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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.sing. 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 pa.s.s? 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.