Chapter XXIX

Mr. Lane, the New York detective, who had so ignobly failed in the search for Aline Rodney, did not easily recover from that unprecedented defeat.

He was acute, wary, and intelligent, with a boundless stock of patience and persistence, and these qualities had always insured him success in all his undertakings. Failure was a new experience with him. He chafed under it. He could not understand it.

If pressing business matters had not recalled him to New York, he would have persevered indefatigably for months in the effort to find the missing girl. It was not in his nature to give up a quest easily. Only the stress of circumstances had induced him to give up this one. When he had thrown it over and returned to New York, it weighed on his mind. He hated to own himself conquered. Amid the stress of other pursuits, he often recalled the case in which he had been defeated. He would shut his eyes amid the din and noise of the city, and recall the quiet country town that had been the scene of such an unfathomable mystery. He did not like to think that he, who had worked up the most difficult cases in the great cities, had been completely baffled by a simple slip of a girl in a country town that, with all its pretentiousness and its exclusive society, was scarcely better than a village.

Although he had ridiculed Dr. Anthony’s story of his beautiful, mysterious patient, it had made an impression on him that was not easily shaken off. He often asked himself in the easy, slangy language of the day, whether there could be anything in it.

He thought sometimes that he had been too hasty and incredulous in condemning the story because all his efforts to find the mysterious, hidden maiden had failed. Dr. Anthony was certainly a man to be trusted, being frank, reliable, and most intelligent. And he had not taken umbrage at Mr. Lane’s credulity. He had been frankly amused at it. When Mr. Lane had quoted, for his benefit,

“Keep probability in view,
Lest folks believe your tale untrue.”

He frankly admitted that his story had an air of romance.

“Notwithstanding which,” he gravely added, “it’s an o’er true tale.”

Spite of this little chaffing, the two men having been frequently thrown together grew to like each other. There were attractive qualities in each one that pleased the other. They became quite social and friendly. When the detective returned to his city home he found it a pleasure sometimes to pause in the whirl of this strange life and drop a few genial lines to the Maywood physician. Dr. Anthony, in his turn, found it pleasant to reply.

So that even before the gossipy newspapers chronicled the fact of Aline Rodney’s return to her home, Mr. Lane was made cognizant of it through the medium of the young physician’s letters.

He was amazed and rather indignant. It was bad enough that she had so cleverly covered up her traces and stayed away as long at it pleased her, but that she should come home and keep her secret still was far worse. He had no vulgar curiosity over the girl, but he had a strong professional interest. She had baffled him and damaged his reputation as an invariably successful man. He was distinctly conscious of an inward pique.

“I should like to shake the naughty little runaway! What business has she to outwit me?” he said to himself.

Sometimes he almost made up his mind to run down to Chester and have a look at this girl who could keep a secret so well. She would be well worth looking at, he fancied, from Dr. Anthony’s enthusiastic description of her beauty. Then, too, she must have brains and will besides her beauty, or she could not have kept her secret against the odds that had been brought to bear against her. Decidedly he meant to see her.

But steady business kept him rather against his will in New York. He put off his trip from time to time waiting for a convenient season. So the autumn months waned and winter was upon him before he had given himself the promised visit. At Christmas he received one of Dr. Anthony’s pleasant, friendly letters. It contained among its closing messages an invitation to Mr. Lane to be present at his friend’s marriage on the 1st of January in the pretty little Gothic church the Rodneys attended in Chester.