The Tracer of Lost Persons | Page 9

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.