The Tracer of Lost Persons

by Robert W. Chambers

  CHAPTER VIII

  Harren started, then walked slowly to the center of the room as thepretty 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 guessthat 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 MissBorrow to help us."

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

  "Don't be surprised, Captain Harren," he said. "I suppose you have noconception of our business, no realization of its scope--its network ofinformation bureaus all over the civilized world, its myriad sources ofinformation, the immensity of its delicate machinery, the endless dataand 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 arein our employ, of the ceaseless yet inoffensive surveillance wemaintain. For example, when your letter came last week I called up theperson who has charge of the army list. There you were, Kenneth Harren,Captain Philippine Scouts, with the date of your graduation from WestPoint. Then I called up a certain department devoted to personal detail,and in five minutes I knew your entire history. I then touched anotherelectric button, and in a minute I had before me the date of yourarrival in New York, your present address, and"--he looked upquizzically at Harren--"and several items of general information, suchas your peculiar use of your camera, and the list of books on PsychicalPhenomena 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 wasnothing offensive in the surveillance." He shrugged his shoulders andmade a deprecating gesture. "Ours is a business, my dear sir, like anyother. 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; inother words, I had you under observation from the day I received yourletter 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 thatmy 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 beextended," 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 theTracer carelessly. "You have the extension you desired. And now, CaptainHarren," with a singularly pleasant smile, "what can I do to help you toa pursuit of that true happiness which is guaranteed for all goodcitizens 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. "Yourprospectus distinctly states that Keen & Co. undertake to find _live_people, and I don't know whether the person I am seeking is aliveor--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 Tracercarelessly.

  "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 almostsullenly, "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. Keenpatiently. "Else why are you here to consult me?" And as Harren made noreply: "I have seen thousands and thousands of people in love. I havereduced the superficial muscular phenomena and facial symptomatic aspectof such people to an exact science founded upon a schedule approximatingthe Bertillon system of records. And," he added, smiling, "out of thetwenty-seven known vocal variations your voice betrays twenty-fiveunmistakable symptoms; and out of the sixteen reflex muscular symptomsyour 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 lovewhen he himself doesn't know whether he is or not? If a man isn't inlove no Bertillon system can make him so; and if a man doesn't knowwhether 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 convincingsymptom. _You_ don't know. _I_ know because you _don't_ know. That isthe easiest way to be sure that you are in love, Captain Harren, becauseyou always are when you are not sure. You'd know if you were _not_ inlove. Now, my dear sir, you may lay your case confidently before me."

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

  "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 noinclination 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, squintedat the ceiling, then straightened up, folding his arms with suddendetermination.

  "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 knowit."

  "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 aboutat night; I mean a phantom--a real phantom--in the sunlight--standingbefore my very eyes in broad day! . . . Now do you feel inclined to goon with my case, Mr. Keen?"

  "Certainly," replied the Tracer gravely. "Please continue, CaptainHarren."

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

  He sat so long immersed in retrospection that the Tracer said: "I amlistening, 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 ofdescription. The hair was also dark--very soft and thick and--er--wavyand dark. The face was extremely youthful, and ornamental to theuttermost verges of a beauty so exquisite that, were I to attempt toformulate for you
its individual attractions, I should, I fear,transgress the strictly rigid bounds of that reticence which becomes agentleman in complete possession of his senses."

  "_Ex_actly," mused the Tracer.

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

  "_Ex_actly; don't try."

  "No," said Harren mournfully, "it is useless"; and he relapsed intoenchanted 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 followingher. She was so b-b-beautiful that it hurt; and I only wanted to look ather; I didn't mind being hurt. So I walked on and on, and sometimes I'dpass her and sometimes I'd let her pass me, and when she wasn't lookingI'd look--not offensively, but just because I _couldn't_ help it. Andall the time my senses were humming like a top and my heart kept jumpingto get into my throat, and I hadn't a notion where I was going or whattime it was or what day of the week. She didn't see me; she didn't dreamthat I was looking at her; she didn't know me from any of the thousandsilk-hatted, frock-coated men who passed and repassed her on FifthAvenue. And when she went into St. Berold's Church, I went, too, and Istood where I could see her and where she couldn't see me. It was like atouch of the Luzon sun, Mr. Keen. And then she came out and got into aFifth Avenue stage, and I got in, too. And whenever she looked away Ilooked at her--without the slightest offense, Mr. Keen, until, once, shecaught 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 ablooming beet, she began to turn pink like a rosebud, and she lookedfull into my eyes with such a wonderful purity, such exquisiteinnocence, 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 anotherthing--only it is part of this business."

  He tightened his clasped hands over his knee until the knuckleswhitened.

  "_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 mea 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 seenher 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 paddyfields. I have seen her passing through the hallway of a friend'shouse--turning on the stair to look back at me! I saw her standing justback of the firing-line at Manoa Wells when we were preparing to rushthe 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 forfive minutes. I saw her in 'Frisco; she sat in the Pullman twice betweenDenver and this city. Twice in my room at the Vice-Regent she has satopposite me at midday, so clear, so beautiful, so real that--that Icould 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 areon the verge of understanding the alphabet of some of the unknown forceswhich 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 myprofession, we have proof of the existence of forces for which we haveas yet no explanation--or, at best, a very crude one. I have had caseafter case of premonition; case after case of dual and even multiplepersonality; case after case where apparitions played a vital part inthe plot which was brought to me to investigate. I'll tell you this,Captain: I, personally, never saw an apparition, never was obsessed bypremonitions, never received any communications from the outer void. ButI have had to do with those who undoubtedly did. Therefore I listen withall seriousness and respect to what you tell me."

  "Suppose," said Harren, growing suddenly red, "that I should tell you Ihave 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 tome in that photograph. . . . You understand me, do you not? Yet, if itwill help you in finding her--"

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

  Harren stared. "Why? Why do I want to find her? Man, I--I can't livewithout 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 wewalk around to your rooms after luncheon. Shall we?"

  Harren picked up his hat and gloves, hesitating, lingering on thethreshold. "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 healthyand--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. Ithink, Captain, that she has been seeing you, too, during these threeyears, but probably only in her dreams--memories of your encounters withher subconscious self floating over continents and oceans in a quest ofwhich her waking intelligence is innocently unaware."

  The Captain colored like a schoolboy, lingering at the door, hat inhand. Then he straightened up to the full height of his slim butpowerful 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, grayeyes lost in retrospection, and on his lean, bronzed, attractive face anafterglow of color wholly becoming.