The Art of Disappearing

by John Talbot Smith

"Oh," cried Honora with a gasp of pain, "can there be such women now? I have read of them in history, but I always felt they were far off——"

"I hope they are not many," said the Captain politely, "but in my profession I have met them. Here was a case where the best of men was the victim of an Agrippina."

"Poor, dear lad," sighed she, "and of course he fled from her in horror."

"He was a wonder, Miss Ledwith. Think what he did. Such a man is more than a match for such a woman. He discovered her unfaithfulness months before he disappeared. Then he sold all his property, turning all he owned into money, and transferred it beyond any reach but his own, leaving his wife just what she brought him—an income from her parents of fifteen hundred a year: a mere drop to a woman whom he had dowered with a share in one hundred thousand. Though I could not follow the tracks of his feet, I saw the traces of his thoughts as he executed his scheme of vengeance. He discovered her villainy, he would have no scandal, he was disgusted with life, so he dropped out of it with the prize for which she had married him, and left her like a famished wolf in the desert. It would have satisfied him to have seen her rage and dismay, but he was not one of the kind that enjoys torture."

"I watched Mrs. Tom for months, and felt she was the nearest thing to a demon I had ever met. Well, I worked hard to find Tom. We tried many tricks to lure him from his hiding-place, if it were near by, and we followed many a false trail into foreign lands. The result was dreadful to me. We found nothing. When a child was born to him, and the fact advertised, and still he did not appear, or give the faintest sign, I surrendered. It would be tedious to describe for you how I followed the sales of his property, how I examined his last traces, how I pursued all clues, how I wore myself out with study. At the last I gave out altogether and cut the whole business. I was beginning to have Tom on the brain. He came to live on my nerves, and to haunt my dreams, and to raise ghosts for me. He is gone two years, and Mrs. Tom is in Europe with her baby and Tom's aunt Quincy. When I get over my present trouble, and get back a clear brain, I shall take up the search. I shall find him yet. I'd like to show some of the documents, but the matter is still confidential, and I must keep quiet, though I don't suppose you know any of the parties. When I find him I shall finish the story for you."

"You will never find him," said Honora with emphasis. "That fearful woman shattered his very soul. I know the sort of a man he was. He will never go back. If he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it."

"I shall find him," said the detective.

"You won't," said Grahame. "I'll wager he has been so close to you all this time, that you cannot recognize him. That man is living within your horizon, if he's living at all. Probably he has aided you in your search. You wouldn't be the first detective fooled in that game."

The Captain made no reply, but went off to see how his ship was bearing the storm. The little company fell silent, perhaps depressed by the sounds of tempest without and the thought of the poor soul whose departure from life had been so strange. Arthur sat thinking of many things. He remembered the teaching that to God the past, present, and future are as one living present. Here was an illustration: the old past and the new present side by side to-night in the person of this detective. What a giant hand was that which could touch him, and fail to seize only because the fingers did not know their natural prey. No doubt that the past is more a part of a man than his heart, for here was every nerve of his body tingling to turn traitor to his will. Horace Endicott, so long stilled that he thought him dead, rose from his sleep at the bidding of the detective, and fought to betray Arthur Dillon. The blush, the trembling of the hands, the tension of the muscles, the misty eye, the pallor of the cheek, the tremulous lip, the writhing tongue, seemed to put themselves at the service of Endicott, and to fight for the chance to betray the secret to Curran. He sat motionless, fighting, fighting; until after a little he felt a delightful consciousness of the strength of Dillon, as of a rampart which the Endicott could not overclimb. Then his spirits rose, and he listened without dread to the story. How pitiful! What a fate for that splendid boy, the son of a brave soldier and a peerless mother! A human being allied with a beast! Oh, tender heart of Honora that sighed for him so pitifully! Oh, true spirit that recognized how impossible for Horace Endicott ever to return! Down, out of sight forever, husband of Agrippina! The furies lie in wait for thee, wretched husband of their daughter! Have shame enough to keep in thy grave until thou goest to meet Sonia at the judgment seat!

Captain Curran was not at all flattered by the deep interest which Arthur took for the next two days in the case of Tom Jones; but the young man nettled him by his emphatic assertions that the detective had adopted a wrong theory as to the mysterious disappearance. They went over the question of motives and of methods. The shrewd objections of Dillon gave him favor in Curran's eyes. Before long the secret documents in the Captain's possession were laid before him under obligations of secrecy. He saw various photographs of Endicott, and wondered at the blindness of man; for here side by side were the man sought and his portrait, yet the detective could not see the truth. Was it possible that the exterior man had changed so thoroughly to match the inner personality which had grown up in him? He was conscious of such a change. The mirror which reflected Arthur Dillon displayed a figure in no way related to the portrait.