the
middle of Gatewood's sentence; which he did with nimble and circumspect
agility.

"I--I know a--" began Gatewood desperately, twisting his head over his
shoulder, only to hear the deadened patter of his friend's feet over the
velvet stair carpet and the subdued clang of the front door.

"Isn't it extraordinary?" he said to his wife. "I've been trying to tell
Tommy, every time he comes here, about a girl I know--just the very girl
he ought to marry; and something prevents him from listening every
time."

The attractive young matron beside him turned her face so that her eyes
were directly in line with his.

"Did you ever know any people named Manners?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

"You never knew a girl named Marjorie Manners, did you, John?"

"No. What about her?"

"You never heard Mr. Kerns speak of her, did you, dear?"

"No, never. Tommy doesn't talk about girls."

"You never heard him speak of a Mrs. Stanley?"

"Never. Who are these two women?"

"One and the same, dear. Marjorie Manners married an Englishman named
Stanley six years ago. Do you happen to recollect that Mr. Kerns took
his vacation in England six years ago?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"He crossed to Southampton with Marjorie and her mother. He didn't know
she was going over to be married, and she didn't tell him. She wrote to
me about it, though. I was in school at Farmington; she left school to
marry--a mere child of eighteen, undeveloped for her age, thin, almost
scrawny, with pipe-stem arms and neck, red hair, a very sweet,
full-lipped mouth, and gray eyes that were too big for her face."

"Well," said Gatewood with a short laugh, "what about it? You don't
think Kerns fell in love with an insect of that genus, do you?"

"Yes, I do," smiled Mrs. Gatewood.

"Nonsense. Besides, what of it? She's married, you say."

"Her husband died of enteric at Ladysmith. She wrote me. She has never
remarried. Think of it, John--in all these years she has never
remarried!"

"Oh!" said Gatewood pityingly; "do you really suppose that Tommy Kerns
has been nursing a blighted affection all these years without ever
giving _me_ an inkling? Besides, men don't do that; men don't curl up
and blight. Besides, men don't take any stock in big-eyed, flat-chested,
red-headed pipe stems. Why do you think that Kerns ever cared for her?"

"I know he did."

"How do you know it?"

"From Marjorie's letters."

"The conceited kid! Well, of all insufferable nerve! A man like Kerns--a
man--one of the finest, noblest characters--spiritually, intellectually,
physically--a practically faultless specimen of manhood! And a
red-headed, spindle-legged--Oh, my! Oh, fizz! Dearest, men don't worship
a cage of bones with an eighteen-year-old soul in it--like a nervous
canary pecking out at the world!"

"She created a furor in England," observed his wife, smiling.

"Oh, I dare say she might over there. Besides, she's doubtless fattened
up since then. But if you suppose for one moment that Tommy could even
remember a girl like that--"

Mrs. Gatewood smiled again--the wise, sweet smile of a young matron in
whom her husband's closest friend had confided. And after a moment or
two the wise smile became more thoughtful and less assured; for that
very day the Tracer of Lost Persons had called on her to inquire about a
Mrs. Stanley--a new client of his who had recently bought a town house
in East Eighty-third Street and a country house on Long Island; and who
had applied to him to find her fugitive butler and a pint or two of
family jewels. And, after her talk with the Tracer of Lost Persons, Mrs.
Gatewood knew that her favorite among all her husband's friends, Mr.
Kerns, would never of his own volition go near that same Marjorie
Manners who had flirted with him to the very perilous verge before she
told him why she was going to England--and who, now a widow, had
returned with her five-year-old daughter to dwell once more in the city
of her ancestors.

Kerns had said very simply: "She has spoiled women for me--all except
you, Mrs. Gatewood. And if Jack hadn't married you--"

"I understand, Mr. Kerns. I'm awfully sorry."

"Don't feel sorry; only, if you can, call Jack off. He's been perfectly
possessed to marry me to somebody ever since he married you. And if I
told him why I don't care to consider the matter he wouldn't believe
me--he'd spend his life in trying to bring me around. Besides, I
couldn't ever tell him about--Marjorie Manners. Anyhow, nothing on earth
could ever induce me to look at her again. . . . You say she is now a
widow?"

"Yes, Mr. Kerns, and very beautiful."

"Never again," muttered Kerns. "Never! She was homely enough when I
asked her to marry me. I don't want to see her; I don't want to know
what she looks like. I'm glad she has changed so I wouldn't recognize
her, for that means the end of it all--the final elimination of the girl
I remember on the ship. . . . It was probably a sort of diseased
infatuation, wasn't it, Mrs. Gatewood? Think of it! A few days on
shipboard and--and I asked her to marry me! . . . I don't blame her,
after all, for letting me dangle. It was an excellent opportunity for
her to study a rare species of idiot. She was justified and I am
satisfied. Only, do call Jack off with a hint or two."

"I shall try," said young Mrs. Gatewood thoughtfully--very thoughtfully,
for already every atom and fiber of her femininity was aroused in behalf
of these two estranged young people whom Providence certainly had not
meant to put asunder.




CHAPTER XII


"Nothing," said Gatewood firmly, "can make me believe that Kerns ought
not to marry somebody; and I'm never going to let up on him until he
does. I'll bet I could fix him for life if I called in the Tracer to
help me. Isn't it extraordinary how Kerns has kept out of it all these
years?"

The attractive girl beside him turned her face once more so that her
clear, sweet eyes were directly in line with his.

"It _is_ extraordinary," she said seriously. "I think you ought to drop
in at the club some day when you can corner him and bully him."

"I don't want to go to the club," said the infatuated man.

"Why, dear?"

He looked straight at her and she flushed prettily, while a tint of
color touched his own face. Which was very nice of him. So she didn't
say what she was going to say--that it would be perhaps better for them
both if he practiced on her an artistic absence now and then. Younger in
years, she was more mature than he. She knew. But she was too much in
love with him to salt their ambrosia with common sense or suggest
economy in their use of the nectar bottle.

However, the gods attend to that, and she knew they would, and she let
them. So one balmy evening late in May, when the new moon's ghost
floated through the upper haze, and the golden Diana above Manhattan
turned flame color, and the electric lights began to glimmer along Fifth
Avenue, and the first faint scent of the young summer freshened the
foliage in square and park, Kerns, stopping at the club for a moment,
found Gatewood seated at the same window they both were wont to haunt in
earlier and more flippant days.

"Are you dining here?" inquired Kerns, pushing the electric button with
enthusiasm. "Well, that's the first glimmer of common sense you've
betrayed since you've been married!"

"Dining _here_!" repeated Gatewood. "I should hope not! I am just going
home--"

"He's thoroughly cowed," commented Kerns; "every married man you meet at
the club is just going home." But he continued to push the button,
nevertheless.

Gatewood leaned back in his chair and gazed about him, nose in the air.
"What a life!" he observed virtuously. "It's all I can do to stand it
for ten minutes. You're here for the evening, I suppose?" he added
pityingly.

"No," said Kerns; "I'm going uptown to Billy Lee's house to get my suit
case. His family are out of town, and he is at Seabright, so he let me
camp there until the workmen finish papering my rooms upstairs. I'm to
lock up the house and send the key to the Burglar Alarm Company
to-night. Then I go to Boston on the 12.10. Want to come? There'll be a
few doing."

"To Boston! What for?"

"Contracts! We can go out to Cambridge when I've finished my business.
There'll be _etwas_ doing."

"_Can't_ you ever recover from being an undergraduate?" asked Gatewood,
disgusted.

"Well--is there anything the matter with a man getting next to a little
amusement in life?" asked Kerns. "Do you object to my being happy?"

"Amusement? You don't know how to amuse yourself. You don't know how to
be happy. Here you sit, day after day, swallowing Martinis--" He paused
to finish his own, then resumed: "Here you sit, day after day,
intellectually stultified, unemotionally ignorant of the higher and
better life--"

"No, I don't. I've a book upstairs that tells all about that. I read it
when I have holdovers--"

"Kerns, I wish to speak seriously. I've had it on my mind ever since I
married. May I speak frankly?"

"Well, when I come back from Boston--"

"Because I know a girl," interrupted Gatewood--"wait a moment,
Tommy!"--as Kerns rose and sauntered toward the door--"you've plenty of
time to catch your train and be civil, too! I mean to tell you about
that girl, if you'll listen."

Kerns halted and turned upon his friend a pair of eyes, unwinking in
their placid intelligence.

"I was going to say that I know a girl," continued Gatewood, "who is
just the sort of a girl you--"

"No, she isn't!" said Kerns, wheeling to resume his progress toward the
cloakroom.

"Tom!"

Kerns halted.

"_You're_ a fine specimen!" commented Gatewood scornfully. "You spent
the best years of your life in persuading me to get married, and the
first time I try to do the same for you, you make for the tall timber!"

"I know it," admitted Kerns, unashamed; "I'm bashful. I'm a chipmunk for
shyness, so I'll say good night--"

"Come back," said Gatewood coldly.

"But my suit case--"

"You left it at the Lee's, didn't you? Well, you've time enough to go
there, get it, make your train, and listen to me, too. Look here, Kerns,
have you any of the elements of decency about you?"

"No," said Kerns, "not a single element." He seated himself defiantly in
the club window facing Gatewood and began to button his gloves. When he
had finished he settled his new straw hat more comfortably on his head,
and, leaning forward and balancing his malacca walking stick across his
knees, gazed at Gatewood with composure.

"Crank up!" he said pleasantly; "I'm going in less than three minutes."
He pushed the electric knob as an afterthought, and when the gilt
buttons of the club servant glimmered through the dusk, "Two more," he
explained briskly. After a few moments' silence, broken by the tinkle of
ice in thin glassware, Gatewood leaned forward, menacing his friend with
an impressive forefinger:

"Did you or didn't you once tell me that a decent citizen ought to
marry?"

"I did, dear friend."

"Did I or didn't I do it?"

"In the words of the classic, you _done_ it," admitted Kerns.

"Was I or wasn't I going to the devil before I had the sense to marry?"
persisted Gatewood.

"You was! You _was_, dear friend!" said Kerns with enthusiasm. "You had
almost went there ere I appeared and saved you."

"Then why shouldn't you marry and let me save you?"

"But I'm not going to the bowwows. _I'm_ all right. I'm a decent
citizen. I awake in the rosy dawn with a song on my lips; I softly
whistle rag time as I button my collar; I warble a few delicious vagrant
notes as I part my sparse hair; I'm not murderous before breakfast; I go
down town, singing, to my daily toil; I fish for fat contracts in
Georgia marble; I return uptown immersed in a holy calm and the evening
paper. I offer myself a cocktail; I bow and accept; I dress for dinner
with the aid of a rascally valet, but--_do_ I swear at him? No, dear
friend; I say, 'Henry, I have known far, far worse scoundrels than you.
Thank you for filling up my bay rum with water. Bless you for wearing
my imported hosiery! I deeply regret that my new shirts do not fit you,
Henry!' And my smile is a benediction upon that wayward scullion. Then,
dear friend, why, why do you desire to offer me up upon the altar of
unrest? What is a little wifey to me or I to any wifey?"

"Because," said Gatewood irritated, "you offered me up. I'm happy and I
want you to be--you great, hulking, self-satisfied symbol of supreme
self-centered selfishness--"

"Oh, splash!" said Kerns feebly.

"Yes, you are. What do you do all day? Grub for money and study how to
make life agreeable to yourself! Every minute of the day you are
occupied in having a good time! You've admitted it! You wake up singing
like a fool canary; you wear imported hosiery; you've made a soft, warm
wallow for yourself at this club, and here you bask your life away,
waddling downtown to nail contracts and cut coupons, and uptown to
dinners and theaters, only to return and sprawl here in luxury without
one single thought for posterity. _Your_ crime is race suicide!"

"I--my--_what_!"

"Certainly. Some shirk taxes, some jury duty. _You_ shirk fatherhood,
and all its happy and sacred obligations! You deny posterity! You strike
a blow at it! You flout it! You menace the future of this Republic!
Your inertia is a crime against the people! Instead of _pro bono
publico_ your motto is _pro bono tempo_--for a good time! And, dog Latin
or not, it's the truth, and our great President"

"Splash!" said Kerns, rising.

"I've a good mind," said Gatewood indignantly, "to put the Tracer of
Lost Persons on your trail. He'd rope you and tie you in record time!"

Kerns's smile was a provocation.

"I'll do it, too!" added Gatewood, losing his temper, "if you dare give
me the chance."

"Seriously," inquired Kerns, delighted, "_do_ you think your friend, Mr.
Keen, could encompass my matrimony against my better sense and the full
enjoyment of my unimpaired mental faculties?"

"Didn't he--fortunately for me--force me into matrimony when I had never
seen a woman I would look at twice? Didn't you put him up to it? Very
well, why can't I put him on your trail then? Why can't _he_ do the same
for you?"

"Try it, dear friend," retorted Kerns courteously.

"Do you mean that you are not afraid? Do you mean you give me full
liberty to set him on you? And do you realize what that means? No, you
don't; for you haven't a notion of what that man, Westrel Keen, can
accomplish. You haven't the slightest idea of the machinery which he
controls with a delicacy absolutely faultless; with a perfectly
terrifying precision. Why, man, the Pinkerton system itself has become
merely a detail in the immense complexity of the system of control which
the Tracer of Lost Persons exercises over this entire continent. The
urban police, the State constabulary of Pennsylvania, the rural systems
of surveillance, the Secret Service, all municipal, provincial, State,
and national organizations form but a few strands in the universal web
he has woven. Custom officials, revenue officers, the militia of the
States, the army, the navy, the personnel of every city, State, and
national legislative bodies form interdependent threads in the mesh he
is master of; and, like a big beneficent spider, he sits in the center
of his web, able to tell by the slightest tremor of any thread exactly
where to begin investigations!"

Flushed, earnest, a trifle out of breath with his own eloquence,
Gatewood waved his hand to indicate a Ciceronian period, adding, as
Kerns's incredulous smile broadened: "Say splash again, and I'll put you
at his mercy!"

"Ker-splash! dear friend," observed Kerns pleasantly. "If a man doesn't
want to marry, the army, the navy, the Senate, the white wings, and the
great White Father at Washington can't make him."

"I tell you I want to see you happy!" said Gatewood angrily.

"Then gaze upon me. I'm it!"

"You're not! You don't know what happiness is."

"Don't I? Well, I don't miss it, dear friend--"

"But if you've never had it, and therefore don't miss it, it's time
somebody found some real happiness for you. Kerns, I simply can't bear
to see you missing so much happiness--"

"Why grieve?"

"Yes, I will! I do grieve--in spite of your grinning skepticism and your
bantering attitude. See here, Tom; I've started about a thousand times
to say that I knew a girl--"

"Do you want to hear that splash again?"

Gatewood grew madder. He said: "I could easily lay your case before Mr.
Keen and have you in love and married and happy whether you like it or
not!"

"If I were not going to Boston, my son, I should enjoy your misguided
efforts," returned Kerns blandly.

"Your going to Boston makes no difference. The Tracer of Lost Persons
doesn't care where you go or what you do. If he starts in on your case,
Tommy, you can't escape."

"You mean he can catch me now? Here? At my own club? Or on the public
highway? Or on the classic Boston train?"

"He _could_. Yes, I firmly believe he could land you before you ever saw
the Boston State House. I tell you he can work like lightning, Kerns. I
know it; I am so absolutely convinced of it that I--I almost hesitate--"

"Don't feel delicate about it," laughed Kerns; "you may call him on the
telephone while I go uptown and get my suit case. Perhaps I'll come back
a blushing bridegroom; who knows?"

"If you'll wait here I'll call him up now," said Gatewood grimly.

"Oh, very well. Only I left my suit case in Billy's room, and it's full
of samples of Georgia marble, and I've got to get it to the train."

"You've plenty of time. If you'll wait until I talk to Mr. Keen I'll
dine with you here. Will you?"

"What? Dine in this abandoned joint with an outcast like me? Dear
friend, are you dippy this lovely May evening?"

"I'll do it if you'll wait. Will you? And I'll bet you now that I'll
have you in love and sprinting toward the altar before we meet again at
this club. Do you dare bet?"

"The terms of the wager, kind friend?" drawled Kerns, delighted; and he
fished out a notebook kept for such transactions.

"Let me see," reflected Gatewood; "you'll need a silver service when
you're married. . . . Well, say, forks and spoons and things against an
imported trap gun--twelve-gauge, you know."

"Done. Go and telephone to your friend, Mr. Keen." And Kerns pushed the
electric button with a jeering laugh, and asked the servant for a dinner
card.




CHAPTER XIII


Gatewood, in the telephone booth, waited impatiently for Mr. Keen; and
after a few moments the Tracer of Lost Persons' agreeable voice sounded
in the receiver.

"It's about Mr. Kerns," began Gatewood; "I want to see him happy, and
the idiot won't be. Now, Mr. Keen, you know what happiness you and he
brought to me! You know what sort of an idle, selfish, aimless,
meaningless life you saved me from? I want you to do the same for Mr.
Kerns. I want to ask you to take up his case at once. Besides, I've a
bet on it. Could you attend to it at once?"

"To-night?" asked the Tracer, laughing.

"Why--ah--well, of course, that would be impossible. I suppose--"

"My profession is to overcome the impossible, Mr. Gatewood. Where is Mr.
Kerns?"

"Here, in this club, defying me and drinking cocktails. He won't get
married, and I want you to make him do it."

"Where is he spending the evening?" asked the Tracer, laughing again.

"Why, he's been stopping at the Danforth Lees' in Eighty-third Street
until the workmen at the club here finish putting new paper on his
walls. The Lees are out of town. He left his suit case at their house
and he's going up to get it and catch the 12.10 train for Boston."

"He goes from the Lenox Club to the residence of Mr. W. Danforth Lee,
East Eighty-third Street, to get a suit case," repeated the Tracer. "Is
that correct?"

"Yes."

"What is in the suit case?"

"Samples of that new marble he's quarrying in Georgia."

"Is it an old suit case? Has it Mr. Kerns's initials on it?"

"Hold the wire; I'll find out."

And Gatewood left the telephone and walked into the great lounging room,
where Kerns sat twirling his stick and smiling to himself.

"All over, dear friend?" inquired Kerns, starting to rise. "I've ordered
a corking dinner."

"Wait!" returned Gatewood ominously. "What sort of a suit case is that
one you're going after?"

"What sort? Oh, just an ordinary--"

"Is it old or new?"

"Brand new. Why?"

"Is your name on it?"

"No; why? Would that thicken the plot, dear friend? Or is the Tracer
foiled, ha! ha!"

Gatewood turned on his heel, went back to the telephone, and, carefully
shutting the door of the booth, took up the receiver.

"It's a new suit case, Mr. Keen," he said; "no initials on it--just an
ordinary case."

"Mr. Lee's residence is 38 East Eighty-third Street, between Madison and
Fifth, I believe."

"Yes," replied Gatewood.

"And the family are out of town?"

"Yes."

"Is there a caretaker there?"

"No; Mr. Kerns camped there. When he leaves to-night he will send the
key to the Burglar Alarm Company."

"Very well. Please hold the wire for a while."

For ten full minutes Gatewood sat gleefully cuddling the receiver
against his ear. His faith in Mr. Keen was naturally boundless; he
believed that whatever the Tracer attempted could not result in failure.
He desired nothing in the world so ardently as to see Kerns safely
married. His own happiness may have been the motive power which had set
him in action in behalf of his friend--that and a certain indefinable
desire to practice a species of heavenly revenge, of grateful
retaliation upon the prime mover and _collaborateur_, if not the sole
author, of his own wedded bliss. Kerns had made him happy.

"And I'm hanged if I don't pay him off and make him happy, too!"
muttered Gatewood. "Does he think I'm going to sit still and see him go
tearing and gyrating about town with no responsibility, no moral check
to his evolutions, no wholesome home duties to limit his acrobatics, no
wife to clip his wings? It's time he had somebody to report to; time he
assumed moral burdens and spiritual responsibilities. A man is just as
happy when he is certain where he is going to sleep. A man can find just
as much enjoyment in life when he feels it his duty to account for his
movements. I don't care whether Kerns is comparatively happy or
not--there's nothing either sacred or holy in that kind of happiness,
and I'm not going to endure the sort of life he likes any longer!"

Immersed in moral reflections, inspired by affectionate obligations to
violently inflict happiness upon Kerns, the minutes passed very
agreeably until the amused voice of the Tracer of Lost Persons sounded
again in the receiver.

"Mr. Gatewood?"

"Yes, I am here, Mr. Keen."

"Do you really think it best for Mr. Kerns to fall in love?"

"I do, certainly!" replied Gatewood with emphasis.

"Because," continued the Tracer of Lost Persons, "I see little chance
for him to do otherwise if I take up this case. Fate itself, in the
shape of a young lady, is already on the way here in a railroad train."

"Good! Good!" exclaimed Gatewood. "Don't let him escape, Mr. Keen! I beg
of you to take up his case! I urge you most seriously to do so. Mr.
Kerns is now exactly what I was a year ago--an utterly useless member of
the community--a typical bachelor who lives at his clubs, shirking the
duties of a decent citizen."

"_Ex_actly," said the Tracer. "Do you insist that I take this case? That
I attempt to trace and find for Mr. Kerns a sort of happiness he himself
has never found?"

"I implore you to do so, Mr. Keen."

"_Ex_actly. If I do--if I carry it out as it has been arranged--or
rather as the case seems to have already arranged itself, for it is
rather a simple matter, I fancy--I do not exactly see how Mr. Kerns can
avoid experiencing a--ahem--a tender sentiment for the very charming
young lady whom I--and chance--have designed for him as a partner
through life."

"Excellent! Splendid!" shouted Gatewood through the telephone. "Can I do
anything to aid you in this?"

"Yes," replied the Tracer, laughing. "If you can keep him amused for an
hour or two before he goes after his suit case it might make it easier
for me. This young lady is due to arrive in New York at eight o'clock--a
client of mine--coming to consult me. Her presence plays an important
part in Mr. Kerns's future. I wish you to detain Mr. Kerns until she is
ready to receive him. But of this he must know nothing. Good-by, Mr.
Gatewood, and would you be kind enough to present my compliments to Mrs.
Gatewood?"

"Indeed I will! We never can forget what you have done for us. Good-by."

"Good-by, Mr. Gatewood. Try to keep Mr. Kerns amused for two or three
hours. Of course, if you can't do this, there are other methods I may
employ--a dozen other plans already partly outlined in my mind; but the
present plan, which accident and coincidence make so easy, is likely to
work itself out to your entire satisfaction within a few hours. We are
already weaving a web around Mr. Kerns; we already have taken exclusive
charge of his future movements after he leaves the Lenox Club. I do not
believe he can escape us, or his charming destiny. Good night!"

Gatewood, enchanted, hung up the receiver. Song broke softly from his
lips as he started in search of Kerns; his step was springy,
buoyant--sort of subdued and modest prance.

"Now," he said to himself, "Tommy must take out his papers. The time is
ended when he can issue letters of marque to himself, hoist sail, square
away, and go cruising all over this metropolis at his own sweet will."




CHAPTER XIV


In the meanwhile, at the other end of the wire, Mr. Keen, the Tracer of
Lost Persons, was preparing to trace for Mr. Kerns, against that
gentleman's will, the true happiness which Mr. Kerns had never been able
to find for himself.

He sat in his easy chair within the four walls of his own office,
inspecting a line of people who stood before him on the carpet forming a
single and attentive rank. In this rank were five men: a policeman, a
cab driver, an agent of the telephone company, an agent of the electric
company, and a reformed burglar carrying a kit of his trade tools.

The Tracer of Lost Persons gazed at them, meditatively joining the tips
of his thin fingers.

"I want the number on 36 East Eighty-third Street changed to No. 38, and
the number 38 replaced by No. 36," he said to the policeman. "I want it
done at once. Get a glazier and go up there and have it finished in an
hour. Mrs. Kenna, caretaker at No. 36, is in my pay; she will not
interfere. There is nobody in No. 38: Mr. Kerns leaves there to-night
and the Burglar Alarm Company takes charge to-morrow."

And, turning to the others: "You," nodding at the reformed burglar,
"know your duty. Mike!" to the cab driver, "don't miss Mr. Kerns at the
Lenox Club. If he calls you before eleven, drive into the park and have
an accident. And you," to the agent of the telephone company, "will
sever all telephone connection in Mrs. Stanley's house; and you," to the
official of the electric company, "will see that the circuit in Mrs.
Stanley's house is cut so that no electric light may be lighted and no
electric bell sound."

The Tracer of Lost Persons stroked his gray mustache thoughtfully. "And
that," he ended, "will do, I think. Good night."

He rose and stood by the door as the policeman headed the solemn file
which marched out to their duty; then he looked at his watch, and, as it
was already a few minutes after eight, he called up No. 36 East
Eighty-third Street, and in a moment more had Mrs. Stanley on the wire.

"Good evening," he said pleasantly. "I suppose you have just arrived
from Rosylyn. I may be a little late--I may be very late, in fact, so I
called you up to say so. And I wished to say another thing; to ask you
whether your servants could recollect ever having seen a young man
about the place, a rather attractive young man with excellent address
and manners, five feet eleven inches, slim but well built, dark hair,
dark eyes, and dark mustache, offering samples of Georgia marble for
sale."

"Really, Mr. Keen," replied a silvery voice, "I have heard them say
nothing about such an individual. If you will hold the wire I will ask
my maid." And, after a pause: "No, Mr. Keen, my maid cannot remember any
such person. Do you think he was a confederate of that wretched butler
of mine?"

"I am scarcely prepared to say that; in fact," added Mr. Keen, "I
haven't the slightest idea that this young man could have been concerned
in anything of that sort. Only, if you should ever by any chance see
such a man, detain him if possible until you can communicate with me;
detain him by any pretext, by ruse, by force if you can, only detain him
until I can get there. Will you do this?"

"Certainly, Mr. Keen, if I can. Please describe him again?"

Mr. Keen did so minutely.

"You say he sells Georgia marble by samples, which he carries in a suit
case?"

"He _says_ that he has samples of Georgia marble in his suit case,"
replied the Tracer cautiously. "It might be well, if possible, to see
what he has in his suit case."

"I will warn the servants as soon as I return to Rosylyn. When may I
expect you this evening, Mr. Keen?"

"It is impossible to say, Mrs. Stanley. If I am not there by midnight I
shall try to call next morning."

So they exchanged civil adieus; the Tracer hung up his receiver and
leaned back in his chair, smiling to himself.

"Curious," he said, "that chance should have sent that pretty woman to
me at such a time. . . . Kerns _is_ a fine fellow, every inch of him. It
hit him hard when he crossed with her to Southampton six years ago; it
hit him harder when she married that Englishman. I don't wonder he never
cared to marry after that brief week of her society; for she is just
about the most charming woman I have ever met--red hair and all. . . .
And if quick action is what is required, it's well to break the ice
between them at once with a dreadful misunderstanding."




CHAPTER XV


The dinner that Kerns had planned for himself and Gatewood was an
ingenious one, cunningly contrived to discontent Gatewood with home fare
and lure him by its seductive quality into frequent revisits to the club
which was responsible for such delectable wines and viands.

A genial glow already enveloped Gatewood and pleasantly suffused Kerns.
From time to time they held some rare vintage aloft, squinting through
the crystal-imprisoned crimson with deep content.

"Not that _my_ word is necessarily the _last_ word concerning Burgundy,"
said Gatewood modestly; "but I venture to doubt that any club in America
can match this bottle, Kerns."

"Now, Jack," wheedled Kerns, "isn't it pleasant to dine here once in a
while? Be frank, man! Look about at the other tables--at all the
pleasant, familiar faces--the same fine fellows, bless 'em--the same
smoky old ceiling, the same bum portraits of dead governors, the same
old stag heads on the wall. Now, Jack, isn't it mighty pleasant, after
all? Be a gentleman and admit it!"

"Y-yes," confessed Gatewood, "it's all right for me once in a while,
because I know that I am presently going back to my own home--a jolly
lamplit room and the prettiest girl in Manhattan curled up in an
armchair--"

"You're fortunate," said Kerns shortly. And for the first time there
remained no lurking mockery in his voice; for the first time his retort
was tinged with bitterness. But the next instant his eyes glimmered with
the same gay malice, and the unbelieving smile twitched at his clean-cut
lips, and he raised his hand, touching the short ends of his mustache
with that careless, amused cynicism which rather became him.

"All that you picture so entrancingly is forbidden the true believer,"
he said; and began to repeat:

    "'O weaver! weave the flowers of Feraghan
    Into the fabric that thy birth began;
    Iris, narcissus, tulips cloud-band tied,
    These thou shalt picture for the eye of Man;
    Henna, Herati, and the Jhelums tide
    In Sarraband and Saruk be thy guide,
    And the red dye of Ispahan beside
    The checkered Chinese fret of ancient gold;
    --So heed the ban, old as the law is old,
    Nor weave into thy warp the laughing face,
    Nor limb, nor body, nor one line of grace,
    Nor hint, nor tint, nor any veiled device
    Of Woman who is barred from Paradise!'"

"A nice sentiment!" said Gatewood hotly.

"Can't help it; you see I'm forbidden to monkey with the eternal looms
or weave the forbidden into the pattern of my life."

Gatewood sat silent for a moment, then looked up at Kerns with something
so closely akin to a grin that his friend became interested in its
scarcely veiled significance, and grinned in reply.

"So you really expect that your friend, Mr. Keen, is going to marry me
to somebody, _nolens volens_?" asked Kerns.

"I do. That's what I dream of, Tommy."

"My poor friend, dream on!"

"I am. Tommy, you're lost! I mean you're as good as married now!"

"You think so?"

"I _know_ it! There you sit, savoring your Burgundy, idling over a
cigar, happy, care free, fancy free, at liberty, as you believe, to roam
off anywhere at any time and continue the eternal hunt for pleasure!
That's what you _think_! Ha! Tommy, I know better! That's not the sort
of man _I_ see sitting on the same chair where you are now sprawling in
such content! I see a doomed man, already in the shadow of the altar,
wasting his time unsuspiciously while Chance comes whirling into the
city behind a Long Island locomotive, and Fate, the footman, sits
outside ready to follow him, and Destiny awaits him no matter what he
does, what he desires, where he goes, wherever he turns to-night!
Destiny awaits him at his journey's end!"

"Very fine," said Kerns admiringly. "Too bad it's due to the Burgundy."

"Never mind what my eloquence is due to," retorted Gatewood, "the fact
remains that this is probably your last bachelor dinner. Kerns, old
fellow! Here's to her! Bless her! I--I wish sincerely that we knew who
she is and where to send those roses. Anyway, here's to the bride!"

He stood up very gravely and drank the toast, then, reseating himself,
tapped the empty glass gently against the table's edge until it broke.

"You are certainly doing your part well," said Kerns admiringly. Then he
swallowed the remainder of his Burgundy and looked up at the club clock.

"Eleven," he said with regret. "I've about time to go to Eighty-third
Street, get my suit case, and catch my train at 125th Street." To a
servant he said, "Call a hansom," then rose and sauntered downstairs to
the cloakroom, where presently both men stood, hatted and gloved,
swinging their sticks.

"That was a fool bet you made," began Kerns; "I'll release you, Jack."

"Sorry, but I must insist on holding you," replied Gatewood, laughing.
"You're going to your doom. Come on! I'll see you as far as the cab
door."

They walked out, and Kerns gave the cabby the street and number and
entered the hansom.

"Now," said Gatewood, "you're in for it! You're done for! You can't help
yourself! I've won my twelve-gauge trap gun already, and I'll have to
set you up in table silver, anyway, so it's an even break. You're all
in, Tommy! The Tracer is on your trail!"

In the beginning of a flippant retort Kerns experienced a curious
sensation of hesitation. Something in Gatewood's earnestness, in his
jeering assurance and delighted certainty, made him, for one moment,
feel doubtful, even uncomfortable.

"What nonsense you talk," he said, recovering his equanimity. "Nothing
on earth can prevent me driving to 38 East Eighty-third Street, getting
my luggage, and taking the Boston express. Your Tracer doesn't intend to
stop my hansom and drag me into a cave, does he? You haven't put
knock-outs into that Burgundy, have you? Then what in the dickens are
you laughing at?"

But Gatewood, on the sidewalk under the lamplight, was still laughing as
Kerns drove away, for he had recognized in the cab driver a man he had
seen in Mr. Kern's office, and he knew that the Tracer of Lost Persons
had Kerns already well in hand.

The hansom drove on through the summer darkness between rows of electric
globes drooping like huge white moon flowers from their foliated bronze
stalks, on up the splendid avenue, past the great brilliantly
illuminated hotels, past the white cathedral, past clubs and churches
and the palaces of the wealthy; on, on along the park wall edged by its
double rows of elms under which shadowy forms moved--lovers strolling in
couples.

"Pooh," sniffed Kerns, "the whole world has gone love mad, and I'm the
only sane man left."

But he leaned back in his cab and fell a-thinking of a thin girl with
red hair and great gray eyes--a thin, frail creature, scarcely more than
a child, who had held him for a week in a strange sorcery only to
release him with a frightened smile, leaving her indelible impression
upon his life forever.

And, thinking, he looked up, realizing that the cab had stopped in East
Eighty-third Street before one of a line of brownstone houses, all
externally alike.

Then he leaned out and saw that the house number was thirty-eight. That
was the number of the Lees' house; he descended, bade the cabman await
him, and, producing his latch key, started up the steps, whistling
gayly.

But he didn't require his key, for, as he reached the front door, he
found, to his surprise and concern, that it swung partly open--just a
mere crack.

"The mischief!" he muttered; "could I have failed to close it? Could
anybody have seen it and crept in?"

He entered the hallway hastily and pressed the electric knob. No light
appeared in the sconces.

"What the deuce!" he murmured; "something wrong with the switch!" And he
hurriedly lighted a match and peered into the darkness. By the vague
glimmer of the burning match he could distinguish nothing. He listened
intently, tried the electric switch again without success. The match
burned his fingers and he dropped it, watching the last red spark die
out in the darkness.

Something about the shadowy hallway seemed unfamiliar; he went to the
door, stepped out on the stoop, and looked up at the number on the
transom. It was thirty-eight; no doubt about the house. Hesitating, he
glanced around to see that his hansom was still there. It had
disappeared.

"What an idiot that cabman is!" he exclaimed, intensely annoyed at the
prospect of lugging his heavy suit case to a Madison Avenue car and
traveling with it to Harlem.

He looked up and down the dimly lighted street; east, an electric car
glided down Madison Avenue; west, the lights of Fifth Avenue glimmered
against the dark foliage of the Park. He stood a moment, angry at the
desertion of his cabman, then turned and reentered the dark hall,
closing the door behind him.

Up the staircase he felt his way to the first landing, and, lighting a
match, looked for the electric button.

"Am I crazy, or was there no electric button in this hall?" he thought.
The match burned low; he had to drop it. Perplexed, he struck another
match and opened the door leading into the front room, and stood on the
threshold a moment, looking about him at the linen-shrouded furniture
and pictures. This front room, closed for the summer, he had not before
entered, but he stepped in now, poking about for any possible intruder,
lighting match after match.

"I suppose I ought to go over this confounded house inch by inch," he
murmured. "What could have possessed me to leave the front door ajar
this morning?"

For an instant he thought that perhaps Mrs. Nolan, the woman who came in
the morning to make his bed, might have left the door open, but he knew
that couldn't be so, because he always waited for her to finish her work
and leave before he went out. So either he must have left the door open,
or some marauder had visited the house--was perhaps at that moment in
the house! And it was his duty to find out.

"I'd better be about it, too," he thought savagely, "or I'll never make
my train."

He struck his last match, looked around, and, seeing gas jets among the
clustered electric bulbs of the sconces, tried to light one and
succeeded.

He had left his suit case in the passageway between the front and rear
rooms, and now, cautiously, stick in hand, he turned toward the dim
corridor leading to the bedroom. There was his suit case, anyway! He
picked it up and started to push open the door of the rear room; but at
the same time, and before he could lay his hand on the knob, the door
before him opened suddenly in a flood of light, and a woman stood there,
dark against the gas-lit glare, a pistol waveringly extended in the
general direction of his head.




CHAPTER XVI


"Good heavens!" he said, appalled, and dropped his suit case with a
crash.

"W-what are you d-doing--" She controlled her voice and the wavering
weapon with an effort. "What are you doing in this house?"

"Doing? In _this_ house?" he repeated, his eyes protruding in the
direction of the unsteady pistol muzzle. "What are _you_ doing in this
house--if you don't mind saying!"

"I--I m-must ask you to put up your hands," she said. "If you move I
shall certainly s-shoot off this pistol."

"It will go off, anyway, if you handle it like that!" he said,
exasperated. "What do you mean by pointing it at me?"

"I mean to fire it off in a few moments if you don't raise your hands
above your head!"

He looked at the pistol; it was new and shiny; he looked at the athletic
young figure silhouetted against the brilliant light.

"Well, if you make a point of it, of course." He slowly held up both
hands, higher, then higher still. "Upon my word!" he breathed. "Held up
by a woman!" And he said aloud, bitterly: "No doubt you have assistance
close at hand."

"No doubt," she said coolly. "What have you been packing into that
valise?"

"P-packing into _what_? Oh, into that suit case? That is my suit case."

"Of course it is," she said quietly, "but what have you inside it?"

"Nothing _you_ or your friends would care for," he said meaningly.

"I must be the judge of that," she retorted. "Please open that suit
case."

"How can I if my hands are in the air?" he expostulated, now intensely
interested in the novelty of being held up by this graceful and vaguely
pretty silhouette.

"You may lower your arms to unpack the suit case," she said.

"I--I had rather not if you are going to keep me covered with your
pistol."

"Of course I shall keep you covered. Unpack your booty at once!"

"My--_what_?"

"Booty."

"Madam, do you take _me_ for a thief? Have you, by chance, entered the
wrong house? I--I cannot reconcile your voice with what I am forced to
consider you--a housebreaker--"

"We will discuss that later. Unpack that bag!" she insisted.

"But--but there is nothing in it except samples of marble--"

"What!" she exclaimed nervously. "_What_ did you say? Samples of
_marble_?"

"Marble, madam! Georgia marble!"

"Oh! So _you_ are the young man who goes about pretending to peddle
Georgia marble from samples! Are you? The famous marble man I have heard
of."

"I? Madam, I don't know what you mean!"

"Come!" she said scornfully; "let me see the contents of that suit case.
I--I am not afraid of you; I am not a bit afraid of you. And I shall
catch your accomplice, too."

"Madam, you speak like an honest woman! You _must_ have managed to enter
the wrong house. This is number thirty-eight, where I live."

"It is number thirty-six; my house!"

"But I _know_ it is number thirty-eight; Mr. Lee's house," he protested
hopefully. "This is some dreadful mistake."

"Mr. Lee's house is next door," she said. "Do you not suppose I know my
own house? Besides, I have been warned against a plausible young man who
pretends he has Georgia marble to sell--"

"There is a dreadful mistake somewhere," he insisted. "Please p-p-put up
your p-pistol and aid me to solve it. I am no robber, madam. I thought
at first that you were. I'm living in Mr. Lee's house, No. 38 East
Eighty-third Street, and I've looked carefully at the number over the
door of this house and the number is thirty-eight, and the street is
East Eighty-third. So I naturally conclude that I am in Mr. Lee's
house."

"Your arguments and your conclusions are very plausible," she said,
"but, fortunately for me, I have been expressly warned against a young
man of your description. _You_ are the marble man!"

"It's a mistake! A very dreadful one."

"Then how did you enter this house?"

"I have a key--I mean I found the front door unlatched. Please don't
misunderstand me; I know it sounds unconvincing, but I really have a key
to number thirty-eight."

He attempted to reach for his pocket and the pistol glittered in his
face.

"Won't you let me prove my innocence?" he asked.

"You can't prove it by showing me a key. Besides, it's probably a
weapon. Anyhow, if, as you pretend, you have managed to get into the
wrong house, why did you bring that suit case up here?"

"It was here. It's mine. I left it here in this passageway."

"In _my_ house?" she asked incredulously.

"In number thirty-eight; that is all I know. I'll open the suit case if
you will let me. I have already described its contents. If it has
samples of marble in it you _must_ be convinced!"

"It will convince me that it is your valise. But what of that? I know it
is yours already," she said defiantly. "I know, at least, that you are
the marble man--if nothing worse!"

"But malefactors don't go about carrying samples of Georgia marble," he
protested, dropping on one knee under the muzzle of her revolver and
tugging at the straps and buckles. In a second or two he threw open the
case--and the sight of the contents staggered him. For there, thrown in
pellmell among small square blocks of polished marble was a complete kit
of burglar's tools, including also a mask, a dark lantern, and a
blackjack.

"What--w--w--what on earth is this?" he stammered. "These things don't
belong to me. I won't have them! I don't want them. Who put them into my
suit case? How the deuce--"

"You _are_ the marble man!" she said with a shudder. "Your crimes are
known! Your wretched accomplice will be caught! You are the marble
man--or something worse!"

Kneeling there, aghast, bewildered, he passed his hand across his eyes
as though to clear them from some terrible vision. But the suit case was
still there with its incriminating contents when he looked again.

"I am sorry for you," she said tremulously. "I--if it were not for the
marble--I would let you go. But you are the marble man!"

"Yes, and I'm probably a madman, too. I don't know what I am! I don't
know what is happening to me. I ought to be going, that is all I know--"

"I cannot let you go."

"But I must! I've got to catch a train."

The feebleness of his excuse chilled her pity.

"I shall not let you go," she said, resting the hand which held the
pistol on her hip, but keeping him covered. "I know you came to rob my
house; I know you are a thoroughly bad and depraved young man, but for
all that I could find it in my heart to let you go if you were not also
the _marble man_!"

"What on earth is the marble man?" he asked, exasperated.

"I don't know. I have been earnestly warned against him. Probably he is
a relative of my butler--"

"I'm not a relative of anybody's butler!"

"You _say_ you are not. How do I know? I--I will make you an offer. I
will give you one last chance. If you will return to me the jewels that
my butler took--"

"Good heavens, madam! Do you really take me for a professional burglar?"

"How can I help it?" she said indignantly. "Look at your suit case full
of lanterns and masks--full of _marble_, too!"

Speechless, he stared at the burglar's kit.

"I am sorry--" Her voice had altered again to a tremulous sweetness. "I
can't help feeling sorry for you. You do not seem to be hardened; your
voice and manner are not characteristically criminal. I--I can't see
your face very clearly, but it does not seem to be a brutally inhuman
face--"

An awful desire to laugh seized Kerns; he struggled against it;
hysteria lay that way; and he covered his face with both hands and
pinched himself.

She probably mistook the action for the emotion of shame and despair
born of bitter grief; perhaps of terror of the law. It frightened her a
little, but pity dominated. She could scarcely endure to do what she
must do.

"This is dreadful, dreadful!" she faltered. "If you only would give me
back my jewels--"

Sounds, hastily smothered, escaped him. She believed them to be groans,
and it made her slightly faint.

"I--I've simply got to telephone for the police," she said pityingly. "I
must ask you to sit down there and wait--there is a chair. Sit
there--and please don't move, for I--this has unnerved me--I am not
accustomed to doing cruel things; and if you should move too quickly or
attempt to run away I feel certain that this pistol would explode."

"Are you going to telephone?" he asked.

"Yes, I am."

She backed away, cautiously, pistol menacing him, reached for the
receiver, and waited for Central. She waited a long time before she
realized that the telephone as well as the electric light was out of
commission.

"Did _you_ cut all these wires?" she demanded angrily.

"I? What wires?"

She reached out and pressed the electric button which should have rung a
bell in her maid's bedroom on the top floor. She kept her finger on the
button for ten minutes. It was useless.

"You laid deliberate plans to rob this house," she said, her cheeks pink
with indignation. "I am not a bit sorry for you. I shall _not_ let you
go! I shall sit here until somebody comes to my assistance, if I have to
sit here for weeks and weeks!"

"If you'd let me telephone to my club--" he began.

"Your club! You are very plausible. You didn't offer to call up any club
until you found that the telephone was not working!"

He thought a moment. "I don't suppose you would trust me to go out and
get a policeman?"

"Certainly not."

"Or go into the front room and open a window and summon some passer-by?"

"How do I know you haven't confederates waiting outside?"

"That's true," he said seriously.

There was a silence. Her nerves seemed to trouble her, for she began to
pace to and fro in front of the passageway where he sat comfortably on
his chair, arms folded, one knee dropped over the other.

The light being behind her he could not as yet distinguish her features
very clearly. Her figure was youthful, slender, yet beautifully rounded;
her head charming in contour. He watched her restlessly walking on the
floor, small hand clutching the pistol resting on her hip.

The ruddy burnished glimmer on the edges of her hair he supposed, at
first, was caused by the strong light behind her.

"This is atrocious!" she murmured, halting to confront him. "How dared
you sever every electric connection in my house?"

As she spoke she stepped backward a pace or two, resting herself for a
moment against the footboard of the bed--full in the gaslight. And he
saw her face.

For a moment he studied her; an immense wave of incredulity swept over
him--of wild unbelief, slowly changing to the astonishment of dawning
conviction. Astounded, silent, he stared at her from his shadowy corner;
and after a while his pulses began to throb and throb and hammer, and
the clamoring confusion of his senses seemed to deafen him.

[Illustration: "'This is atrocious,' she murmured, halting to confront
him."]

She rested a moment or two against the footboard of the bed, her big
gray eyes fixed on his vague and shadowy form.

"This won't do," she said.

"No," he said, "it won't do."

He spoke very quietly, very gently. She detected the alteration in his
voice and started slightly, as though the distant echo of a familiar
voice had sounded.

"What did you say?" she asked, coming nearer, pistol glittering in
advance.

"I said 'It won't do.' I don't know what I meant by it. If I meant
anything I was wrong. It _will_ do. The situation is perfectly agreeable
to me."

"Insolence will not help you," she said sharply. And under the sharpness
he detected the slightest quaver of a new alarm.

"I am going to free myself," he said coolly.

"If you move I shall certainly shoot!" she retorted.

"I am going to move--but only my lips. I have only to move my lips to
free myself."

"I should scarcely advise you to trust to your eloquence. I have been
duly warned, you see."

"Who warned you?" he asked curiously. And, as she disdained to reply:
"Never mind. We can clear that up later. Now let me ask you something."

"You are scarcely in a position to ask questions," she said.

"May I not speak to you?"

"Is it necessary?"

He thought a moment. "No, not necessary. Nothing is in this life, you
know. I thought differently once. Once--when I was younger--six years
younger--I thought happiness was necessary. I found that a man might
live without it."

She stood gazing at him through the shadows, pistol on hip.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that happiness is not necessary to life. Life goes on all the
same. My life has continued for six years without that happiness which
some believe to be essential."

After a silence she said: "I can tell by the way you speak that you are
well born. I--I dread to do what I simply must do."

He, too, sat silent a long time--long enough for an utterly perverse and
whimsical humor to take complete possession of him.

"_Won't_ you let me go--_this_ time?" he pleaded.

"I cannot."

"You had better let me go while you can," he said, "because, perhaps,
you may find it difficult to get rid of me later."

Affronted, she shrank back from the doorway and stood in the center of
her room, angry, disdainful, beautiful, under the ruddy glory of her
lustrous hair.

His perverse mood changed, too; he leaned forward, studying her
minutely--the splendid gray eyes, the delicate mouth and nose, the full,
sweet lips, the witchery of wrist and hand, and the flowing, rounded
outline of limb and body under the pretty gown. Could this be _she_?
This lovely, mature woman, wearing scarcely a trace of the young girl he
had never forgotten--scarcely a trace save in the beauty of her eyes and
hair--save in the full, red mouth, sweet and sensitive even in its
sudden sullenness?

"Once," he said, and his voice sounded to him like voices heard in
dreams--"once, years and years ago, there was a steamer, and a man and a
young girl on board. Do you mind my telling you about it?"

She stood leaning against the footboard of the bed, not even deigning to
raise her eyes in reply. So he made the slightest stir in his chair; and
then she looked up quickly enough, pistol poised.

"The steamer," said Kerns slowly, "was coming into Southampton--six
years ago. On deck these two people stood--a man of twenty-eight, a girl
of eighteen--six years ago. The name of the steamer was the _Carnatic_.
Did you ever hear of that ship?"

She was looking at him attentively. He waited for her reply; she made
none; and he went on.

"The man had asked the girl something--I don't know what--I don't know
why her gray eyes filled with tears. Perhaps it was because she could
not do what the man asked her to do. It may have been to love him; it
may have been that he was asking her to marry him and that she couldn't.
Perhaps that is why there were tears in her eyes--because she may have
been sorry to cause him the pain of refusal--sorry, perhaps, perhaps a
little guilty. Because she must have seen that he was falling in love
with her, and she--she let him--knowing all the time that she was to
marry another man. Did you ever hear of that man before?"

She had straightened up, quivering, wide eyed, lips parted. He rose and
walked slowly into her room, confronting her under the full glare of
light.

Her pistol fell clattering to the floor. It did not explode because it
was not loaded.

"Now," he said unsteadily, "will you give me my freedom? I have waited
for it--not minutes--but years--six years. I ask it now--the freedom I
enjoyed before I ever saw you. Can you give it back to me? Can you
restore to me a capacity for happiness? Can you give me a heart to love
with--love some woman, as other men love? Is it very much I ask of
you--to give me a chance in life--the chance I had before I ever saw
you?"

Her big gray eyes seemed fascinated; he looked deep into them, smiling;
and she turned white.

"Will you give me what I ask?" he said, still smiling.

She strove to speak; she could not, but her eyes never faltered.
Suddenly the color flooded her neck and cheeks to the hair, and the
quick tears glimmered.

"I--I did not understand; I was too young to be cruel," she faltered.
"How could I know what I was doing? Or what--what you did?"

"I? To _you_?"

"Y-yes. Did you think that I escaped heart free? Do you realize what
_my_ punishment was--to--to marry--and _remember_! If I was too young,
too inexperienced to know what I was doing, I was not too young to
suffer for it!"

"You mean--" He strove to control his voice, but the sweet, fearless
gray eyes met his; the old flame leaped in his veins. He reached out to
steady himself and his hand touched hers--that soft, white hand that had
held him all these years in the hollow of its palm.

"Did you _ever_ love me?" he demanded.

Her eyes, wet with tears, met his straight as the starry gaze of a
child.

"Yes," she said.

His hand tightened over hers; she swayed a moment, quivering from head
to foot; then drawing a quick, sobbing breath, closed her eyes,
imprisoned in his arms; and, after a long while, aroused, she looked up
at him, her divine eyes unclosing dreamily.

"Somebody is hammering at the front door," he breathed. "Listen!"

"I hear. I believe it must be the Tracer of Lost Persons."

"What?"

"Only a Mr. Keen."

"O Lord!" said Kerns faintly, and covered his face with her fragrant
hands.

Very tenderly, very gravely, she drew her hands away, and, laying them
on his shoulders, looked up at him.

"You--you know what there is in your suit case," she faltered; "_are_
you a burglar, dear?"

"Ask the Tracer of Lost Persons," said Kerns gently, "what sort of a
criminal I am!"

They stood together for one blissful moment listening to the loud
knocking below, then, hand in hand, they descended the dark stairway to
admit the Tracer of Lost Persons.




CHAPTER XVII


On the thirteenth day of March, 1906, Kerns received the following cable
from an old friend:

     "Is there anybody in New York who can find two criminals for me? I
     don't want to call in the police.

     "J.T. BURKE."

To which Kerns replied promptly:

     "Wire Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, N.Y."

And a day or two later, being on his honeymoon, he forgot all about his
old friend Jack Burke.

On the fifteenth day of March, 1906, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons,
received the following cablegram from Alexandria, Egypt:

     "_Keen, Tracer, New York:_--Locate Joram Smiles, forty, stout,
     lame, red hair, ragged red mustache, cast in left eye, pallid skin;
     carries one crutch; supposed to have arrived in America per S. S.
     _Scythian Queen_, with man known as Emanuel Gandon, swarthy, short,
     fat, light bluish eyes, Eurasian type.

     "I will call on you at your office as soon as my steamer, _Empress
     of Babylon_, arrives. If you discover my men, keep them under
     surveillance, but on no account call in police. Spare no expense.
     Dundas, Gray & Co. are my bankers and reference.

     "JOHN TEMPLETON BURKE."

On Monday, April 2d, a few minutes after eight o'clock in the morning,
the card of Mr. John Templeton Burke was brought to Mr. Keen, Tracer of
Lost Persons, and a moment later a well-built, wiry, sun-scorched young
man was ushered into Mr. Keen's private office by a stenographer
prepared to take minutes of the interview.

The first thing that the Tracer of Lost Persons noted in his visitor was
his mouth; the next his eyes. Both were unmistakably good--the eyes
which his Creator had given him looked people squarely in the face at
every word; the mouth, which a man's own character fashions agreeably or
mars, was pleasant, but firm when the trace of the smile lurking in the
corners died out.

There were dozens of other external characteristics which Mr. Keen
always looked for in his clients; and now the rapid exchange of
preliminary glances appeared to satisfy both men, for they advanced
toward each other and exchanged a formal hand clasp.

"Have you any news for me?" asked Burke.

"I have," said the Tracer. "There are cigars on the table beside
you--matches in that silver case. No, I never smoke; but I like the
aroma--and I like to watch men smoke. Do you know, Mr. Burke, that no
two men smoke in the same fashion? There is as much character in the
manner of holding a cigar as there is difference in the technic of
artists."

Burke nodded, amused, but, catching sight of the busy stenographer, his
bronzed features became serious, and he looked at Mr. Keen inquiringly.

"It is my custom," said the Tracer. "Do you object to my stenographer?"

Burke looked at the slim young girl in her black gown and white collar
and cuffs. Then, very simply, he asked her pardon for objecting to her
presence, but said that he could not discuss his case if she remained.
So she rose, with a humorous glance at Mr. Keen; and the two men stood
up until she had vanished, then reseated themselves _vis-a-vis_. Mr.
Keen calmly dropped his elbow on the concealed button which prepared a
hidden phonograph for the reception of every word that passed between
them.

"What news have you for me, Mr. Keen?" asked the younger man with that
same directness which the Tracer had already been prepared for, and
which only corroborated the frankness of eyes and voice.

"My news is brief," he said. "I have both your men under observation."

"Already?" exclaimed Burke, plainly unprepared. "Do you actually mean
that I can see these men whenever I desire to do so? Are these
scoundrels in this town--within pistol shot?"

His youthful face hardened as he snapped out his last word, like the
crack of a whip.

"I don't know how far your pistol carries," said Mr. Keen. "Do you wish
to swear out a warrant?"

"No, I do not. I merely wish their addresses. You have not used the
police in this matter, have you, Mr. Keen?"

"No. Your cable was explicit," said the Tracer. "Had you permitted me to
use the police it would have been much less expensive for you."

"I can't help that," said the young man. "Besides, in a matter of this
sort, a man cannot decently consider expense."

"A matter of what sort?" asked the Tracer blandly.

"Of _this_ sort."

"Oh! Yet even now I do not understand. You must remember, Mr. Burke,
that you have not told me anything concerning the reasons for your quest
of these two men, Joram Smiles and Emanuel Gandon. Besides, this is the
first time you have mentioned pistol range."

Burke, smoking steadily, looked at the Tracer through the blue fog of
his cigar.

"No," he said, "I have not told you anything about them."

Mr. Keen waited a moment; then, smiling quietly to himself, he wrote
down the present addresses of Joram Smiles and Emanuel Gandon, and,
tearing off the leaf, handed it to the younger man, saying: "I omit the
pistol range, Mr. Burke."

"I am very grateful to you," said Burke. "The efficiency of your system
is too famous for me to venture to praise it. All I can say is 'Thank
you'; all I can do in gratitude is to write my check--if you will be
kind enough to suggest the figures."

"Are you sure that my services are ended?"

"Thank you, quite sure."

So the Tracer of Lost Persons named the figures, and his client produced
a check book and filled in a check for the amount. This was presented
and received with pleasant formality. Burke rose, prepared to take his
leave, but the Tracer was apparently busy with the combination lock of a
safe, and the young man lingered a moment to make his adieus.

As he stood waiting for the Tracer to turn around he studied the writing
on the sheet of paper which he held toward the light:

     Joram Smiles, no profession, 613 West 24th Street. Emanuel Gandon,
     no profession, same address. Very dangerous men.

It occurred to him that these three lines of pencil-writing had cost him
a thousand dollars--and at the same instant he flushed with shame at the
idea of measuring the money value of anything in such a quest as this.

And yet--and yet he had already spent a great deal of money in his brief
quest, and--_was_ he any nearer the goal--even with the penciled
addresses of these two men in his possession? Even with these men almost
within pistol shot!

Pondering there, immersed in frowning retrospection, the room, the
Tracer, the city seemed to fade from his view. He saw the red sand
blowing in the desert; he heard the sickly squealing of camels at the El
Teb Wells; he saw the sun strike fire from the rippling waters of Sais;
he saw the plain, and the ruins high above it; and the odor of the Long
Bazaar smote him like a blow, and he heard the far call to prayer from
the minarets of Sa-el-Hagar, once Sais, the mysterious--Sais of the
million lanterns, Sais of that splendid festival where the Great Triad's
worship swayed dynasty after dynasty, and where, through the hot
centuries, Isis, veiled, impassive, looked out upon the hundredth king
of kings, Meris, the Builder of Gardens, dragged dead at the chariot of
Upper and Lower Egypt.

Slowly the visions faded; into his remote eyes crept the consciousness
of the twentieth century again; he heard the river whistles blowing, and
the far dissonance of the streets--that iron undertone vibrating through
the metropolis of the West from river to river and from the Palisades to
the sea.

His gaze wandered about the room, from telephone desk to bookcase, from
the table to the huge steel safe, door ajar, swung outward like the
polished breech of a twelve-inch gun.

Then his vacant eyes met the eyes of the Tracer of Lost Persons, almost
helplessly. And for the first time the full significance of this quest
he had undertaken came over him like despair--this strange, hopeless,
fantastic quest, blindly, savagely pursued from the sand wastes of Sais
to the wastes of this vast arid city of iron and masonry, ringing to the
sky with the menacing clamor of its five monstrous boroughs.

Curiously weary of a sudden, he sat down, resting his head on one hand.
The Tracer watched him, bent partly over his desk. From moment to moment
he tore minute pieces from the blotter, or drew imaginary circles and
arabesques on his pad with an inkless pen.

"Perhaps I could help you, after all--if you'd let me try," he said
quietly.

"Dou you mean--_me_?" asked Burke, without raising his head.

"If you like--yes, you--or any man in trouble--in perplexity--in the
uncertain deductions which arise from an attempt at self-analysis."

"It is true; I am trying to analyze myself. I believe that I don't know
how. All has been mere impulse--so far. No, I don't know how to analyze
it all."

"I do," said the Tracer.

Burke raised his level, unbelieving eyes.

"You are in love," said the Tracer.

After a long time Burke looked up again. "Do you think so?"

"Yes. Can I help you?" asked the Tracer pleasantly.

The young man sat silent, frowning into space; then:

"I tell you plainly enough that I have come here to argue with two men
at the end of a pistol; and--you tell me I'm in love. By what logic--"

"It is written in your face, Mr. Burke--in your eyes, in every feature,
every muscle's contraction, every modulation of your voice. My tables,
containing six hundred classified superficial phenomena peculiar to all
human emotions, have been compiled and scientifically arranged according
to Bertillon's system. It is an absolutely accurate key to every phase
of human emotion, from hate, through all its amazingly paradoxical
phenomena, to love, with all its genera under the suborder--all its
species, subspecies, and varieties."

He leaned back, surveying the young man with kindly amusement.

"You talk of pistol range, but you are thinking of something more fatal
than bullets, Mr. Burke. You are thinking of love--of the first, great,
absorbing, unreasoning passion that has ever shaken you, blinded you,
seized you and dragged you out of the ordered path of life, to push you
violently into the strange and unexplored! That is what stares out on
the world through those haunted eyes of yours, when the smile dies out
and you are off your guard; that is what is hardening those flat, clean
bands of muscle in jaw and cheek; that is what those hints of shadow
mean beneath the eye, that new and delicate pinch to the nostril, that
refining, almost to sharpness, of the nose, that sensitive edging to the
lips, and the lean delicacy of the chin."

He bent slightly forward in his chair.

"There is all that there, Mr. Burke, and something else--the glimmering
dawn of desperation."

"Yes," said the other, "that is there. I am desperate."

"_Ex_actly. Also you wear two revolvers in a light, leather harness
strapped up under your armpits," said the Tracer, laughing. "Take them
off, Mr. Burke. There is nothing to be gained in shooting up Mr. Smiles
or converting Mr. Gandon into nitrates."

"If it is a matter where one man can help another," the Tracer added
simply, "it would give me pleasure to place my resources at your
command--without recompense--"

"Mr. Keen!" said Burke, astonished.

"Yes?"

"You are very amiable; I had not wished--had not expected anything
except professional interest from you."

"Why not? I like you, Mr. Burke."

The utter disarming candor of this quiet, elderly gentleman silenced the
younger man with a suddenness born of emotions long crushed, long
relentlessly mastered, and which now, in revolt, shook him fiercely in
every fiber. All at once he felt very young, very helpless in the
world--that same world through which, until within a few weeks, he had
roved so confidently, so arrogantly, challenging man and the gods
themselves in the pride of his strength and youth.

But now, halting, bewildered, lost amid the strange maze of byways
whither impulse had lured and abandoned him, he looked out into a world
of wilderness and unfamiliar stars and shadow shapes undreamed of, and
he knew not which way to turn--not even how to return along the ways his
impetuous feet had trodden in this strange and hopeless quest of his.

"How can you help me?" he said bluntly, while the quivering undertone
rang in spite of him. "Yes, I am in love; but how can any living man
help me?"

"Are you in love with the dead?" asked the Tracer gravely. "For that
only is hopeless. Are you in love with one who is not living?"

"Yes."

"You love one whom you know to be dead?"

"Yes; dead."

"How do you know that she is dead?"

"That is not the question. I knew that when I fell in love with her. It
is not that which appals me; I ask nothing more than to live my life out
loving the dead. I--I ask very little."

He passed his unsteady hand across his dry lips, across his eyes and
forehead, then laid his clinched fist on the table.

"Some men remain constant to a memory; some to a picture--sane,
wholesome, normal men. Some men, with a fixed ideal, never encounter its
facsimile, and so never love. There is nothing strange, after all, in
this; nothing abnormal, nothing unwholesome. Gruenwald loved the marble
head and shoulders of the lovely Amazon in the Munich Museum; he died
unmarried, leaving the charities and good deeds of a blameless life to
justify him. Sir Henry Guest, the great surgeon who worked among the
poor without recompense, loved Gainsborough's 'Lady Wilton.' The
portrait hangs above his tomb in St. Clement's Hundreds. D'Epernay loved
Mlle. Jeanne Vacaresco, who died before he was born. And I--I love in
my own fashion."

His low voice rang with the repressed undertone of excitement; he opened
and closed his clinched hand as though controlling the lever of his
emotions.

"What can you do for a man who loves the shadow of Life?" he asked.

"If you love the shadow because the substance has passed away--if you
love the soul because the dust has returned to the earth as it was--"

"It has _not_!" said the younger man.

The Tracer said very gravely: "It is written that whenever 'the Silver
Cord' is loosed, 'then shall the dust return unto the earth as it was,
and the spirit shall return unto Him who gave it.'"

"The spirit--yes; _that_ has taken its splendid flight--"

His voice choked up, died out; he strove to speak again, but could not.
The Tracer let him alone, and bent again over his desk, drawing
imaginary circles on the stained blotter, while moment after moment
passed under the tension of that fiercest of all struggles, when a man
sits throttling his own soul into silence.

And, after a long time, Burke lifted a haggard face from the cradle of
his crossed arms and shook his shoulders, drawing a deep, steady breath.

"Listen to _me_!" he said in an altered voice.

And the Tracer of Lost Persons nodded.




CHAPTER XVIII


"When I left the Point I was assigned to the colored cavalry. They are
good men; we went up Kettle Hill together. Then came the Philippine
troubles, then that Chinese affair. Then I did staff duty, and could not
stand the inactivity and resigned. They had no use for me in Manchuria;
I tired of waiting, and went to Venezuela. The prospects for service
there were absurd; I heard of the Moorish troubles and went to Morocco.
Others of my sort swarmed there; matters dragged and dragged, and the
Kaiser never meant business, anyway.

"Being independent, and my means permitting me, I got some shooting in
the back country. This all degenerated into the merest nomadic
wandering--nothing but sand, camels, ruins, tents, white walls, and blue
skies. And at last I came to the town of Sa-el-Hagar."

His voice died out; his restless, haunted eyes became fixed.

"Sa-el-Hagar, once ancient Sais," repeated the Tracer quietly; and the
young man looked at him.

"You know _that_?"

"Yes," said the Tracer.

For a while Burke remained silent, preoccupied, then, resting his chin
on his hand and speaking in a curiously monotonous voice, as though
repeating to himself by rote, he went on:

"The town is on the heights--have you a pencil? Thank you. Here is the
town of Sa-el-Hagar, here are the ruins, here is the wall, and somewhere
hereabouts should be the buried temple of Neith, which nobody has
found." He shifted his pencil. "Here is the lake of Sais; here, standing
all alone on the plain, are those great monolithic pillars stretching
away into perspective--four hundred of them in all--a hundred and nine
still upright. There were one hundred and ten when I arrived at El Teb
Wells."

He looked across at the Tracer, repeating: "One hundred and ten--when I
arrived. One fell the first night--a distant pillar far away on the
horizon. Four thousand years had it stood there. And it fell--the first
night of my arrival. I heard it; the nights are cold at El Teb Wells,
and I was lying awake, all a-shiver, counting the stars to make me
sleep. And very, very far away in the desert I heard and felt the shock
of its fall--the fall of forty centuries under the Egyptian stars."

His eyes grew dreamy; a slight glow had stained his face.

"Did you ever halt suddenly in the Northern forests, listening, as
though a distant voice had hailed you? Then you understand why that far,
dull sound from the dark horizon brought me to my feet, bewildered,
listening, as though my own name had been spoken.

"I heard the wind in the tents and the stir of camels; I heard the reeds
whispering on Sais Lake and the yap-yap of a shivering jackal; and
always, always, the hushed echo in my ears of my own name called across
the star-lit waste.

"At dawn I had forgotten. An Arab told me that a pillar had fallen; it
was all the same to me, to him, to the others, too. The sun came out
hot. I like heat. My men sprawled in the tents; some watered, some went
up to the town to gossip in the bazaar. I mounted and cast bridle on
neck--you see how much I cared where I went! In two hours we had
completed a circle--like a ruddy hawk above El Teb. And my horse halted
beside the fallen pillar."

As he spoke his language had become very simple, very direct, almost
without accent, and he spoke slowly, picking his way with that lack of
inflection, of emotion characteristic of a child reading a new reader.

"The column had fallen from its base, eastward, and with its base it had
upheaved another buried base, laying bare a sort of cellar and a flight
of stone steps descending into darkness.

"Into this excavation the sand was still running in tiny rivulets.
Listening, I could hear it pattering far, far down into the shadows.

"Sitting there in the saddle, the thing explained itself as I looked.
The fallen pillar had been built upon older ruins; all Egypt is that
way, ruin founded on the ruin of ruins--like human hopes.

"The stone steps, descending into the shadow of remote ages, invited me.
I dismounted, walked to the edge of the excavation, and, kneeling,
peered downward. And I saw a wall and the lotus-carved rim of a vast
stone-framed pool; and as I looked I heard the tinkle of water. For the
pillar, falling, had unbottled the ancient spring, and now the
stone-framed lagoon was slowly filling after its drought of centuries.

"There was light enough to see by, but, not knowing how far I might
penetrate, I returned to my horse, pocketed matches and candles from
the saddlebags, and, returning, started straight down the steps of
stone.

"Fountain, wall, lagoon, steps, terraces half buried--all showed what
the place had been: a water garden of ancient Egypt--probably
royal--because, although I am not able to decipher hieroglyphics, I have
heard somewhere that these picture inscriptions, when inclosed in a
cartouch like this"--he drew rapidly--

[Illustration: Glyph]

"or this

[Illustration: Glyph]

indicate that the subject of the inscription was once a king.

"And on every wall, every column, I saw the insignia of ancient royalty,
and I saw strange hawk-headed figures bearing symbols engraved on
stone--beasts, birds, fishes, unknown signs and symbols; and everywhere
the lotus carved in stone--the bud, the blossom half-inclosed, the
perfect flower."

His dreamy eyes met the gaze of the Tracer, unseeing; he rested his
sunburned face between both palms, speaking in the same vague monotone:

"Everywhere dust, ashes, decay, the death of life, the utter
annihilation of the living--save only the sparkle of reborn waters
slowly covering the baked bed of the stone-edged pool--strange, luminous
water, lacking the vital sky tint, enameled with a film of dust, yet,
for all that, quickening with imprisoned brilliancy like an opal.

"The slow filling of the pool fascinated me; I stood I know not how long
watching the thin film of water spreading away into the dimness beyond.
At last I turned and passed curiously along the wall where, at its base,
mounds of dust marked what may have been trees. Into these I probed with
my riding crop, but discovered nothing except the depths of the dust.

"When I had penetrated the ghost of this ancient garden for a thousand
yards the light from the opening was no longer of any service. I lighted
a candle; and its yellow rays fell upon a square portal into which led
another flight of steps. And I went down.

"There were eighteen steps descending into a square stone room. Strange
gleams and glimmers from wall and ceiling flashed dimly in my eyes under
the wavering flame of the candle. Then the flame grew still--still as
death--and Death lay at my feet--there on the stone floor--a man, square
shouldered, hairless, the cobwebs of his tunic mantling him, lying face
downward, arms outflung.

"After a moment I stooped and touched him, and the entire prostrate
figure dissolved into dust where it lay, leaving at my feet a shadow
shape in thin silhouette against the pavement--merely a gray layer of
finest dust shaped like a man, a tracery of impalpable powder on the
stones.

"Upward and around me I passed the burning candle; vast figures in blue
and red and gold grew out of the darkness; the painted walls sparkled;
the shadows that had slept through all those centuries trembled and
shrank away into distant corners.

"And then--and then I saw the gold edges of her sandals sparkle in the
darkness, and the clasped girdle of virgin gold around her slender waist
glimmered like purest flame!"

Burke, leaning far across the table, interlocked hands tightening,
stared and stared into space. A smile edged his mouth; his voice grew
wonderfully gentle:

"Why, she was scarcely eighteen--this child--there so motionless, so
lifelike, with the sandals edging her little upturned feet, and the
small hands of her folded between the breasts. It was as though she
had just stretched herself out there--scarcely sound asleep as yet, and
her thick, silky hair--cut as they cut children's hair in these days,
you know--cradled her head and cheeks.

[Illustration: "'As though . . . scarcely sound asleep as yet.'"]

"So marvelous the mimicry of life, so absolute the deception of
breathing sleep, that I scarce dared move, fearing to awaken her.

"When I did move I forgot the dusty shape of the dead at my feet, and
left, full across his neck, the imprint of a spurred riding boot. It
gave me my first shudder; I turned, feeling beneath my foot the soft,
yielding powder, and stood aghast. Then--it is absurd!--but I felt as a
man feels who has trodden inadvertently upon another's foot--and in an
impulse of reparation I stooped hastily and attempted to smooth out the
mortal dust which bore the imprint of my heel. But the fine powder
flaked my glove, and, looking about for something to compose the ashes
with, I picked up a papyrus scroll. Perhaps he himself had written on
it; nobody can ever know, and I used it as a sort of hoe to scrape him
together and smooth him out on the stones."

The young man drew a yellowish roll of paper-like substance from his
pocket and laid it on the table.

"This is the same papyrus," he said. "I had forgotten that I carried it
away with me until I found it in my shooting coat while packing to sail
for New York."

The Tracer of Lost Persons reached over and picked up the scroll. It was
flexible still, but brittle; he opened it with great care, considered
the strange figures upon it for a while, then turned almost sharply on
his visitor.

"Go on," he said.

And Burke went on:

"The candle was burning low; I lighted two more, placing them at her
head and feet on the edges of the stone couch. Then, lighting a third
candle, I stood beside the couch and looked down at the dead girl under
her veil-like robe, set with golden stars."

He passed his hand wearily over his hair and forehead.

"I do not know what the accepted meaning of beauty may be if it was not
there under my eyes. Flawless as palest amber ivory and rose, the
smooth-flowing contours melted into exquisite symmetry; lashes like
darkest velvet rested on the pure curve of the cheeks; the closed lids,
the mouth still faintly stained with color, the delicate nose, the full,
childish lips, sensitive, sweet, resting softly upon each other--if
these were not all parts of but one lovely miracle, then there is no
beauty save in a dream of Paradise. . . .

"A gold band of linked scarabs bound her short, thick hair straight
across the forehead; thin scales of gold fell from a necklace, clothing
her breasts in brilliant discolored metal, through which ivory-tinted
skin showed. A belt of pure, soft gold clasped her body at the waist;
gold-edged sandals clung to her little feet.

"At first, when the stunned surprise had subsided, I thought that I was
looking upon some miracle of ancient embalming, hitherto unknown. Yet,
in the smooth skin there was no slit to prove it, no opening in any vein
or artery, no mutilation of this sculptured masterpiece of the Most
High, no cerements, no bandages, no gilded carven case with painted face
to stare open eyed through the wailing cycles.

"This was the image of sleep--of life unconscious--not of death. Yet is
was death--death that had come upon her centuries and centuries ago; for
the gold had turned iridescent and magnificently discolored; the sandal
straps fell into dust as I bent above them, leaving the sandals clinging
to her feet only by the wired silver core of the thongs. And, as I
touched it fearfully, the veil-like garment covering her, vanished into
thin air, its metal stars twinkling in a shower around her on the stone
floor."

The Tracer, motionless, intent, scarcely breathed; the younger man moved
restlessly in his chair, the dazed light in his eyes clearing to sullen
consciousness.

"What more is there to tell?" he said. "And to what purpose? All this is
time wasted. I have my work cut out for me. What more is there to tell?"

"What you have left untold," said the Tracer, with the slightest ring of
authority in his quiet voice.

And, as though he had added "Obey!" the younger man sank back in his
chair, his hands contracting nervously.

"I went back to El Teb," he said; "I walked like a dreaming man. My
sleep was haunted by her beauty; night after night, when at last I fell
asleep, instantly I saw her face, and her dark eyes opening into mine in
childish bewilderment; day after day I rode out to the fallen pillar and
descended to that dark chamber where she lay alone. Then there came a
time when I could not endure the thought of her lying there alone. I had
never dared to touch her. Horror of what might happen had held me aloof
lest she crumble at my touch to that awful powder which I had trodden
on.

"I did not know what to do; my Arabs had begun to whisper among
themselves, suspicious of my absences, impatient to break camp, perhaps,
and roam on once more. Perhaps they believed I had discovered treasure
somewhere; I am not sure. At any rate, dread of their following me,
determination to take my dead away with me, drove me into action; and
that day when I reached her silent chamber I lighted my candle, and,
leaning above her for one last look, I touched her shoulder with my
finger tip.

"It was a strange sensation. Prepared for a dreadful dissolution,
utterly unprepared for cool, yielding flesh, I almost dropped where I
stood. For her body was neither cold nor warm, neither dust-dry nor
moist; neither the skin of the living nor the dead. It was firm, almost
stiff, yet not absolutely without a certain hint of flexibility.

"The appalling wonder of it consumed me; fear, incredulity, terror,
apathy succeeded each other; then slowly a fierce shrinking happiness
swept me in every fiber.

"This marvelous death, this triumph of beauty over death, was mine.
Never again should she lie here alone through the solitudes of night and
day; never again should the dignity of Death lack the tribute demanded
of Life. Here was the appointed watcher--I, who had found her alone in
the wastes of the world--all alone on the outermost edges of the
world--a child, dead and unguarded. And standing there beside her I knew
that I should never love again."

He straightened up, stretching out his arm: "I did not intend to carry
her away to what is known as Christian burial. How could I consign her
to darkness again, with all its dreadful mockery of marble, all its
awful emblems?

"This lovely stranger was to be my guest forever. The living should be
near her while she slept so sweetly her slumber through the centuries;
she should have warmth, and soft hangings and sunlight and flowers; and
her unconscious ears should be filled with the pleasant stir of living
things. . . . I have a house in the country, a very old house among
meadows and young woodlands. And I--I had dreamed of giving this child a
home--"

His voice broke; he buried his head in his hands a moment; but when he
lifted it again his features were hard as steel.

"There was already talk in the bazaar about me. I was probably followed,
but I did not know it. Then one of my men disappeared. For a week I
hesitated to trust my Arabs; but there was no other way. I told them
there was a mummy which I desired to carry to some port and smuggle out
of the country without consulting the Government. I knew perfectly well
that the Government would never forego its claim to such a relic of
Egyptian antiquity. I offered my men too much, perhaps. I don't know.
They hesitated for a week, trying by every artifice to see the treasure,
but I never let them out of my sight.

"Then one day two white men came into camp; and with them came a
government escort to arrest me for looting an Egyptian tomb. The white
men were Joram Smiles and that Eurasian, Emanuel Gandon, who was partly
white, I suppose. I didn't comprehend what they were up to at first.
They escorted me forty miles to confront the official at Shen-Bak. When,
after a stormy week, I was permitted to return to Sais, my Arabs and the
white men were gone. And the stone chamber under the water garden wall
was empty as the hand I hold out to you!"

He opened his palm and rose, his narrowing eyes clear and dangerous.

"At the bazaar I learned enough to know what had been done. I traced the
white men to the coast. They sailed on the _Scythian Queen_, taking
with them all that I care for on earth or in heaven! And you ask me why
I measure their distance from me by a bullet's flight!"

The Tracer also rose, pale and grave.

"Wait!" he said. "There are other things to be done before you prepare
to face a jury for double murder."

"It is for them to choose," said Burke. "They shall have the choice of
returning to me my dead, or of going to hell full of lead."

"_Ex_actly, my dear sir. That part is not difficult," said the Tracer
quietly. "There will be no occasion for violence, I assure you. Kindly
leave such details to me. I know what is to be done. You are outwardly
very calm, Mr. Burke--even dangerously placid; but though you maintain
an admirable command over yourself superficially, you are laboring under
terrible excitement. Therefore it is my duty to say to you at once that
there is no cause for your excitement, no cause for your apprehension as
to results. I feel exceedingly confident that you will, in due time,
regain possession of all that you care for most--quietly, quietly, my
dear sir! You are not yet ready to meet these men, nor am I ready to go
with you. I beg you to continue your habit of self-command for a
little while. There is no haste--that is to say, there is every reason
to make haste slowly. And the quickest method is to seat yourself. Thank
you. And I shall sit here beside you and spread out this papyrus scroll
for your inspection."

[Illustration: Hieroglyphics]

Burke stared at the Tracer, then at the scroll.

"What has that inscription to do with the matter in hand?" he demanded
impatiently.

"I leave you to judge," said the Tracer. A dull tint of excitement
flushed his lean cheeks; he twisted his gray mustache and bent over the
unrolled scroll which was now held flat by weights at the four corners.

"Can you understand any of these symbols, Mr. Burke?" he asked.

"No."

"Curious," mused the Tracer. "Do you know it was fortunate that you put
this bit of papyrus in the pocket of your shooting coat--so fortunate
that, in a way, it approaches the miraculous?"

"What do you mean? Is there anything in that scroll bearing on this
matter?"

"Yes."

"And you can read it? Are you versed in such learning, Mr. Keen?"

"I am an Egyptologist--among other details," said the Tracer calmly.

The young man gazed at him, astonished. The Tracer of Lost Persons
picked up a pencil, laid a sheet of paper on the table beside the
papyrus, and slowly began to copy the first symbol:

[Illustration: Glyph]




CHAPTER XIX


"The ancient Egyptian word for the personal pronoun 'I' was _anuk_,"
said the Tracer placidly. "The phonetic for _a_ was the hieroglyph

[Illustration: Glyph]

a reed; for _n_ the water symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

for _u_ the symbols

[Illustration: Glyph]

for _k_

[Illustration: Glyph]

Therefore this hieroglyphic inscription begins with the personal pronoun

[Illustration: Glyph]

or _I_. That is very easy, of course.

"Now, the most ancient of Egyptian inscriptions read vertically in
columns; there are only two columns in this papyrus, so we'll try it
vertically and pass downward to the next symbol, which is inclosed in a
sort of frame or cartouch. That immediately signifies that royalty is
mentioned; therefore, we have already translated as much as 'I, the king
(or queen).' Do you see?"

"Yes," said Burke, staring.

"Very well. Now this symbol, number two,

[Illustration: Glyph]

spells out the word '_Meris_,' in this way: M (pronounced _me_) is
phonetically symbolized by the characters

[Illustration: Glyph]

_r_ by

[Illustration: Glyph]

(a mouth) and the comma

[Illustration: Glyph]

and the hieroglyph

[Illustration: Glyph]

_i_ by two reeds

[Illustration: Glyph]

and two oblique strokes,

[Illustration: Glyph]

and _s_ by

[Illustration: Glyph]

This gives us Meris, the name of that deposed and fugitive king of
Egypt who, after a last raid on the summer palace of Mer-Shen, usurping
ruler of Egypt, was followed and tracked to Sais, where, with an arrow
through his back, he crawled to El Teb and finally died there of his
wound. All this Egyptologists are perfectly familiar with in the
translations of the boastful tablets and inscriptions erected near Sais
by Mer-Shen, the three hundred and twelfth sovereign after Queen
Nitocris."

He looked up at Burke, smiling. "Therefore," he said, "this papyrus
scroll was written by Meris, ex-king, a speculative thousands of years
before Christ. And it begins: 'I, Meris the King.'"

"How does all this bear upon what concerns me?" demanded Burke.

"Wait!"

Something in the quiet significance of the Tracer's brief command sent a
curious thrill through the younger man. He leaned stiffly forward,
studying the scroll, every faculty concentrated on the symbol which the
Tracer had now touched with the carefully sharpened point of his pencil:

[Illustration: Glyph]

"That," said Mr. Keen, "is the ancient Egyptian word for 'little,'
'_Ket_.' The next, below, written in two lines, is 'Samaris,' a proper
name--the name of a woman. Under that, again, is the symbol for the
number 18; the decimal sign,

[Illustration: Glyph]

and eight vertical strokes,

[Illustration: Glyph]

Under that, again, is a hieroglyph of another sort, an ideograph
representing a girl with a harp; and, beneath that, the symbol which
always represented a dancing girl

[Illustration: Glyph]

and also the royal symbol inclosed in a cartouch,

[Illustration: Glyph]

which means literally 'the Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.' Under that
is the significant symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

representing an arm and a hand holding a stick. This always means
_force_--to take forcibly or to use violence. Therefore, so far, we have
the following literal translation: 'I, Meris the King, little Samaris,
eighteen, a harpist, dancing girl, the Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt,
to take by violence--'"

"What does that make?" broke in Burke impatiently.

"_Wait!_ Wait until we have translated everything literally. And, Mr.
Burke, it might make it easier for us both if you would remember that I
have had the pleasure of deciphering many hundreds of papyri before you
had ever heard that there were such things."

"I beg your pardon," said the young man in a low voice.

"I beg yours for my impatience," said the Tracer pleasantly. "This
deciphering always did affect my nerves and shorten my temper. And, no
doubt, it is quite as hard on you. Shall we go on, Mr. Burke?"

"If you please, Mr. Keen."

So the Tracer laid his pencil point on the next symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

"That is the symbol for night," he said; "and that

[Illustration: Glyph]

is the water symbol again, as you know; and that

[Illustration: Glyph]

is the ideograph, meaning a ship. The five reversed crescents

[Illustration: Glyph]

record the number of days voyage; the sign

[Illustration: Glyph]

means a house, and is also the letter H in the Egyptian alphabet.

"Under it, again, we have a repetition of the first symbol meaning _I_,
and a repetition of the second symbol, meaning 'Meris, the King.' Then,
below that cartouch, comes a new symbol,

[Illustration: Glyph]

which is the feminine personal pronoun, _sentus_, meaning '_she_'; and
the first column is completed with the symbol for the ancient Egyptian
verb, _nehes_, 'to awake,'

[Illustration: Glyph]

"And now we take the second column, which begins with the jackal
ideograph expressing slyness or cleverness. Under it is the hieroglyph
meaning 'to run away,' 'to escape.' And under that, Mr. Burke, is one of
the rarest of all Egyptian symbols; a symbol seldom seen on stone or
papyrus,

[Illustration: Glyph]

except in rare references to the mysteries of Isis. The meaning of it,
so long in dispute, has finally been practically determined through a
new discovery in the cuneiform inscriptions. It is the symbol of two
hands holding two _closed_ eyes; and it signifies power."

"You mean that those ancients understood hypnotism?" asked Burke,
astonished.

"Evidently their priests did; evidently hypnotism was understood and
employed in certain mysteries. And there is the symbol of it; and under
it the hieroglyphs

[Illustration: Glyph]

meaning 'a day and a night,' with the symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

as usual present to signify force or strength employed. Under that,
again, is a human figure stretched upon a typical Egyptian couch. And
now, Mr. Burke, _note carefully_ three modifying signs: first, that it
is a _couch_ or _bed_ on which the figure is stretched, not the funeral
couch, not the embalming slab; second, there is no mummy mask covering
the face, and no mummy case covering the body; third, that under the
recumbent figure is pictured an _open_ mouth, not a _closed_ one.

"All these modify the ideograph, apparently representing death. But the
sleep symbol is not present. Therefore it is a sound inference that all
this simply confirms the symbol of hypnotism."

Burke, intensely absorbed, stared steadily at the scroll.

"Now," continued Mr. Keen, "we note the symbol of force again, always
present; and, continuing horizontally, a cartouch quite empty except for
the midday sun. That is simply translated; the midday sun illuminates
nothing. Meris, deposed, is king only in name; and the sun no longer
shines on him as 'Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt.' Under that despairing
symbol, 'King of Nothing,' we have

[Illustration: Glyph]

the phonetics which spell _sha_, the word for garden. And, just beyond
this, horizontally, the modifying ideograph meaning 'a _water_ garden';

[Illustration: Glyph]

a design of lotus and tree alternating on a terrace. Under that is the
symbol for the word '_aneb_,'

[Illustration: Glyph]

a 'wall.' Beyond that, horizontally, is the symbol for 'house.' It
should be placed under the wall symbol, but the Egyptians were very apt
to fill up spaces instead of continuing their vertical columns. Now,
beneath, we find the imperative command

[Illustration: Glyph]

'arise!' And the Egyptian personal pronoun '_entuten_,'

[Illustration: Glyph]

which means 'you' or 'thou.'

"Under that is the symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

which means 'priest,' or, literally, 'priest man.' Then comes the
imperative 'awake to life!'

[Illustration: Glyph]

After that, our first symbol again, meaning '_I_,' followed horizontally
by the symbol

[Illustration: Glyph]

signifying 'to go.'

"Then comes a very important drawing--you see?--the picture of a man
with a jackal's head, not a dog's head. It is not accompanied by the
phonetic in a cartouch, as it should be. Probably the writer was in
desperate haste at the end. But, nevertheless, it is easy to translate
that symbol of the man with a jackal's head. It is a picture of the
Egyptian god, Anubis, who was supposed to linger at the side of the
dying to conduct their souls. Anubis, the jackal-headed, is the courier,
the personal escort of departing souls. And this is he.

"And now the screed ends with the cry 'Pray for me!'

[Illustration: Glyph]

the last symbol on this strange scroll--this missive written by a
deposed, wounded, and dying king to an unnamed priest. Here is the
literal translation in columns:

I                                  cunning
Meris the King                     escape
little                             hypnotize
Samaris                            King of Nothing
eighteen                           place forcibly
a harpist                          garden
a dancing girl--Ruler of           water garden
  Upper and Lower                  wall
  Egypt                            house
took forcibly--night               Arise. Do
by water                           Thou
five days                          Priest Man
ship                               Awake
house                              To life
I                                  I go
Meris the King                     Anubis
she                                Pray
awake

"And this is what that letter, thousands of years old, means in this
language of ours, hundreds of years young: 'I, Meris the King, seized
little Samaris, a harpist and a dancing girl, eighteen years of age,
belonging to the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and carried her away at
night on shipboard--a voyage of five days--to my house. I, Meris the
King, lest she lie awake watching cunningly for a chance to escape,
hypnotized her (or had her hypnotized) so that she lay like one dead or
asleep, but breathing, and I, King no longer of Upper and Lower Egypt,
took her and placed her in my house under the wall of the water garden.
Arise! therefore, O thou priest; (go) and awaken her to life. I am dying
(I go with Anubis!). Pray for me!'"




CHAPTER XX


For a full minute the two men sat there without moving or speaking. Then
the Tracer laid aside his pencil.

"To sum up," he said, opening the palm of his left hand and placing the
forefinger of his right across it, "the excavation made by the falling
pillar raised in triumph above the water garden of the deposed king,
Meris, by his rival, was the subterranean house of Meris. The prostrate
figure which crumbled to powder at your touch may have been the very
priest to whom this letter or papyrus was written. Perhaps the bearer of
the scroll was a traitor and stabbed the priest as he was reading the
missive. Who can tell how that priest died? He either died or betrayed
his trust, for he never aroused the little Samaris from her suspended
animation. And the water garden fell into ruins and she slept; and the
Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt raised his columns, lotus crowned, above
the ruins; and she slept on. Then--_you_ came."

Burke stared like one stupefied.

"I do not know," said the Tracer gravely, "what balm there may be in a
suspension of sensation, perhaps of vitality, to protect the human body
from corruption after death. I do not know how soon suspended animation
or the state of hypnotic coma, undisturbed, changes into death--whether
it comes gradually, imperceptibly freeing the soul; whether the soul
hides there, asleep, until suddenly the flame of vitality is
extinguished. I do not know how long she lay there with life in her."

He leaned back and touched an electric bell, then, turning to Burke:

"Speaking of pistol range," he said, "unstrap those weapons and pass
them over, if you please."

And the young man obeyed as in a trance.

"Thank you. There are four men coming into this room. You will keep your
seat, if you please, Mr. Burke."

After a moment the door opened noiselessly. Two men handcuffed together
entered the room; two men, hands in their pockets, sauntered carelessly
behind the prisoners and leaned back against the closed door.

"That short, red-haired, lame man with the cast in his eye--do you
recognize him?" asked the Tracer quietly.

Burke, grasping the arms of his chair, had started to rise, fury fairly
blazing from his eyes; but, at the sound of the Tracer's calm, even
voice, he sank back into his chair.

"That is Joram Smiles? You recognize him?" continued Mr. Keen.

Burke nodded.

"_Ex_actly--alias Limpy, alias Red Jo, alias Big Stick Joram, alias
Pinky; swindler, international confidence man, fence, burglar, gambler;
convicted in 1887, and sent to Sing Sing for forgery; convicted in 1898,
and sent to Auburn for swindling; arrested by my men on board the S. S.
_Scythian Queen_, at the cabled request of John T. Burke, Esquire, and
held to explain the nature of his luggage, which consisted of the
contents of an Egyptian vault or underground ruin, declared at the
customhouse as a mummy, and passed as such."

The quiet, monotonous voice of the Tracer halted, then, as he glanced at
the second prisoner, grew harder:

"Emanuel Gandon, general international criminal, with over half a
hundred aliases, arrested in company with Smiles and held until Mr.
Burke's arrival."

Turning to Burke, the Tracer continued: "Fortunately, the _Scythian
Queen_ broke down off Brindisi. It gave us time to act on your cable;
we found these men aboard when she was signaled off the Hook. I went out
with the pilot myself, Mr. Burke."

Smiles shot a wicked look at Burke; Gandon scowled at the floor.

"Now," said the Tracer pleasantly, meeting the venomous glare of Smiles,
"I'll get you that warrant you have been demanding to have exhibited to
you. Here it is--charging you and your amiable friend Gandon with
breaking into and robbing the Metropolitan Museum of ancient Egyptian
gold ornaments, in March, 1903, and taking them to France, where they
were sold to collectors. It seems that you found the business good
enough to go prowling about Egypt on a hunt for something to sell here.
A great mistake, my friends--a very great mistake, because, after the
Museum has finished with you, the Egyptian Government desires to
extradite you. And I rather suspect you'll have to go."

He nodded to the two quiet men leaning against the door.

"Come, Joram," said one of them pleasantly.

But Smiles turned furiously on the Tracer. "You lie, you old gray rat!"
he cried. "That ain't no mummy; that's a plain dead girl! And there
ain't no extrydition for body snatchin', so I guess them niggers at
Cairo won't get us, after all!"

"Perhaps," said the Tracer, looking at Burke, who had risen, pale and
astounded. "Sit down, Mr. Burke! There is no need to question these men;
no need to demand what they robbed you of. For," he added slowly, "what
they took from the garden grotto of Sais, and from you, I have under my
own protection."

The Tracer rose, locked the door through which the prisoners and their
escorts had departed; then, turning gravely on Burke, he continued:

"That panel, there, is a door. There is a room beyond--a room facing to
the south, bright with sunshine, flowers, soft rugs, and draperies of
the East. _She_ is there--like a child asleep!"

Burke reeled, steadying himself against the wall; the Tracer stared at
space, speaking very slowly:

"Such death I have never before heard of. From the moment she came under
my protection I have dared to doubt--many things. And an hour ago you
brought me a papyrus scroll confirming my doubts. I doubt still--Heaven
knows what! Who can say how long the flame of life may flicker within
suspended animation? A week? A month? A year? Longer than that? Yes;
the Hindoos have proved it. How long? The span of a normal life? Or
longer? Can the life flame burn indefinitely when the functions are
absolutely suspended--generation after generation, century after
century?"

Burke, ghastly white, straightened up, quivering in every limb; the
Tracer, as pale as he, laid his hand on the secret panel.

"If--if you dare say it--the phrase is this: '_O Ket Samaris,
Nehes!_'--'O Little Samaris, awake!'"

"I--dare. In Heaven's name, open that door!"

Then, averting his head, the Tracer of Lost Persons swung open the
panel.

A flood of sunshine flashed on Burke's face; he entered; and the paneled
door closed behind him without a sound.

Minute after minute passed; the Tracer stood as though turned to stone,
gray head bent.

Then he heard Burke's voice ring out unsteadily:

"O Ket Samaris--Samaris! O Ket Samaris--_Nehes!_"

And again: "Samaris! Samaris! O beloved, awake!"

And once more: "_Nehes!_ O Samaris!"

Silence, broken by a strange, sweet, drowsy plaint--like a child
awakened at midnight by a dazzling light.

"Samaris!"

Then, through the stillness, a little laugh, and a softly tremulous
voice:

"_Ari un aha, O Entuk sen!_"




CHAPTER XXI


"What we want to do," said Gatewood over the telephone, "is to give you
a corking little dinner at the Santa Regina. There'll be Mr. and Mrs.
Tommy Kerns, Captain and Mrs. Harren, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Burke, Mrs.
Gatewood, and myself. We want you to set the date for it, Mr. Keen, and
we also wish you to suggest one more deliriously happy couple whom you
have dragged out of misery and flung head-first into terrestrial
paradise."

"Do you young people really care to do this for me?" asked the Tracer,
laughing.

"Of course we do. We're crazy about it. We want one more couple, and you
to set the date."

There was the slightest pause; then the Tracer's voice, with the same
undertone of amusement ringing through it:

"How would your cousin, Victor Carden, do?"

"He's all right, only he isn't married. We want two people whom you have
joined together after hazard has put them asunder and done stunts with
them."

"Very well; Victor Carden and his very lovely wife will be just the
people."

"Is Victor married?" demanded Gatewood, astonished.

"No," said the Tracer demurely, "but he will be in time for that
dinner." And he set the date for the end of the week in an amused voice,
and rang off.

Then he glanced at the clock, touched an electric bell, and again
unhooking the receiver of the telephone, called up the Sherwood Studios
and asked for Mr. Carden.

"Is _this_ Mr. Carden? Oh, good morning, Mr. Carden! This is Mr. Keen,
Tracer of Lost Persons. Could you make it convenient to call--say in
course of half an hour? Thank you. . . . What? . . . Well, speaking with
that caution and reserve which we are obliged to employ in making any
preliminary statements to our clients, I think I may safely say that you
have every reason to feel moderately encouraged."

"You mean," said Carden's voice, "that you have actually solved the
proposition?"

"It has been a difficult proposition, Mr. Carden; I will not deny that
it has taxed our resources to the uttermost. Over a thousand people,
first and last, have been employed on this case. It has been a slow and
tedious affair, Mr. Carden--tedious for us all. We seldom have a case
continue as long as this has; it is a year ago to-day since you placed
the matter in our hands. . . . What? Well, without committing myself, I
think that I may venture to express a carefully qualified opinion that
the solution of the case is probably practically in the way of being
almost accomplished! . . . Yes, I shall expect you in half an hour.
Good-by!"

The Tracer of Lost Persons' eyes were twinkling as he hung up the
receiver and turned in his revolving chair to meet the pretty young
woman who had entered in response to his ring.

"The Carden case, if you please, Miss Smith," he said, smiling to
himself.

The young woman also smiled; the Carden case had become a classic in the
office. Nobody except Mr. Keen had believed that the case could ever be
solved.

"Safe-deposit box 108923!" said Miss Smith softly, pressing a speaking
tube to her red lips. In a few moments there came a hissing thud from
the pneumatic tube; Miss Smith unlocked it and extracted a smooth, steel
cylinder.

"The combination for that cylinder is A-4-44-11-X," observed the Tracer,
consulting a cipher code, "which, translated," he added, "gives us the
setting combination, One, D, R-R,-J-'24."

Miss Smith turned the movable disks at the end of the cylinder until
the required combination appeared. Then she unscrewed the cylinder head
and dumped out the documents in the famous Carden case.

"As Mr. Carden will be here in half an hour or so I think we had better
run over the case briefly," nodded the Tracer, leaning back in his chair
and composing himself to listen. "Begin with my preliminary memorandum,
Miss Smith."

"Case 108923," began the girl. Then she read the date, Carden's full
name, Victor Carden, a terse biography of the same gentleman, and added:
"Case accepted. Contingent fee, $5,000."

"Quite so," said Mr. Keen; "now, run through the minutes of the first
interview."

And Miss Smith unrolled a typewritten scroll and read:

"Victor Carden, Esquire, the well-known artist, called this evening at
6.30. Tall, well-bred, good appearance, very handsome; very much
embarrassed. Questioned by Mr. Keen he turned pink, and looked timidly
at the stenographer (Miss Colt). Asked if he might not see Mr. Keen
alone, Miss Colt retired. Mr. Keen set the recording phonograph in
motion by dropping his elbow on his desk."

A brief _resume_ of the cylinder records followed:

"Mr. Carden asked Mr. Keen if he (Mr. Keen) knew who he (Mr. Carden)
was. Mr. Keen replied that everybody knew Mr. Carden, the celebrated
painter and illustrator who had created the popular type of beauty known
as the 'Carden Girl.' Mr. Carden blushed and fidgeted. (_Notes from. Mr.
Keen's Observation Book, pp. 291-297._) Admitted that he was the creator
of the 'Carden Girl.' Admitted he had drawn and painted that particular
type of feminine beauty many times. Fidgeted some more. (_Keen's O.B.,
pp. 298-299._) Volunteered the statement that this type of beauty, known
as the 'Carden Girl,' was the cause of great unhappiness to himself.
Questioned, turned pinker and fidgeted. (_K.O.B., page 300._) Denied
that his present trouble was caused by the model who had posed for the
'Carden Girl.' Explained that a number of assorted models had posed for
that type of beauty. Further explained that none of them resembled the
type; that the type was his own creation; that he used models merely for
the anatomy, and that he always idealized form and features.

"Questioned again, admitted that the features of the 'Carden Girl' were
his ideal of the highest and loveliest type of feminine beauty. Did not
deny that he had fallen in love with his own creation. Turned red and
tried to smoke. (_K.O.B., page 303._) Admitted he had been fascinated
himself with his own rendering of a type of beauty which he had never
seen anywhere except as rendered by his own pencil on paper or on
canvas. Fidgeted. (_K.O.B., page 304._) Admitted that he could easily
fall in love with a woman who resembled the 'Carden Girl.' Didn't
believe she ever really existed. Confessed he had hoped for years to
encounter her, but had begun to despair. Admitted that he had ventured
to think that Mr. Keen might trace such a girl for him. Doubted Mr.
Keen's success. Fidgeted (_K.O.B., page 306_), and asked Mr. Keen to
take the case. Promised to send to Mr. Keen a painting in oil which
embodied his loftiest ideal of the type known as the 'Carden Girl.'
(_Portrait received; lithographs made and distributed to our agents
according to routine, from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the
Pacific._)

"Mr. Keen terminated the interview with characteristic tact, accepting
the case on the contingent fee of $5,000."

"Very well," said the Tracer, as Miss Smith rolled up the scroll and
looked at him for further instructions. "Now, perhaps you had better run
over the short summary of proceedings to date. I mean the digest which
you will find attached to the completed records."

Miss Smith found the paper, unrolled it, and read:

"During the twelve months' investigation and search (_in re Carden_)
seven hundred and nine young women were discovered who resembled very
closely the type sought for. By process of elimination, owing to defects
in figure, features, speech, breeding, etc., etc., this list was cut
down to three. One of these occasionally chewed gum, but otherwise
resembled the type. The second married before the investigation of her
habits could be completed. The third is apparently a flawless replica of
Mr. Carden's original in face, figure, breeding, education, moral and
mental habits. (_See Document 23, A._)"

"Read Document 23, A," nodded Mr. Keen.

And Miss Smith read:

ROSALIND HOLLIS, M.D.

Age  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 24

Height  .  .  .  .  .  .   5 feet 9 inches

Weight  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  160 pounds

                      Thick, bright, ruddy
Hair .  .  .  .  .  . golden, and inclined
                      to curl.

Teeth   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect

Eyes .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Dark violet-blue

Mouth   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect

Color   .  .  .  .   Fair. An ivory-tinted
                     blonde.

Figure  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect

Health  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  Perfect

Temper  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . Feminine

                           Austere, with a
Habits  .  .  .  .   resolutely suppressed
                     capacity for romance.

Business   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  None

Profession .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Physician

Mania   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   A Mission

"NOTE.--Dr. Rosalind Hollis was presented to society in her eighteenth
year. At the end of her second season she withdrew from society with the
determination to devote her entire life to charity. Settlement work and
the study of medicine have occupied her constantly. Recently admitted to
practice, she spends her mornings in visiting the poor, whom she treats
free of all charge; her afternoons and evenings are devoted to what she
expects is to be her specialty: the study of the rare malady known as
Lamour's Disease. (_See note on second page._)

"It is understood that Dr. Hollis has abjured the society of all men
other than her patients and such of her professional _confreres_ as she
is obliged to consult or work with. Her theory is that of the beehive:
drones for mates, workers for work. She adds, very decidedly, that she
belongs to the latter division, and means to remain there permanently.

"NOTE (_Mr. Keen's O.B., pp. 916-18_).--Her eccentricity is probably the
result of a fine, wholesome, highly strung young girl taking life and
herself too seriously. The remedy will be the _Right Man_."

"_Ex_actly," nodded Mr. Keen, joining the tips of his thin fingers and
partly closing his eyes. "Now, Miss Smith, the disease which Dr. Hollis
intends to make her specialty--have you any notes on that?"

"Here they are," said Miss Smith; and she read: "Lamour's Disease; the
rarest of all known diseases; first discovered and described by Ero S.
Lamour, M.D., M.S., F.B.A., M.F.H., in 1861. Only a single case has ever
been observed. This case is fully described in Dr. Lamour's superb and
monumental work in sixteen volumes. Briefly, the disease appears without
any known cause, and is ultimately supposed to result fatally. The first
symptom is the appearance of a faintly bluish circle under the eyes, as
though the patient was accustomed to using the eyes too steadily at
times. Sometimes a slight degree of fever accompanies this
manifestation; pulse and temperature vary. The patient is apparently in
excellent health, but liable to loss of appetite, restlessness, and a
sudden flushing of the face. These symptoms are followed by others
unmistakable: the patient becomes silent at times; at times evinces a
weakness for sentimental expressions; flushes easily; is easily
depressed; will sit for hours looking at one person; and, if not
checked, will exhibit impulsive symptoms of affection for the opposite
sex. The strangest symptom of all, however, is the physical change in
the patient, whose features and figure, under the trained eye of the
observer, gradually from day to day assume the symmetry and charm of a
beauty almost unearthly, sometimes accompanied by a spiritual pallor
which is unmistakable in confirming the diagnosis, and which, Dr. Lamour
believes, presages the inexorable approach of immortality.

"There is no known remedy for Lamour's Disease. The only case on record
is the case of the young lady described by Dr. Lamour, who watched her
for years with unexampled patience and enthusiasm; finally, in the
interest of science, marrying his patient in order to devote his life
to a study of her symptoms. Unfortunately, some of these disappeared
early--within a week--but the curious manifestation of physical beauty
remained, and continued to increase daily to a dazzling radiance, with
no apparent injury to the patient. Dr. Lamour, unfortunately, died
before his investigations, covering over forty years, could be
completed; his widow survived him for a day or two only, leaving sixteen
children.

"Here is a wide and unknown field for medical men to investigate. It is
safe to say that the physician who first discovers the bacillus of
Lamour's Disease and the proper remedy to combat it will reap as his
reward a glory and renown imperishable. Lamour's Disease is a disease
not yet understood--a disease whose termination is believed to be
fatal--a strange disease which seems to render radiant and beautiful the
features of the patient, brightening them with the forewarning of
impending death and the splendid resurrection of immortality."

The Tracer of Lost Persons caressed his chin reflectively. "_Ex_actly,
Miss Smith. So this is the disease which Dr. Hollis has chosen for her
specialty. And only one case on record. _Ex_actly. Thank you."

Miss Smith replaced the papers in the steel cylinder, slipped it into
the pneumatic tube, sent it whizzing below to the safe-deposit vaults,
and, saluting Mr. Keen with a pleasant inclination of her head, went out
of the room.

The Tracer turned in his chair, picked up the daily detective report,
and scanned it until he came to the name Hollis. It appeared that the
daily routine of Rosalind Hollis had not varied during the past three
weeks. In the mornings she was good to the poor with bottles and pills;
in the afternoons she tucked one of Lamour's famous sixteen volumes
under her arm and walked to Central Park, where, with democratic
simplicity, she sat on a secluded bench and pored over the symptoms of
Lamour's Disease. About five she retired to her severely simple
apartments in the big brownstone office building devoted to physicians,
corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue. Here she took tea,
read a little, dined all alone, and retired about nine. This was the
guileless but determined existence of Rosalind Hollis, M.D., according
to McConnell, the detective assigned to observe her.

The Tracer refolded the report of his chief of detectives and
pigeonholed it just as the door opened and a tall, well-built,
attractive young man entered.

Shyness was written all over him; he offered his hand to Mr. Keen with
an embarrassed air and seated himself at that gentleman's invitation.

"I'm almost sorry I ever began this sort of thing," he blurted out, like
a big schoolboy appalled at his own misdemeanors. "The truth is, Mr.
Keen, that the prospect of actually seeing a 'Carden Girl' alive has
scared me through and through. I've a notion that my business with that
sort of a girl ends when I've drawn her picture."

"But surely," said the Tracer mildly, "you have some natural curiosity
to see the living copy of your charming but inanimate originals, haven't
you, Mr. Carden?"

"Yes--oh, certainly. I'd like to see one of them alive--say out of a
window, or from a cab. I should not care to be too close to her."

"But merely seeing her does not commit you," interposed Mr. Keen,
smiling. "She is far too busy, too much absorbed in her own affairs to
take any notice of you. I understand that she has something of an
aversion for men."

"Aversion!"

"Well, she excludes them as unnecessary to her existence."

"Why?" asked Carden.

"Because she has a mission in life," said Mr. Keen gravely.

Carden looked out of the window. It was pleasant weather--June in all
its early loveliness--the fifth day of June. The sixth was his birthday.

"I've simply got to marry somebody before the day after to-morrow," he
said aloud--"that is, if I want my legacy."

"What!" demanded the Tracer sharply.

Carden turned, pink and guilty. "I didn't tell you all the circumstances
of my case," he said. "I suppose I ought to have done so."

"_Ex_actly," said the Tracer severely. "Why is it necessary that you
marry somebody before the day after to-morrow?"

"Well, it's my twenty-fifth birthday--"

"Somebody has left you money on condition that you marry before your
twenty-fifth birthday? Is that it, Mr. Carden? An uncle? An imbecile
grandfather? A sentimental aunt?"

"My Aunt Tabby Van Beekman."

"Where is she?"

"In Trinity churchyard. It's too late to expostulate with her, you see.
Besides, it wouldn't have done any good when she was alive."

The Tracer knitted his brows, musing, the points of his slim fingers
joined.

"She was very proud, very autocratic," said Carden. "I am the last of
my race and my aunt was determined that the race should not die out with
me. I don't want to marry and increase, but she's trying to make me. At
all events, I am not going to marry any woman inferior to the type I
have created with my pencil--what the public calls the 'Carden Girl.'
And now you see that your discovery of this living type comes rather
late. In two days I must be legally married if I want my Aunt Tabby's
legacy; and to-day for the first time I hear of a girl who, you assure
me, compares favorably to my copyrighted type, but who has a mission and
an aversion to men. So you see, Mr. Keen, that the matter is perfectly
hopeless."

"I don't see anything of the kind," said Mr. Keen firmly.

"What?--do you believe there is any chance--"

"Of your falling in love within the next hour or so? Yes, I do. I think
there is every chance of it. I am sure of it. But that is not the
difficulty. The problem is far more complicated."

"You mean--"

"_Ex_actly; how to marry that girl before day after to-morrow. That's
the problem, Mr. Carden!--not whether you are capable of falling in
love with her. I have seen her; I _know_ you can't avoid falling in
love with her. Nobody could. I myself am on the verge of it; and I am
fifty: you can't avoid loving her."

"If that were so," said Carden gravely; "if I were really going to fall
in love with her--I would not care a rap about my Aunt Tabby and her
money--"

"You ought to care about it for this young girl's sake. That legacy is
virtually hers, not yours. She has a right to it. No man can ever give
enough to the woman he loves; no man has ever done so. What _she_ gives
and what _he_ gives are never a fair exchange. If you can balance the
account in any measure, it is your duty to do it. Mr. Carden, if she
comes to love you she may think it very fine that you bring to her your
love, yourself, your fame, your talents, your success, your position,
your gratifying income. But I tell you it's not enough to balance the
account. It is never enough--no, not all your devotion to her included!
You can never balance the account on earth--all you can do is to try to
balance it materially and spiritually. Therefore I say, endow her with
_all_ your earthly goods. Give all you can in every way to lighten as
much as possible man's hopeless debt to all women who have ever loved."

"You talk about it as though I were already committed," said Carden,
astonished.

"You are, morally. For a month I have, without her knowledge, it is
true, invaded the privacy of a very lovely young girl--studied her
minutely, possessed myself of her history, informed myself of her
habits. What excuse had I for this unless I desired her happiness and
yours? Nobody could offer me any inducement to engage in such a practice
unless I believed that the means might justify a moral conclusion. And
the moral conclusion of this investigation is your marriage to her."

"Certainly," said Carden uneasily, "but how are we going to accomplish
it by to-morrow? How is it going to be accomplished at all?"

The Tracer of Lost Persons rose and began to pace the long rug, clasping
his hands behind his back. Minute after minute sped; Carden stared
alternately at Mr. Keen and at the blue sky through the open window.

"It is seldom," said Mr. Keen with evident annoyance, "that I personally
take any spectacular part in the actual and concrete demonstrations
necessary to a successful conclusion of a client's case. But I've got to
do it this time."

He went to a cupboard, picked out a gray wig and gray side whiskers and
deliberately waved them at Carden.

"You see what these look like?" he demanded.

"Y-yes."

"Very well. It is now noon. Do you know the Park? Do you happen to
recollect a shady turn in the path after you cross the bridge over the
swan lake? Here; I'll draw it for you. Now, here is the lake; here's the
esplanade and fountain, you see. Here's the path. You follow
it--so!--around the lake, across the bridge, then following the lake to
the right--so!--then up the wooded slope to the left--so! Now, here is a
bench. I mark it Number One. _She_ sits there with her book--there she
is!"

"If she looks like _that_--" began Carden. And they both laughed with
the slightest trace of excitement.

"Here is Bench Number Two!" resumed the Tracer. "Here you sit--and there
you are!"

[Illustration: MR. KEEN'S SKETCH OF THE RENDEZVOUS]

"Thanks," said Carden, laughing again.

"Now," continued the Tracer, "you must be there at one o'clock. She will
be there at one-thirty, or earlier perhaps. A little later I will become
benignly visible. Your part is merely a thinking part; you are to do
nothing, say nothing, unless spoken to. And when you are spoken to you
are to acquiesce in whatever anybody says to you, and you are to do
whatever anybody requests you to do. And, above all, don't be surprised
at _anything_ that may happen. You'll be nervous enough; I expect that.
You'll probably color up and flush and fidget; I expect that; I count on
that. But don't lose your nerve entirely; and don't think of attempting
to escape."

"Escape! From what? From whom?"

"From her."

"_Her?_"

"Are you going to follow my instructions?" demanded the Tracer of Lost
Persons.

"I--y-yes, of course."

"Very well, then, I am going to rub some of this under your eyes." And
Mr. Keen produced a make-up box and, walking over to Carden, calmly
darkened the skin under his eyes.

"I look as though I had been on a bat!" exclaimed Carden, surveying
himself in a mirror. "Do you think any girl could find any attraction in
such a countenance?"

"_She_ will," observed the Tracer meaningly. "Now, Mr. Carden, one last
word: The moment you find yourself in love with her, and the first
moment you have the chance to do so decently, make love to her. She
won't dismiss you; she will repulse you, of course, but she won't let
you go. I know what I am saying; all I ask of you is to promise on your
honor to carry out these instructions. Do you promise?"

"I do."

"Then here is the map of the rendezvous which I have drawn. Be there
promptly. Good morning."




CHAPTER XXII


At one o'clock that afternoon a young man earnestly consulting a map
might have been seen pursuing his solitary way through Central Park.
Fresh green foliage arched above him, flecking the path with fretted
shadow and sunlight; the sweet odor of flowering shrubs saturated the
air; the waters of the lake sparkled where swans swept to and fro, snowy
wings spread like sails to the fitful June wind.

"This," he murmured, pausing at a shaded bend in the path, "must be
Bench Number One. I am not to sit on that. This must be Bench Number
Two. I _am_ to sit on that. So here I am," he added nervously, seating
himself and looking about him with the caution of a cat in a strange
back yard.

There was nobody in sight. Reassured, he ventured to drop one knee over
the other and lean upon his walking stick. For a few minutes he remained
in this noncommittal attitude, alert at every sound, anxious,
uncomfortable, dreading he knew not what. A big, fat, gray squirrel
racing noisily across the fallen leaves gave him a shock. A number of
birds came to look at him--or so it appeared to him, for in the
inquisitive scrutiny of a robin he fancied he divined sardonic meaning,
and in the blank yellow stare of a purple grackle, a sinister
significance out of all proportion to the size of the bird.

"What an absurd position to be in!" he thought. And suddenly he was
seized with a desire to flee.

He didn't because he had promised not to, but the desire persisted to
the point of mania. Oh, how he could run if he only hadn't promised not
to! His entire being tingled with the latent possibilities of a burst of
terrific speed. He wanted to scuttle away like a scared rabbit. The pace
of the kangaroo would be slow in comparison. What a record he could make
if he hadn't promised not to.

He crossed his knees the other way and brooded. The gray squirrel
climbed the bench and nosed his pockets for possible peanuts, then
hopped off hopefully toward a distant nursemaid and two children.

Growing more alarmed every time he consulted his watch Carden attempted
to stem his rising panic with logic and philosophy, repeating: "Steady!
my son! Don't act like this! You're not obliged to marry her if you
don't fall in love with her; and if you do, you won't mind marrying her.
That is philosophy. That is logic. Oh, I wonder what will have happened
to me by this time to-morrow! I wish it _were_ this time to-morrow! I
wish it were this time next month! Then it would be all over. Then it
would be--"

His muttering speech froze on his lips. Rooted to his bench he sat
staring at a distant figure approaching--the figure of a young girl in a
summer gown.

Nearer, nearer she came, walking with a free-limbed, graceful step, head
high, one arm clasping a book.

That was the way the girls he drew would have walked had they ever
lived. Even in the midst of his fright his artist's eyes noted that:
noted the perfect figure, too, and the witchery of its grace and
contour, and the fascinating poise of her head, and the splendid color
of her hair; noted mechanically the flowing lines of her gown, and the
dainty modeling of arm and wrist and throat and ear.

Then, as she reached her bench and seated herself, she raised her eyes
and looked at him. And for the first time in his life he realized that
ideal beauty was but the pale phantom of the real and founded on
something more than imagination and thought; on something of vaster
import than fancy and taste and technical skill; that it was founded on
Life itself--on breathing, living, palpitating, tremulous Life!--from
which all true inspiration must come.

Over and over to himself he was repeating: "Of course, it is perfectly
impossible that I can be in love already. Love doesn't happen between
two ticks of a watch. I am merely amazed at that girl's beauty; that is
all. I am merely astounded in the presence of perfection; that is all.
There is nothing more serious the matter with me. It isn't necessary for
me to continue to look at her; it isn't vital to my happiness if I never
saw her again. . . . That is--of course, I should like to see her,
because I never did see living beauty such as hers in any woman. Not
even in my pictures. What superb eyes! What a fascinately delicate nose!
_What_ a nose! By Heaven, that nose _is_ a nose! I'll draw noses _that_
way in future. My pictures are all out of drawing; I must fit arms into
their sockets the way hers fit! I must remember the modeling of her
eyelids, too--and that chin! and those enchanting hands--"

She looked up leisurely from her book, surveyed him calmly, absent-eyed,
then bent her head again to the reading.

"There _is_ something the matter with me," he thought with a suppressed
gulp. "I--if she looks at me again--with those iris-hued eyes of a
young goddess--I--I think I'm done for. I believe I'm done for anyway.
It seems rather mad to think it. But there _is_ something the matter--"

She deliberately looked at him again.

"It's all wrong for them to let loose a girl like that on people," he
thought to himself, "all wrong. Everybody is bound to go mad over her.
I'm going now. I'm mad already. I know I am, which proves I'm no
lunatic. It isn't her beauty; it's the way she wears it--every motion,
every breath of her. I know exactly what her voice is like. Anybody who
looks into her eyes can see what her soul is like. She isn't out of
drawing anywhere--physically or spiritually. And when a man sees a girl
like that, why--why there's only one thing that can happen to him as far
as I can see. And it doesn't take a year either. Heavens! How awfully
remote from me she seems to be."

She looked up again, calmly, but not at him. A kindly, gray-whiskered
old gentleman came tottering and rocking into view, his rosy, wrinkled
face beaming benediction on the world as he passed through it--on the
sunshine dappling the undergrowth, on the furry squirrels sitting up on
their hind legs to watch him pass, on the stray dickybird that hopped
fearlessly in his path, at the young man sitting very rigid there on
his bench, at the fair, sweet-faced girl who met his aged eyes with the
gentlest of involuntary smiles. And Carden did not recognize him!

Who could help smiling confidently into that benign face, with its gray
hair and gray whiskers? Goodness radiated from every wrinkle.

"Dr. Atwood!" exclaimed the girl softly as she rose to meet this
marvelous imitation of Dr. Austin Atwood, the great specialist on
children's diseases.

The old man beamed weakly at her, halted, still beaming, fumbled for his
eyeglasses, adjusted them, and peered closely into her face.

"Bless my soul," he smiled, "our pretty Dr. Hollis!"

"I--I did not suppose you would remember me," she said, rosy with
pleasure.

"Remember you? Surely, surely." He made her a quaint, old-fashioned bow,
turned, and peeped across the walk at Carden. And Carden, looking
straight into his face, did not know the old man, who turned to Dr.
Hollis again with many mysterious nods of his doddering head.

"You're watching him, too, are you?" he chuckled, leaning toward her.

"Watching whom, Dr. Atwood?" she asked surprised.

"Hush, child! I thought you had noticed that unfortunate and afflicted
young man opposite."

Dr. Hollis looked curiously at Carden, then at the old gentleman with
gray whiskers.

"Please sit down, Dr. Atwood, and tell me," she murmured. "I have
noticed nothing in particular about the young man on the bench there."
And she moved to give him room; and the young man opposite stared at
them both as though bereft of reason.

"A heavy book for small hands, my child," said the old gentleman in his
quaintly garrulous fashion, peering with dimmed eyes at the volume in
her lap.

She smiled, looking around at him.

"My, my!" he said, tremblingly raising his eyeglasses to scan the title
on the page; "Dr. Lamour's famous works! Are _you_ studying Lamour,
child?"

"Yes," she said with that charming inflection youth reserves for age.

"Astonishing!" he murmured. "The coincidence is more than remarkable. A
physician! And studying Lamour's Disease! Incredible!"

"Is there anything strange in that, Dr. Atwood?" she smiled.

"Strange!" He lowered his voice, peering across at Carden. "Strange,
did you say? Look across the path at that poor young man sitting there!"

"Yes," she said, perplexed, "I see him."

"_What_ do you see?" whispered the old gentleman in a shakily portentous
voice. "Here you sit reading about what others have seen; now what do
_you_ see?"

"Why, only a man--rather young--"

"No _symptoms_?"

"Symptoms? Of what?"

The old gentleman folded his withered hands over his cane. "My child,"
he said, "for a year I have had that unfortunate young man under secret
observation. He was not aware of it; it never entered his mind that I
could be observing _him_ with minutest attention. He may have supposed
there was nothing the matter with him. He was in error. I have studied
him carefully. Look closer! _Are_ there dark circles under his eyes--or
are there not?" he ended in senile triumph.

"There are," she began, puzzled, "but I--but of what interest to me--"

"Compare his symptoms with the symptoms in that book you are studying,"
said the old gentleman hoarsely.

"Do you mean--do you suppose--" she stammered, turning her eyes on
Carden, who promptly blushed to his ears and began to fidget.

"_Every symptom_," muttered the old gentleman. "Poor, poor young man!"

She had seen Carden turn a vivid pink; she now saw him fidget with his
walking stick; she discovered the blue circles under his eyes. Three
symptoms at once!

"Do you believe it _possible_?" she whispered excitedly under her breath
to the old gentleman beside her. "It seems incredible! Such a rare
disease! Only one single case ever described and studied! It seems
impossible that I could be so fortunate as actually to see a case! Tell
me, Dr. Atwood, do you believe that young man is really afflicted with
Lamour's Disease?"

"There is but one way to be absolutely certain," said the old gentleman
in a solemn voice, "and that is to study him; corroborate your
suspicions by observing his pulse and temperature, as did Dr. Lamour."

"But--how can I?" she faltered. "I--he would probably object to becoming
a patient of mine--"

"Ask him, child! Ask him."

"I have not courage--"

"Courage should be the badge of your profession," said the old
gentleman gravely. "When did a good physician ever show the white
feather in the cause of humanity?"

"I--I know, but this requires a different sort of courage."

"How," persisted the old gentleman, "can you confirm your very natural
suspicions concerning this unfortunate young man unless you corroborate
your observations by studying him at close range? Besides, already it
seems to me that certain unmistakable signs are visible; I mean that
strange physical phase which Dr. Lamour dwells on: the symmetry of
feature and limb, the curiously spiritual beauty. Do you not notice
these? Or is my sight so dim that I only imagine it?"

"He is certainly symmetrical--and--in a certain way--almost handsome in
regard to features," she admitted, looking at Carden.

"Poor, poor boy!" muttered the old gentleman, wagging his gray whiskers.
"I am too old to help him--too old to dream of finding a remedy for the
awful malady which I am now convinced has seized him. I shall study him
no more. It is useless. All I can do now is to mention his case to some
young, vigorous, ambitious physician--some specialist--"

"Don't!" she whispered almost fiercely, "don't do that, Dr. Atwood! I
want him, please! I--you helped me to discover him, you see. And his
malady is to be my specialty. Please, do you mind if I keep him all to
myself and study him?"

"But you refused, child."

"I didn't mean to. I--I didn't exactly see how I was to study him. But I
must study him! Oh, I _must_! There will surely be some way. Please let
me. You discovered him, I admit, but I will promise you faithfully to
devote my entire life to studying him, as the great Lamour devoted his
life for forty years to his single patient."

"But Dr. Lamour married his patient," said the Tracer mildly.

"He--I--that need not be necessary--"

"But if it should prove necessary?"

"I--you--"

"Answer me, child."

She stared across at Carden, biting her red lips. He turned pink
promptly and fidgeted.

"He _has_ got it!" she whispered excitedly. "Oh, _do_ you mind if I take
him for mine? I am perfectly wild to begin on him!"

"You have not yet answered my question," said the old gentleman gravely.
"Do you lack the courage to marry him if it becomes necessary to do so
in order to devote your entire life to studying him?"

"Oh--it _cannot_ be necessary--"

"You lack the courage."

She was silent.

"Braver things have been done by those of your profession who have gone
among lepers," said the old gentleman sadly.

She flushed up instantly; her eyes sparkled; her head proudly high,
delicate nostrils dilated.

"I am not afraid!" she said. "If it ever becomes necessary, I _can_ show
courage and devotion, as well as those of my profession who minister to
the lepers of Molokai! Yes; I do promise you to marry him if I cannot
otherwise study him. And I promise you solemnly to devote my entire life
to observing his symptoms and searching for proper means to combat them.
My one ambition in life is personally to observe and study a case of
Lamour's Disease, and to give my entire life to investigating its
origin, its course, and its cure."

The old gentleman rose, bowing with that quaintly obsolete courtesy
which was in vogue in his youth.

"I am contented to leave him exclusively to you, Dr. Hollis. And I wish
you happiness in your life's work--and success in your cure of this
unhappy young man."

Hat in hand, he bowed again as he tottered past her, muttering and
smiling to himself and shaking his trembling head as he went rocking on
unsteady legs out into the sunshine, where the nursemaids and children
flocked along the lake shore throwing peanuts to the waterfowl and
satiated goldfish.

Dr. Hollis looked after him, her small hand buried among the pages of
her open book. Carden viewed his disappearing figure with guileless
emotions. He was vaguely aware that something important was about to
happen to him. And it did before he was prepared.




CHAPTER XXIII


When Rosalind Hollis found herself on her feet again a slight sensation
of fright checked her for a moment. Then, resolutely suppressing such
unworthy weakness, the lofty inspiration of her mission in life
dominated her, and she stepped forward undaunted. And Carden, seeing her
advance toward him, arose in astonishment to meet her.

For a second they stood facing each other, he astounded, she a trifle
pale but firm. Then in a low voice she asked his pardon for disturbing
him.

"I am Rosalind Hollis, a physician," she said quietly, "and physicians
are sometimes obliged to do difficult things in the interest of their
profession. It is dreadfully difficult for me to speak to you in this
way. But"--she looked fearlessly at him--"I am confident you will not
misinterpret what I have done."

He managed to assure her that he did not misinterpret it.

She regarded him steadily; she examined the dark circles under his eyes;
she coolly observed his rising color under her calm inspection; she saw
him fidgeting with his walking stick. She _must_ try his pulse!

"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions in the interest of
science?" she said earnestly.

"As a m-m-matter of fact," he stammered, "I don't know much about
science. Awfully glad to do anything I can, you know."

"Oh, I don't mean it that way," she reassured him. A hint of a smile
tinted her eyes with brilliant amethyst. "Would you mind if I sat here
for a few moments? _Could_ you overlook this horrid unconventionality
long enough for me to explain why I have spoken to you?"

"I could indeed!" he said, so anxiously cordial that her lovely face
grew serious and she hesitated. But he was standing aside, hat off,
placing the bench at her disposal, and she seated herself, placing her
book on the bench beside her.

"Would you mind sitting here for a few moments?" she asked him gravely.

Dazed, scarcely crediting the evidence of his senses, he took possession
of the end of the bench with the silent obedience of a schoolboy. His
attitude was irreproachable. She was grateful for this, and her
satisfaction with herself for not having misjudged him renewed her
confidence in him, in herself, and in the difficult situation.

She began, quietly, by again telling him her name and profession; where
she lived, and that she was studying to be a specialist, though she did
not intimate what that specialty was to be.

Outwardly composed and attentively deferential, his astonishment at
times dominated a stronger sentiment that seemed to grow and expand with
her every word, seizing him in a fierce possession absolutely and
hopelessly complete.

The bewildering fascination of her mastered him. No cool analysis of
what his senses were confirming could be necessary to convince him of
his condition. Every word of hers, every gesture, every inflection of
her sweet, clear voice, every lifting of her head, her eyes, her
perfectly gloved hands, only repeated to him what he knew was a
certainty. Never had he looked upon such physical loveliness; never had
he dreamed of such a voice.

She had asked him a question, and, absorbed in the pure delight of
looking at her, he had not comprehended or answered. She flushed
sensitively, accepting his silence as refusal, and he came out of his
trance hastily.

"I beg your pardon; I did not quite understand your question, Miss
Hollis--I mean, Dr. Hollis."

"I asked you if you minded my noting your pulse," she said.

He stretched out his right hand; she stripped off her glove, laid the
tip of her middle finger on his wrist, and glanced down at the gold
watch which she held.

"I am wondering," he said, laughing uncertainly, "whether you believe me
to be ill. Of course it is easy to see that you have found something
unusual about me--something of particular interest to a physician. Is
there anything very dreadful going to happen to me, Dr. Hollis? I feel
perfectly well."

"Are you sure you feel well?" she asked, so earnestly that the smile on
his lips faded out.

"Absolutely. Is my pulse queer?"

"It is not normal."

He could easily account for that, but he said nothing.

She questioned him for a few minutes, noted his pulse again, looked
closely at the bluish circles under his eyes. Naturally he flushed up
and grew restless under the calm, grave, beautiful eyes.

"I--I have an absolutely new and carefully sterilized thermometer--" She
drew it from a tiny gold-initialed pocket case, and looked wistfully at
him.

"You want to put that into my mouth?" he asked, astonished.

"If you don't mind."

She held it up, shook it once or twice, and deliberately inserted it
between his lips. And there he sat, round-eyed, silent, the end of the
thermometer protruding at a rakish angle from the corner of his mouth.
And he grew redder and redder.

"I _don't_ wish to alarm you," she was saying, "but all this is so
deeply significant, so full of vital interest to me--to the world, to
science--"

"_What_ have I got, in Heaven's name?" he said thickly, the thermometer
wiggling in his mouth.

"Ah!" she exclaimed with soft enthusiasm, clasping her pretty ungloved
hands, "I cannot be sure yet--I dare not be too sanguine--"

"Do you mean that you _want_ me to have something queer?" he blurted
out, while the thermometer wiggled with every word he uttered.

"N-no, of course, I don't _want_ you to be ill," she said hastily.
"Only, if you _are_ ill it will be a wonderful thing for me. I
mean--a--that I am intensely interested in certain symptoms which--"

She gently withdrew the glass tube from his lips and examined it
carefully.

"_Is_ there anything the matter?" he insisted, looking at the instrument
over her shoulder.

She did not reply; pure excitement rendered her speechless.

"I seem to _feel_ all right," he added uneasily. "If you really believe
that there's anything wrong with me, I'll stop in to see my doctor."

"Your doctor!" she repeated, appalled.

"Yes, certainly. Why not?"

"Don't do that! Please don't do that! I--why _I_ discovered this case. I
beg you most earnestly to let me observe it. You don't understand the
importance of it! You don't begin to dream of the rarity of this case!
How much it means to me!"

He flushed up. "Do you intend to intimate that I am afflicted with some
sort of rare and s-s-trange d-d-disease?" he stammered.

"I dare not pronounce upon it too confidently," she said with
enthusiasm; "I have not yet absolutely determined the nature of the
disease. But, oh, I am beginning to hope--"

"Then I _am_ diseased!" he faltered. "I've got _something_ anyhow; is
that it? Only you are not yet perfectly sure what it is called! Is that
the truth, Miss Hollis?"

"How can I answer positively until I have had time to observe these
symptoms? It requires time to be certain. I do not wish to alarm you,
but it is my duty to say to you that you should immediately place
yourself under medical observation."

"You think that?"

"I do; I am convinced of it. Please understand me; I do not pronounce
upon these visible symptoms; I do not express an unqualified opinion;
but I could be in a position to do so if you consent to place yourself
under my observations and care. For these suspicious symptoms are not
only very plainly apparent to me, but were even noted by that old
gentleman whom you may perhaps have observed conversing with me."

"Yes, I saw him. Who is he?"

"Dr. Austin Atwood," said the girl solemnly.

"Oh! And you say he also observed something queer about me? What did he
see? Are there spots on me? Am I turning any remarkable color? Am I--"
And in the very midst of his genuine alarm he suddenly remembered the
make-up box and what the Tracer of Lost Persons had done to his eyes.
Was _that_ it? Where was the Tracer, anyway? He had promised to appear.
And then Carden recollected the gray wig and whiskers that the Tracer
had waved at him from the cupboard, bidding him note them well. _Could_
that beaming, benignant, tottering old gentleman have been the Tracer of
Lost Persons himself? And the same instant Carden was sure of it, spite
of the miraculous change in the man.

Then logic came to his aid; and, deducing with care and patience, an
earnest conviction grew within him that the dark circles under his eyes
and the tottering old gentleman resembling Dr. Austin Atwood had a great
deal to do with this dreadful disease which Dr. Hollis desired to study.

He looked at the charming girl beside him, and she looked back at him
very sweetly, very earnestly, awaiting his decision.

For a moment he realized that she had really scared him, and in the
reaction of relief an overwhelming desire to laugh seized him. He
managed to suppress it, to compose himself. Then he remembered the
Tracer's admonition to acquiesce in everything, do what he was told to
do, not to run away, and to pay his court at the first decent
opportunity.

He had no longer any desire to escape; he was quite willing to do
anything she desired.

"Do you really want to study me, Dr. Hollis?" he asked, feeling like a
hypocrite.

"Indeed I do," she replied fervently.

"You believe me worth studying?"

"Oh, truly, truly, you are! You don't suspect--you cannot conceive how
important you have suddenly become to me."

"Then I think you had better take my case, Dr. Hollis," he said
seriously. "I begin now to realize that you believe me to be a sort of
freak--an afflicted curiosity, and that, in the interest of medicine, I
ought to go to an asylum or submit myself to the ceaseless observation
of a competent private physician."

"I--I think it best for you to place yourself in my care," she said.
"Will you?"

"Yes," he said, "I will. I'll do anything in the world you ask."

"That is very--very generous, very noble of you!" she exclaimed,
flushing with excitement and delight. "It means a great deal to me--it
means, perhaps, a fame that I scarcely dared dream of even in my most
enthusiastic years. I am too grateful to express my gratitude
coherently; I am trying to say to you that I thank you; that I recognize
in you those broad, liberal, generous qualities which, from your
appearance and bearing, I--I thought perhaps you must possess."

She colored again very prettily; he bowed, and ventured to remind her
that she had not yet given him the privilege of naming himself.

"That is true!" she said, surprised. "I had quite forgotten it." But
when he named himself she raised her head, startled.

"Victor Carden!" she repeated. "You are the _artist_, Victor Carden!"

"Yes," he said, watching her dilated eyes like two violet-tinted jewels.

For a minute she sat looking at him; and imperceptibly a change came
into her face, and its bewildering beauty softened as the vivid tints
died out, leaving her cheeks almost pale.

"It is--a pity," she said under her breath. All the excitement, all the
latent triumph, all the scarcely veiled eager enthusiasm had gone from
her now.

"A pity?" he repeated, smiling.

"Yes. I wish it had been only an ordinary man. I--why should this happen
to you? You have done so much for us all--made us forget ourselves in
the beauty of what you offer us. Why should this happen to _you_!"

"But you have not told me yet what has happened to me, Miss Hollis."

She looked up, almost frightened.

"_Are_ you our Victor Carden? I do not wish to believe it! You have done
so much for the world--you have taught us to understand and desire all
that is noble and upright and clean and beautiful!--to desire it, to
aspire toward it, to venture to live the good, true, wholesome lives
that your penciled creations must lead--_must_ lead to wear such
beautiful bodies and such divine eyes!"

"Do _you_ care for my work?" he asked, astonished and moved.

"I? Yes, of course I do. Who does not?"

"Many," he replied simply.

"I am sorry for them," she said.

They sat silent for a long while.

At first his overwhelming desire was to tell her of the deception
practiced upon her; but he could not do that, because in exposing
himself he must fail in loyalty to the Tracer of Lost Persons. Besides,
she would not believe him. She would think him mad if he told her that
the old gentleman she had taken for Dr. Atwood was probably Mr. Keen,
the Tracer of Lost Persons. Also, he himself was not absolutely certain
about it. He had merely deduced as much.

"Tell me," he said very gently, "what is the malady from which you
believe I am suffering?"

For a moment she remained silent, then, face averted, laid her finger on
the book beside her.

"That," she said unsteadily.

He read aloud: "Lamour's Disease. A Treatise in sixteen volumes by Ero
S. Lamour, M.D., M.S., F.B.A., M.F.H."

"All that?" he asked guiltily.

"I don't know, Mr. Carden. Are you laughing at me? Do you not believe
me?" She had turned suddenly to confront him, surprising a humorous
glimmer in his eyes.

"I really do not believe I am seriously ill," he said, laughing in spite
of her grave eyes.

"Then perhaps you had better read a little about what Lamour describes
as the symptoms of this malady," she said sadly.

"Is it fatal?" he inquired.

"Ultimately. That is why I desire to spend my life in studying means to
combat it. That is why I desire you so earnestly to place yourself under
my observation and let me try."

"Tell me one thing," he said; "is it contagious? Is it infectious? No?
Then I don't mind your studying me all you wish, Dr. Hollis. You may
take my temperature every ten minutes if you care to. You may observe my
pulse every five minutes if you desire. Only please tell me how this is
to be accomplished; because, you see, I live in the Sherwood Studio
Building, and you live on Madison Avenue."

"I--I have a ward--a room--fitted up with every modern surgical
device--every improvement," she said. "It adjoins my office. _Would_ you
mind living there for a while--say for a week at first--until I can be
perfectly certain in my diagnosis?"

"Do you intend to put me to bed?" he asked, appalled.

"Oh, no! Only I wish to watch you carefully and note your symptoms from
moment to moment. I also desire to try the effects of certain medicines
on you--"

"What kind of medicines?" he asked uneasily.

"I cannot tell yet. Perhaps antitoxin; I don't know; perhaps formalin
later. Truly, Mr. Carden, this case has taken on a graver, a more
intimate significance since I have learned who you are. I would have
worked hard to save any life; I shall put my very heart and soul into my
work to save you, who have done so much for us all."

The trace of innocent emotion in her voice moved him.

"I am really not ill," he said unsteadily. "I cannot let you think I
am--"

"Don't speak that way, Mr. Carden. I--I am perfectly miserable over it;
I don't feel any happiness in my discovery now--not the least bit. I had
rather live my entire life without seeing one case of Lamour's Disease
than to believe you are afflicted with it."

"But I'm not, Miss Hollis!--really, I am not--"

She looked at him compassionately for a moment, then rose.

"It is best that you should be informed as to your probable condition,"
she said. "In Lamour's works, volume nine, you had better read exactly
what Lamour says. Do you mind coming to the office with me, Mr. Carden?"

"Now?"

"Yes. The book is there. Do you mind coming?"

"No--no, of course not." And, as they turned away together under the
trees: "You don't intend to begin observing me this afternoon, do you?"
he ventured.

"I think it best if you can arrange your affairs. Can you, Mr. Carden?"

"Why, yes, I suppose I can. Did you mean for me to begin to occupy that
surgical bedroom at once?"

"Do you mind?"

"N-no. I'll telephone my servants to pack a steamer trunk and send it
around to your apartment this evening. And--where am I to board?"

"I have a dining room," she said simply. "My apartment consists of the
usual number of servants and rooms, including my office, and my
observation ward which you will occupy."

He walked on, troubled.

"I only w-want to ask one or two things, Dr. Hollis. Am I to be placed
on a diet? I hate diets!"

"Not at once."

"May I smoke?"

"Certainly," she said, smiling.

"And you won't p-put me--send me to bed too early?"

"Oh, no! The later you sit up the better, because I shall wish to take
your temperature every ten minutes and I shall feel very sorry to arouse
you."

"You mean you are coming in to wake me up every ten minutes and put that
tube in my mouth?" he asked, aghast.

"Only every half-hour, Mr. Carden. Can't you stand it for a week?"

"Well," he said, "I--I suppose I can if _you_ can. Only, upon my honor,
there is really nothing the matter with me, and I'll prove it to you out
of your own book."

"I wish you could, Mr. Carden. I should be only too happy to give you
back to the world with a clear bill of health if you can convince me I
am wrong. Do you not believe me? Indeed, indeed I am not selfish and
wicked enough to wish you this illness, no matter how rare it is!"

"The rarer a disease is the madder it makes people who contract it," he
said. "I should be the maddest man in Manhattan if I really did have
Lamour's malady. But I haven't. There is only one malady afflicting me,
and I am waiting for a suitable opportunity to tell you all about it,
but--"

"Tell me now," she said, raising her eyes to his.

"Not now."

"To-night?"

"I hope so. I will if I can, Miss Hollis."

"But you must not fear to tell a physician about anything which troubles
you, Mr. Carden."

"I'll remember that," he said thoughtfully, as they emerged from the
Park and crossed to Madison Avenue.

A moment later he hailed a car and they both entered.




CHAPTER XXIV


No, there could be no longer any doubt in her mind as she went into her
bedroom, closed the door, and, unhooking the telephone receiver, called
up the great specialist in rare diseases, Dr. Austin Atwood, M.S.,
F.B.A., M.F.H.

"Dr. Atwood," she said with scarcely concealed emotion, "this is Dr.
Rosalind Hollis."

"How-de-do?" squeaked the aged specialist amiably.

"Oh, I am well enough, thank you, doctor--except in spirits. Dr. Atwood,
you were right! He _has_ got it, and I am perfectly wretched!"

"_Who_ has got _what_?" retorted the voice of Atwood.

"The unfortunate young gentleman we saw to-day in the Park."

"What park?"

"Why, Central Park, doctor."

"Central Park! _I_ haven't been in Central Park for ten years, my
child."

"Why, Dr. Atwood!--A--_is_ this Dr. Austin Atwood with whom I am
talking?"

"Not the least doubt! And you are that pretty Dr. Hollis--Rosalind
Hollis, who consulted me in those charity cases, are you not?"

"I certainly am. And I wanted to say to you that I have the unfortunate
patient now under closest observation here in my own apartment. I have
given him the room next to the office. And, doctor, you were perfectly
right. He shows every symptom of the disease--he is even inclined to
sentimentalism; he begins to blush and fidget and look at me--a--in that
unmistakable manner--not that he isn't well-bred and charming--indeed he
is most attractive, and it grieves me dreadfully to see that he already
is beginning to believe himself in love with the first person of the
opposite sex he encounters--I mean that he--that I cannot mistake his
attitude toward me--which is perfectly correct, only one cannot avoid
seeing the curious infatuation--"

"_What_ the dickens is all this?" roared the great specialist, and Dr.
Hollis jumped.

"I was only confirming your diagnosis, doctor," she explained meekly.

"What diagnosis?"

"Yours, doctor. I have confirmed it, I fear. And the certainty has made
me perfectly miserable, because his is such a valuable life to the
world, and he himself is such a splendid, wholesome, noble specimen of
youth and courage, that I cannot bear to believe him incurably
afflicted."

"Good Heavens!" shouted the doctor, "_what_ has he got and _who_ is he?"

"He is Victor Carden, the celebrated artist, and he has Lamour's
Disease!" she gasped.

There was a dead silence; then: "Keep him there until I come! Chloroform
him if he attempts to escape!"

And the great specialist rang off excitedly.

So Rosalind Hollis went back to the lamp-lit office where, in a
luxurious armchair, Carden was sitting, contentedly poring over the
ninth volume of Lamour's great treatise and smoking his second cigar.

"Dr. Atwood is coming here," she said in a discouraged voice, as he rose
with alacrity to place her chair.

"Oh! What for?"

"T-to see you, Mr. Carden."

"Who? Me? Great Scott! I don't want to be slapped and pinched and polled
by a man! I didn't expect that, you know. I'm willing enough to have you
observe me in the interest of humanity--"

"But, Mr. Carden, he is only called in for consultation. I--I have a
dreadful sort of desperate hope that perhaps I may have made a mistake;
that possibly I am in error."

"No doubt you are," he said cheerfully. "Let me read a few more pages,
Dr. Hollis, and then I think I shall be all ready to dispute my
symptoms, one by one, and convince you what really is the trouble with
me. And, by the way, did Dr. Atwood seem a trifle astonished when you
told him about me?"

"A trifle--yes," she said uncertainly. "He is a very, very old man; he
forgets. But he is coming."

"Oh! And didn't he appear to recollect seeing me in the Park?"

"N-not clearly. He is very old, you know. But he is coming here."

"_Ex_actly--as a friend of mine puts it," smiled Carden. "May I be
permitted to use your telephone a moment?"

"By all means, Mr. Carden. You will find it there in my bedroom."

So he entered her pretty bedroom and, closing the door tightly, called
up the Tracer of Lost Persons.

"Is that you, Mr. Keen? This is Mr. Carden. I'm head over heels in love.
I simply must win her, and I'm going to try. If I don't--if she will
not listen to me--I'll certainly go to smash. And what I want you to do
is to prevent Atwood from butting in. Do you understand? . . . Yes, Dr.
Austin Atwood. Keep him away somehow. . . . Yes, I'm here, at Dr.
Hollis's apartments, under anxious observation. . . . She is the _only_
woman in the world! I'm mad about her--and getting madder every moment!
She is the most perfectly splendid specimen of womanhood--_what_? Oh,
yes; I rang you up to ask you whether it was _you_ in the Park
to-day?--that old gentleman--_What!_ Yes, in Central Park. Yes, this
afternoon! No, he didn't resemble you; and Dr. Hollis took him for Dr.
Atwood. . . . What are you laughing about? . . . I can _hear_ you
laughing. . . . _Was_ it you? . . . What do I think? Why, I don't know
exactly what to think, but I suppose it must have been you. Was it?
. . . Oh, I see. You don't wish me to know. Certainly, you are quite
right. Your clients have no business behind the scenes. I only asked out
of curiosity. . . . All right. Good-by."

He came back to the lamp-lit office, which was more of a big, handsome,
comfortable living room than a physician's quarters, and for a moment or
two he stood on the threshold, looking around.

In the pleasant, subdued light of the lamp Rosalind Hollis looked up
and around, smiling involuntarily to see him standing there; then,
serious, silent, she dropped her eyes to the pages of the volume he had
discarded--volume nine of Lamour's great works.

Even with the evidence before her, corroborated in these inexorably
scientific pages which she sat so sadly turning, she found it almost
impossible to believe that this big, broad-shouldered, attractive young
man could be fatally stricken.

Twice her violet eyes stole toward him; twice the thick lashes veiled
them, and the printed pages on her knee sprang into view, and the cold
precision of the type confirmed her fears remorselessly:

"The trained scrutiny of the observer will detect in the victim of this
disease a peculiar and indefinable charm--a strange symmetry which, on
closer examination, reveals traces of physical beauty almost
superhuman--"

Again her eyes were lifted to Carden; again she dropped her white lids.
Her worst fears were confirmed.

Meanwhile he stood on the threshold looking at her, his pulses racing,
his very soul staring through his eyes; and, within him, every sense
clamoring out revolt at the deception, demanding confession and its
penalty.

"I can't stand this!" he blurted out; and she looked up quickly, her
face blanched with foreboding.

"Are you in pain?" she asked.

"No--not that sort of pain! I--_won't_ you please believe that I am not
ill? I'm imposing on you. I'm an impostor! There's nothing whatever the
trouble with me except--something that I want to tell you--if you'll let
me--"

"Why should you hesitate to confide in a physician, Mr. Carden?"

He came forward slowly. She laid her small hand on the empty chair which
faced hers and he sank into it, clasping his restless hands under his
chin.

"You are feeling depressed," she said gently. Depression was a
significant symptom. Three chapters were devoted to it.

"I'm depressed, of course. I'm horribly depressed and ashamed of myself,
because there is nothing on earth the matter with me, and I've let you
think there is."

She smiled mournfully; this was another symptom of a morbid state. She
turned, unconsciously, to page 379 to verify her observation.

"See here, Miss Hollis," he broke out, "haven't I any chance to
convince you that I am not ill? I want to be honest without involving
a--a friend of mine. I can't endure this deception. Won't you let me
prove to you that these symptoms are--are only significant of something
else?"

She looked straight at him, considering him in silence.

"Let us begin with those dark circles under my eyes," he said
desperately. "I found some cold-cream in my room and--look! They are
practically gone! At any rate, if there is a sort of shadow left it's
because I use my eyes in my profession."

"Dr. Lamour says that the dark circles disappear, anyway," said the
girl, unconvinced. "Cold-cream had nothing to do with it."

"But it _did_! Really it did. And as for the other symptoms, I--well, I
can't help my pulses when y-you t-t-touch me."

"Please, Mr. Carden."

"I don't mean to be impertinent. I am trying my hardest to tell the
truth. And my pulses _do_ gallop when you test them; they're galloping
now! This very moment!"

"Let me try them," she said coolly, laying her hand on his wrist.

"Didn't I say so!" he insisted grimly. "And I'm turning red, too. But
those symptoms mean something else; they mean _you_!"

"Mr. Carden!"

"I can't help saying so--"

"I know it," she said soothingly; "these sentimental outbursts are part
of the disease--"

"Good Heavens! _Won't_ you try to believe me! There's nothing in the
world the matter with me except that I am--am--p-p-perfectly
f-f-fascinated--"

"You must struggle against it, Mr. Carden. That is only part of the--"

"It isn't! It isn't! It's you! It's your mere presence, your
personality, your charm, your beauty, your loveliness, your--"

"Mr. Carden, I beg of you! I--it is part of my duty to observe symptoms,
but--but you are making it very hard for me--very difficult--"

"I am only proving to you that it isn't Lamour's Disease which does
stunts with my pulses, my temperature, my color. I'm not morbid except
when I realize my deception. I'm not depressed except when I think how
far you are from me--how far above me--how far out of reach of such a
man as I am--how desperately I--I--"

"D-don't you think I had better administer a s-s-sedative, Mr. Carden?"
she said, distressed.

"I don't care. I'll take anything you give me--as long as _you_ give it
to me. I'll swallow pint after pint of pills! I'll fletcherize 'em! I'll
luxuriate in poison--anything--"

She was hastily running through the pages of the ninth volume to see
whether the symptoms of sentimental excitement ever turned into frenzy.

"What can you learn from that book?" he insisted, leaning forward to see
what she was reading. "Anyway, Dr. Lamour married his patient so early
in the game that all the symptoms disappeared. And I believe the trouble
with his patient was my trouble. She had every symptom of it until he
married her! She was in love with him, that is absolutely all!"

Rosalind Hollis raised her beautiful, incredulous eyes.

"What do you mean, Mr. Carden?"

"I mean that, in my opinion, there's no such disease as Lamour's
Disease. That young girl was in love with him. Then he married her at
last, and--presto!--all the symptoms vanished--the pulse, the
temperature, the fidgets, the blushes, the moods, the whole business!"

"W-what about the strangely curious manifestations of physical
beauty--superhuman symmetry, Mr. Carden?"

"Do you notice them in _me_?" he gasped.

"A--yes--in a m-modified measure--"

"In _me_?"

"Certainly!" she said firmly; but the slow glow suffusing her cheeks was
disconcerting her. Then his own face began to reflect the splendid color
in hers; their eyes met, dismayed.

"There are sixteen volumes about this disease," she said. "There _must_
be such a disease!"

"There is," he said. "I have it badly. But I never had it before I first
saw you in the Park!"

"Mr. Carden--this is the wildest absurdity--"

"I know it. Wildness is a symptom. I'm mad as a hatter. I've got every
separate symptom, and I wish it was infectious and contagious and
catching and fatal!"

She made an effort to turn the pages to the chapter entitled "Manias and
Illusions," but he laid his hand across the book and his clear eyes
defied her.

"Mr. Carden--"

Her smooth hand trembled under his, then, suddenly nerveless, relaxed.
With an effort she lifted her head; their eyes met, spellbound.

"_You_ have _every_ symptom," he said unsteadily--"every one! What have
you to say?"

Her fascinated eyes held his.

"What have you to say?" he repeated under his breath--"you, with every
symptom, and your heavenly radiant beauty to confirm them--that splendid
youthful loveliness which blinds and stuns me as I look--as I speak--as
I tell you that I love you. That is my malady; that is the beginning and
the end of it; love!"

She sat speechless, immovable, as one under enchantment.

"All my life," he said, "I have spent in painting shadows. But the
shadows were those dim celestial shapes cast by your presence in the
world. You tell me that the world is better for my work; that I have
offered my people beauty and a sort of truth, which they had never
dreamed of until I revealed it? Yet what inspired me was the shadow
only, for I had never seen the substance; I had never believed I should
ever see the living source of the shadows which inspired me. And now I
see; now I have seen with my own eyes. Now the confession of faith is no
longer a blind creed, born of instinct. You live! You are you! What I
believed from necessity I find proved in fact. The occult no longer can
sway one who has seen. And you, who, without your knowledge or mine,
have always been the one and only source of any good in me or in my
work--why is it strange that I loved you at first sight?--that I
worshiped you at first breath?--I, who, like him who raises his altar to
'the unknown god,' raised my altar to truth and beauty? And a miracle
has answered me."

She rose, the beautiful dazed eyes meeting his, both hands clasping the
ninth volume of Lamour's great monograph to her breast as though to
protect it from him--from him who was threatening her, enthralling her,
thrilling her with his magic voice, his enchanted youth, the masterful
mystery of his eyes. What was he saying to her? What was this mounting
intoxication sweeping her senses--this delicious menace threatening her
very will? What did he want with her? What was he asking? What was he
doing now--with both her hands in his, and her gaze deeply lost in
his--and the ninth volume of Lamour on the floor between them, sprawling
there, abandoned, waving its helpless, discredited leaves in
air--discredited, abandoned, obsolete as her own specialty--her life's
work! He had taken that, too--taken her life's work from her. And in
return she was holding nothing!--nothing except a young man's
hands--strong, muscular hands which, after all, were holding her own
imprisoned. So she had nothing in exchange for the ninth volume of
Lamour; and her life's work had been annihilated by a smile; and she was
very much alone in the world--very isolated and very youthful.

After a while she emerged from the chaos of attempted reflection and
listened to what he was saying. He spoke very quietly, very distinctly,
not sparing himself, laying bare every deception without involving
anybody except himself.

He told her the entire history of his case, excluding Mr. Keen in
person; he told her about his aunt, about his birthday, about his
determination to let the legacy go. Then in a very manly way he told her
that he had never before loved a woman; and fell silent, her hands a
dead weight in his.

She was surprised that she could experience no resentment. A curious
inertia crept over her. She was tired of expectancy, tired of effort,
weary of the burden of decision. Life and its problems overweighted her.
Her eyes wandered to his broad young shoulders, then were raised to his
face.

"What shall we do?" she asked innocently.

Unresisting, she suffered him to explain. His explanation was not
elaborate; he only touched his lips to her hands and straightened up, a
trifle pale.

After a moment they walked together to the door and he took his hat and
gloves from the rack.

"Will you come to-morrow morning?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Come early. I am quite certain of how matters are with me. Everything
has gone out of my life--everything I once cared for--all the familiar
things. So come early, for I am quite alone without you."

"And I without you, Rosalind."

"That is only right," she said simply. "I shall cast no more shadows for
you. . . . Are you going? . . . Oh, I know it is best that you should
go, but--"

He halted. She laid both hands in his.

"We both have it," she faltered--"every symptom. And--you will come
early, won't you?"



THE END







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