ntil I had
unraveled them every one. Mrs. Jones declared there was no reason for
the disappearance of Tom; his aunt Quincy said her flightiness had
driven him to it; and Cousin Jack, Mrs. Tom's adviser, thought it just a
freak after much dissipation, for Tom had been acting queerly for months
before he did the vanishing act. The three were talking either from
spleen or the wish to hide the truth. When there was no trace of Tom
after a month of ordinary searching much of the truth came out, and I
discovered the rest. Plain speech with Mrs. Tom brought her to the
half-truth. She was told that her husband would never be found if the
detective had to work in the dark. She was a clever woman, and very much
worried, for reasons, over her husband's disappearance. It was something
to have her declare that he had suspected her fidelity, but chiefly out
of spleen, because she had discovered his infidelity. A little sifting
of many statements, which took a long time, for I was on the case nearly
two years, as I said, revealed Mrs. Tom as a remarkable woman. In
viciousness she must have been something of a monster, though she was
beautiful enough to have posed for an angel. Her corruption was of the
marrow. She breathed crime and bred it. But her blade was too keen. She
wounded herself too often. Grit and ferocity were her strong points. We
meet such women occasionally. When she learned that I knew as much about
her as need be, she threw off hypocrisy, and made me an offer of ten
thousand dollars to find her husband."

"I felt sure then of the money. Disappearance, for a living man, if
clever people are looking for him, is impossible nowadays. I can admit
the case of a man being secretly killed or self-buried, say, for
instance, his wandering into a swamp and there perishing: these cases of
disappearance are common. But if he is alive he can be found."

"Why are you so sure of that?" said Arthur.

"Because no man can escape from his past, which is more a part of him
than his heart or his liver," said Curran. "That past is the pathway
which leads to him. If you have it, it's only a matter of time when you
will have him."

"Yet you failed to find Tom Jones."

"For the time, yes," said the Captain with an eloquent smile. "Then, I
had an antagonist of the noblest quality. Tom Jones was a bud of the
Mayflower stock. All his set agreed that he was an exceptional man: a
clean, honest, upright chap, the son of a soldier and a peerless