The Tracer of Lost Persons Part 4

"Perhaps I had better tell you," she suggested, her color rising a little under his scrutiny.

"Is it eighteen? Just _her_ age!"

"Twenty-one, Mr. Gatewood--and you _said_ you didn't know her age."

"I have just remembered that I _thought_ it might be eighteen; but I dare say I was shy three years in her case, too. You may put it down at twenty-one."

For the slightest fraction of a second the brown eyes rested on his, the pencil hovered in hesitation. Then the eyes fell, and the moving fingers wrote.

"Did you write 'twenty-one'?" he inquired carelessly.

"I did not, Mr. Gatewood."

"What did you write?"

"I wrote: 'He doesn't appear to know much about her age.'"

"But I _do_ know--"

"You said--" They looked at one another earnestly.

"The next question," she continued with composure, "is: 'Date and place of birth?' Can you answer any part of _that_ question?"

"I trust I may be able to--some day. . . . What _are_ you writing?"

"I'm writing: 'He trusts he may be able to, some day.' Wasn't that what you said?"

"Yes, I did say that. I--I'm not perfectly sure what I meant by it."

She pa.s.sed to the next question:

"Height?"

"About five feet six," he said, fascinated gaze on her.

"Hair?"

"More gold than brown--full of--er--gleams--" She looked up quickly; his eyes reverted to the window rather suddenly. He had been looking at her hair.

"Complexion?" she continued after a shade of hesitation.

"It's a sort of delicious mixture--bisque, tinted with a pinkish bloom--ivory and rose--" He was explaining volubly, when she began to shake her head, timing each shake to his words.

"Really, Mr. Gatewood, I think you are hopelessly vague on that point--unless you desire to convey the impression that she is speckled."

"Speckled!" he repeated, horrified. "Why, I am describing a woman who is my ideal of beauty--"

But she had already gone to the next question:

"Teeth?"

"P-p-perfect p-p-pearls!" he stammered. The laughing red mouth closed like a flower at dusk, veiling the sparkle of her teeth.

Was he trying to be impertinent? Was he deliberately describing her? He did not look like that sort of man; yet _why_ was he watching her so closely, so curiously at every question? Why did he look at her teeth when she laughed?

"Eyes?" Her own dared him to continue what, coincidence or not, was plainly a description of herself.

"B-b-b--" He grew suddenly timorous, hesitating, pretending to a perplexity which was really a healthy scare. For she was frowning.

"Curious I can't think of the color of her eyes," he said; "is--isn't it?"

She coldly inspected her pad and made a correction; but all she did was to rub out a comma and put another in its place. Meanwhile, Gatewood, chin in his hand, sat buried in profound thought. "_Were_ they blue?" he murmured to himself aloud, "or _were_ they brown? Blue begins with a _b_ and brown begins with a _b_. I'm convinced that her eyes began with a _b_. They were not, therefore, gray or green, because," he added in a burst of confidence, "it is utterly impossible to spell gray or green with a _b_!"

Miss Southerland looked slightly astonished.

"All you can recollect, then, is that the color of her eyes began with the letter _b_?"

"That is absolutely all I can remember; but I _think_ they _were_--brown."

"If they _were_ brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out of the window.

"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you writing?"

"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.

"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.

"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color, shape, its sensitive beauty, its--_What_ did you write just then?"

"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"

"I don't want you to! I want--"

"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry, but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction.

Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"

"Oh, I _do_ mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her figure--"

"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a glimmering transition from vexation to amus.e.m.e.nt. For, after all, it could be _only_ a coincidence that this young man should be describing features peculiar to herself.

"Couldn't you write, 'Venus-of-Milo-like'?" he inquired. "That is laconic."

"I could--if it's true. But if you mean it for praise--I--don't think any modern woman would be flattered."

"I always supposed that she of Milo had an ideal figure," he said, perplexed.

She wrote, "A good figure." Then, propping her rounded chin on one lovely white hand, she glanced at the next question: