"But is a presumably demented person a fit judge of his or her own best course of conduct? In your opinion shouldn't there be other safeguards in their interests to insure against what conceivably might be a terrible error or a terrible injustice?"

He didn't exactly sneer, but he indulged himself in the first cousin of a sneer.

"You've evidently been fortifying yourself to give me a battle--reading up on the subject, eh?"

"I've been reading up on the subject--not, though, for the purpose of entering into a joint debate on the subject with anyone. But, doctor, I have read enough to startle me. I never knew before there were such laws on the statute books. And I have learned about another case, the case of that rich man--a multimillionaire the papers called him, which means I suppose that at least he was well-to-do. You remember about him, I am sure? A commission declared him of unsound mind. He got away to another state where the legal processes of this state could not reach him. The courts of that other state declared him mentally competent and capable of managing his own affairs--and for a period of years he did manage them. Here the other month, under a pledge of safe conduct, he returned to New York on legal business and while he was here he carried his cause to a higher court and that court ruled him to be sane and ent.i.tled to his complete freedom of body and action. But for years he had been a pseudofugitive in enforced exile and for years he had carried the stigma of having been adjudged insane. This thing happened, incredible as it sounds. It might happen again to-day or to-morrow. It--"

"Excuse me for interrupting your flow of eloquence," he said with a labored politeness, "but I thought you came here to discuss the case of a girl named Vinsolving, not the case of a man I never heard of before.

Now, at least I'm not going to discuss generalities with you and I'm not going to sit here and join with you in questioning the workings of the law either. The laws are good enough for me as they stand. I'm a law-abiding citizen, not one of these red-eyed socialistic Bolsheviks that are forever trying to tear down things. I believe in taking the laws as I find them. Let well enough alone--that's my motto, young woman. And there are a whole lot more like me in this country."

"Pardon me for breaking in on you, sir," she said, fighting hard to keep her temper, "but neither am I a socialist or a Bolshevik."

"Then I reckon probably you're one of these rampant suffragists. Anyhow, what's the use of discussing abstracts? If you don't like the law why don't you have it changed?"

"That's one of the very things I hope before long to try to do," she replied.

"It'll keep you pretty busy," he responded with a sniff of profound disapproval. "But then you seem to have a lot of spare time on your hands to spend in crusading round. Well, I haven't. I've got my patients to see to. One of 'em is waiting for me now--if you'll kindly excuse me?"

She rose.

"I'm sorry," she said sincerely, "if either my mission or my language has irritated you. I seem somehow to have defeated the purpose that brought me--I mean a faint hope that perhaps somehow I might help that girl. Something tells me--call it intuition or sentimentality or what you will--but something tells me I must keep on trying to help her. I only wish I could make you share my point of view."

"Well, you can't. Say, see here, why don't you go to see the mother? I judge she might convince you that you are on the wrong tack, even if I can't."

"That's exactly what I mean to do," she declared.

Something inside her brain gave a little jump. It was curious that she had not thought of it before; even more curious that his labored sarcasms had been required to set her on this new trail.

"Well, at that, you'd better think twice before you go," he retorted.

"She was a mighty badly broken-up woman the last time I saw her, but even so I judge she's still got s.p.u.n.k enough left in her to resent having an unauthorized and uninvited stranger coming about, seeking to pry into her own private sorrow. But it's your affair, not mine.

Besides, judging by everything, you probably don't think my advice is worth much anyhow."

"Oh, yes, but I do--I do indeed! And I thank you for it."

"Don't mention it! And good day!"

The slamming of the inner door behind him made an appropriate exclamation point to punctuate the brevity of his offended and indignant departure. For a moment she felt like laughing outright. Then she felt like crying. Then she did neither. She left.

"Poor, old opinionated, stupid old, conscientious old thing!" she was saying to herself as she let herself, unattended, out of the front door.

"And yet I'll wager he would sit up all night and work his fingers to the bone trying to save a life. And when it comes to serving poor people without expecting payment or even asking for it, I know he is a perfect dear. Besides, I should be grateful to him--he gave me an idea. I don't know where he got it from either--I don't believe he ever had so very many of his own."

Again the handy cop in the communal center set her upon her way. But when she came to the destination she sought--a small, rather shabby cottage standing a mile or so westward from the middle of things communal, out in the fringes of the village where outlying homesteads tailed away into avowed farmsteads--the house itself was closed up fast and tight. The shutters all were closely drawn and against the gatepost was fastened a newly painted sign reading: "For Sale or Rent. Apply to Searle, the Up-to-Date Real Estate Man, Next Door to Pythian Hall."

Not quite sure she had stopped at the right place, Miss Smith hailed a man pottering in a chrysanthemum bed in the yard of the adjoining cottage.

"Mrs. Vinsolving?" he said, lifting a tousled head above his palings.

"Yessum, she lives there--leastwise she did. She moved away only the day before yesterday. Sort of sudden, I think it must have been. I didn't know she was going till she was gone." He grinned in extenuation of the unaccountable failure of a small-town man to acquaint himself with all available facts regarding a neighbor's private affairs. "But then she never wasn't much of a hand, Mrs. Vinsolving wasn't, for mixing with folks. I'll say she wasn't!"

Back she turned to seek out Searle, he of up-to-date real estate. In a dingy office upstairs over the local harness store a lean and rangy gentleman raised a brindled beard above a roll-top desk and in answer to her first question crisply remarked, "Can't tell."

"But surely if she put her property in your hands for disposal she must have given you some address where you might communicate with her?"

pressed Miss Smith.

"Oh, yes, she done that all right, but that ain't the question you ast me first. You ast me if I could tell you where she was--and that I can't do."

"I see. Then I presume she left instructions with you not to give her present whereabouts to anyone?"

"Well, you might figger it out that way and mebbe not so far wrong,"

said the cryptic Mr. Searle. "But if you think you'd like to buy or rent her place I'm fully empowered to act. Got the keys right here and a car standing outside--take you right on out there in a jiffy if you say the word."

He rose up and followed her halfway down the steps, plainly torn between a desire to make a commission and a regret that under orders from his client he could furnish no details regarding her late movements.

"If you're interested in any other piece of property in this vicinity--"

were the last words she heard floating down the stair well as she pa.s.sed out upon the uneven sidewalk.

She knew exactly what she meant to do next. At sight of her badge, as shown to him through his wicketed window marked "General Delivery," the village postmaster gave her a number on a side street well up-town in New York, adding: "Going away, Mrs. Vinsolving particularly asked me not to tell anybody where her mail was to be sent on to. Kind of a secretive woman anyhow, she was, and besides she's had some very pressing trouble come on her lately. I presume you've heard something about that matter?"

She nodded.

"I suppose now," went on the postmaster, his features sharpening with curiosity, "that the Federal authorities ain't looking into that particular matter? Not that I care to know myself, but I just thought it wouldn't be any harm to ask."

"No," said Miss Smith, "I merely wanted to see her on a personal matter and I only let you see my credential in order to learn her forwarding address."

Provided with the requisite information, she figured that before night she would interview the widow or know good reasons why. That the other woman had quitted her home seemingly in a hurry and with efforts at secrecy gave zest to the quest and added a trace of bepuzzlement to it too. Even so, she did not herself know what she meant to say to the woman when she had found her in her present abiding place or what questions she would ask. Only she knew that an inner prompting stronger than any reasoned-out process drove her forward upon her vague and blinded mission. Fool's errand it might be--probably was--yet she meant to see it through.

But she had not reckoned upon the contingency that on this fine October forenoon, for the first time since buying his new touring car, Mr. Jake Goebel, shirt-waist manufacturer in a small way in Broome Street and head of a family in a large way in West One Hundred and Ninety-ninth Street, would be undertaking to drive the said car unaided and untutored by a more experienced charioteer on a trial spin up the Albany Post Road, accompanied--it being merely a five-pa.s.senger car--only by Mrs.

Rosa Goebel, wife of the above, six little Goebels of a.s.sorted sizes and ages and Mrs. Goebel's unmated sister, Miss Freda Hirschfeld of Rivington Street. In Getty Square, Yonkers, about noontime occurred a head-on collision, the subsequent upshots of which were variously that divers of those figuring in the accident went in the following directions:

Miss Smith to a doctor's office near by to have a sprained wrist bandaged; and thence home in a hired automobile.

Her runabout to a Yonkers repair shop and garage.

Mr. Goebel, with lamentations, to the office of an attorney making a specialty of handling damage suits, thence home by train with the seven members of his family party, all uninjured as to their limbs and members but in a highly distracted state nervously.

Mr. Goebel's car to another repair shop and garage.

The traffic policeman on duty in Getty Square to the station house to make a report of the fifth smash-up personally officered by him within eight hours--on a Sunday his casualty list would have been longer, but this was a week day, when pleasure travel was less fraught with highway perilousness.

It so happened that Mullinix came to town from Washington next morning and, following his custom, rang up his unpaid but none the less valued aid to inquire whether he might come a-calling. No, he might not, Miss Smith being confined to her room with cold compresses on her injured wrist, but he might render a service for her if so minded--and he was.

To him, then, over the wire Miss Smith stated her requirements.

"I want you please to go to this address"--giving it--"and see whether you find there a Mrs. Janet Vinsolving, a widow. I rather imagine the place may be a boarding house, though I won't be sure as to that. It will not be necessary for you to see her in person; in fact I'd rather you did not. What I want you to do is to learn whether she is still there, and if so how long she expects to stay there, and generally anything you can about her movements. She went there only three days ago and inasmuch as she has a reputation in her former home for keeping very much to herself this may be a more difficult job than it sounds. But do the best you can, won't you, and then notify me of the results by telephone? No, it is a personal affair--nothing to do with any of our official undertakings. I'll tell you more about it when I see you. I expect I shall be able to receive visitors in a day or two; just now I feel a bit shaken up and unstrung. That's all, and thank you ever so much."

Within an hour he had her on the telephone again.

"h.e.l.lo!" she said. "Yes, this is Miss Smith. Oh, it's you, is it? Well, what luck?... Oh, so it was a boarding house, after all.... And you found her there?... No? Then where is she?... What? Where did you say?

Bellevue!... I knew it, I knew it, something told me!... No, no, never mind my ravings! Go on, please, go on!... Yes, all right. Now then, listen please: You jump in a taxi and get here to my apartments as soon as you can. I'll be dressed and ready when you arrive to go over there with you.... What?... Oh, bother the doctor's instructions. It's only a sprain anyhow and I feel perfectly fit by now, honestly I do ... tell you I'd get up out of my dying bed to go.... Yes, indeed, it is important--much more important than you think! Come on for me, I'll be waiting."