Blanks on application.

     WESTREL KEEN, Manager.

“Mistuh Keen will see you, suh,” came a persuasive voice at his elbow; and he rose and followed the softly moving colored servant out of the room, through a labyrinth of demure young women at their typewriters, then sharply to the right and into a big, handsomely furnished office, where a sleepy-looking elderly gentleman rose from an armchair and bowed.  There could not be the slightest doubt that he was a gentleman; every movement, every sound he uttered, settled the fact.

“Mr. Keen?”

“Mr. Gatewood?”—­with a quiet certainty which had its charm.  “This is very good of you.”

Gatewood sat down and looked at his host.  Then he said:  “I’m searching for somebody, Mr. Keen, whom you are not likely to find.”

“I doubt it,” said Keen pleasantly.

Gatewood smiled.  “If,” he said, “you will undertake to find the person I cannot find, I must ask you to accept a retainer.”

“We don’t require retainers,” replied Keen.  “Unless we find the person sought for, we make no charges, Mr. Gatewood.”

“I must ask you to do so in my case.  It is not fair that you should undertake it on other terms.  I desire to make a special arrangement with you.  Do you mind?”

“What arrangement had you contemplated?” inquired Keen, amused.

“Only this:  charge me in advance exactly what you would charge if successful.  And, on the other hand, do not ask me for detailed information—­I mean, do not insist on any information that I decline to give.  Do you mind taking up such an extraordinary and unbusinesslike proposition, Mr. Keen?”

The Tracer of Lost Persons looked up sharply: 

“About how much information do you decline to give, Mr. Gatewood?”

“About enough to incriminate and degrade,” replied the young man, laughing.

The elderly gentleman sat silent, apparently buried in meditation.  Once or twice his pleasant steel-gray eyes wandered over Gatewood as an expert, a connoisseur, glances at a picture and assimilates its history, its value, its artistic merit, its every detail in one practiced glance.

“I think we may take up this matter for you, Mr. Gatewood,” he said, smiling his singularly agreeable smile.

“But—­but you would first desire to know something about me—­would you not?”

Keen looked at him:  “You will not mistake me—­you will consider it entirely inoffensive—­if I say that I know something about you, Mr. Gatewood?”

“About me?  How can you?  Of course, there is the social register and the club lists and all that—­”

“And many, many sources of information which are necessary in such a business as this, Mr. Gatewood.  It is a necessity for us to be almost as well informed as our clients’ own lawyers.  I could pay you no sincerer compliment than to undertake your case.  I am half inclined to do so even without a retainer.  Mind, I haven’t yet said that I will take it.”