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The Tracer of Lost Persons, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 12 |
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_ 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. _ |
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