CHAPTER XIV.
In the meanwhile, at the other end of the wire, Mr.Keen, the Tracer of Lost Persons, was preparing to trace for Mr.Kerns, against that gentleman's will, the true happiness which Mr.Kerns had never been able to find for himself.
He sat in his easy chair within the four walls of his own office, inspecting a line of people who stood before him on the carpet forming a single and attentive rank.

In this rank were five men: a policeman, a cab driver, an agent of the telephone company, an agent of the electric company, and a reformed burglar carrying a kit of his trade tools.
The Tracer of Lost Persons gazed at them, meditatively joining the tips of his thin fingers.
"I want the number on 36 East Eighty-third Street changed to No.

38, and the number 38 replaced by No.

36," he said to the policeman.

"I want it done at once.