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 carefulnotto 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
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 PERSONSKeen & 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.
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 includeallthat 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 anybodyon 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.
"Exactly. 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 theCaraniato-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—"
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.
"Exactly, 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?"
"Exactly. 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 findlivepeople, 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 sheisdead—"
"She!"
"Didn't you say 'she,' Captain?"
"No, I did not."
"I beg your pardon, then, for anticipating you," said the Tracer carelessly.
"Anticipating?Howdo 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."
"Exactly. Then you arenotin 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.Youdon't know.Iknow because youdon'tknow. 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 werenotin 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, Iama 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."
"Exactly," 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."
"Exactly; 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 Icouldn'thelp 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'smy 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.
"Doyoubelieve 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.
"Exactly," 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. "Youdon'tthink 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.
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:
Cryptographic symbols
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. "Doyou 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—
Cryptographic symbols
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 sawher!" 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 thatyoucan 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'tyou 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 seeher?"
"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:
Ring with an X
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."
Ring with an X
Ring with an X
"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: "Shenever 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 theMindinao, 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:
Cryptographic symbol
Cryptographic symbol
"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 istoosimple."
"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