hirk 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, an