Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I must ask you to do so in my case. It is not fair that you should undertake it on other terms. I desire to make a special arrangement with you. Do you mind?”

  “What arrangement had you contemplated?” inquired Keen, amused.

  “Only this: charge me in advance exactly what you would charge if successful. And, on the other hand, do not ask me for detailed information — I mean, do not insist on any information that I decline to give. Do you mind taking up such an extraordinary and unbusinesslike proposition, Mr. Keen?”

  The Tracer of Lost Persons looked up sharply:

  “About how much information do you decline to give, Mr. Gatewood?”

  “About enough to incriminate and degrade,” replied the young man, laughing.

  The elderly gentleman sat silent, apparently buried in meditation. Once or twice his pleasant steel-gray eyes wandered over Gatewood as an expert, a connoisseur, glances at a picture and assimilates its history, its value, its artistic merit, its every detail in one practiced glance.

  “I think we may take up this matter for you, Mr. Gatewood,” he said, smiling his singularly agreeable smile.

  “But — but you would first desire to know something about me — would you not?”

  Keen looked at him: “You will not mistake me — you will consider it entirely inoffensive — if I say that I know something about you, Mr. Gatewood?”

  “About me? How can you? Of course, there is the social register and the club lists and all that—”

  “And many, many sources of information which are necessary in such a business as this, Mr. Gatewood. It is a necessity for us to be almost as well informed as our clients’ own lawyers. I could pay you no sincerer compliment than to undertake your case. I am half inclined to do so even without a retainer. Mind, I haven’t yet said that I will take it.”

  “I prefer to regulate any possible indebtedness in advance,” said Gatewood.

  “As you wish,” replied the older man, smiling. “In that case, suppose you draw your check” (he handed Gatewood a fountain pen as the young man fished a check-book from his pocket)— “your check for — well, say for $5,000, to the order of Keen & Co.”

  Gatewood met his eye without wincing; he was in for it now; and he was always perfectly game. He had brought it upon himself; it was his own proposition. Not that he would have for a moment considered the sum as high — or any sum exorbitant — if there had been a chance of success; one cannot compare and weigh such matters. But how could there be any chance for success?

  As he slowly smoothed out the check and stub, pen poised, Keen was saying: “Of course, we should succeed sooner or later — if we took up your case. We might succeed to-morrow — to-day. That would mean a large profit for us. But we might not succeed to-day, or next month, or even next year. That would leave us little or no profit; and, as it is our custom to go on until we do succeed, no matter how long it may require, you see, Mr. Gatewood, I should be taking all sorts of chances. It might even cost us double your retainer before we found her—”

  “Her? How did — why do you say ‘her’?”

  “Am I wrong?” asked Keen, smiling.

  “No — you are right.”

  The Tracer of Lost Persons sank into abstraction again. Gatewood waited, hoping that his case might be declined, yet ready to face any music started at his own request.

  “She is young,” mused Keen aloud, “very beautiful and accomplished. Is she wealthy?” He looked up mildly.

  Gatewood said: “I don’t know — the truth is I don’t care—” And stopped.

  “O-ho!” mused Keen slowly. “I — think — I understand. Am I wrong, Mr. Gatewood, in surmising that this young lady whom you seek is, in your eyes, very — I may say ideally gifted?”

  “She is my ideal,” replied the young man, coloring.

  “Exactly. And — her general allure?”

  “Charming!”

  “Exactly; but to be a trifle more precise — if you could give me a sketch, an idea, a mere outline delicately tinted, now. Is she more blond than brunette?”

  “Yes — but her eyes are brown. I — I insist on that.”

  “Why should you not? You know her; I don’t,” said Keen, laughing. “I merely wished to form a mental picture. . . . You say her hair is — is—”

  “It’s full of sunny color; that’s all I can say.”

  “Exactly — I see. A rare and lovely combination with brown eyes and creamy skin, Mr. Gatewood. I fancy she might be, perhaps, an inch or two under your height?”

  “Just about that. Her hands should be — are beautiful—”

  “Exactly. The ensemble is most vividly portrayed, Mr. Gatewood; and — you have intimated that her lack of fortune — er — we might almost say her pecuniary distress — is more than compensated for by her accomplishments, character, and very unusual beauty. . . . Did I so understand you, Mr. Gatewood?”

  “That’s what I meant, anyhow,” he said, flushing up.

  “You did mean it?”

  “I did: I do.”

  “Then we take your case, Mr. Gatewood. . . . No haste about the check, my dear sir — pray consider us at your service.”

  But Gatewood doggedly filled in the check and handed it to the Tracer of Lost Persons.

  “I wish you happiness,” said the older man in a low voice. “The lady you describe exists; it is for us to discover her.”

  “Thank you,” stammered Gatewood, astounded.

  Keen touched an electric button; a moment later a young girl entered the room.

  “Miss Southerland, Mr. Gatewood. Will you be kind enough to take Mr. Gatewood’s dictation in Room 19?”

  For a second Gatewood stared — as though in the young girl before him the ghost of his ideal had risen to confront him — only for a second; then he bowed, matching her perfect acknowledgment of his presence by a bearing and courtesy which must have been inbred to be so faultless.

  And he followed her to Room 19.

  What had Keen meant by saying, “The lady you describe exists!” Did this remarkable elderly gentleman suspect that it was to be a hunt for an ideal? Had he deliberately entered into such a bargain? Impossible!

  His disturbed thoughts reverted to the terms of the bargain, the entire enterprise, the figures on his check. His own amazing imbecility appalled him. What idiocy! What sudden madness had seized him to entangle himself in such unheard-of negotiations! True, he had played bridge until dawn the night before, but, on awaking, he had discovered no perceptible hold-over. It must have been sheer weakness of intellect that permitted him to be dominated by the suggestions of Kerns. And now the game was on: the jack declared, cards dealt, and his ante was up. Had he openers?

  Room 19, duly labeled with its number on the opaque glass door, contained a desk, a table and typewriter, several comfortable chairs, and a window opening on Fifth Avenue, through which the eastern sun poured a stream of glory, washing curtain, walls, and ceiling with palest gold.

  And all this time, preoccupied with new impressions and his own growing chagrin, he watched the girl who conducted him with all the unconscious assurance and grace of a young chatelaine passing through her own domain under escort of a distinguished guest.

  When they had entered Room 19, she half turned, but he forestalled her and closed the door, and she passed before him with a perceptible inclination of her finely modeled head, seating herself at the desk by the open window. He took an armchair at her elbow and removed his gloves, looking at her expectantly.

  CHAPTER III

  “This is a list of particular and general questions for you to answer, Mr. Gatewood,” she said, handing him a long slip of printed matter. “The replies to such questions as you are able or willing to answer you may dictate to me.” The beauty of her modulated voice was scarcely a surprise — no woman who moved and carried herself as did this tall young girl in black and white could reasonably be expected to speak with less distinction — yet the charm of her voice, from the moment
her lips unclosed, so engrossed him that the purport of her speech escaped him.

  “Would you mind saying it once more?” he asked.

  She did so; he attempted to concentrate his attention, and succeeded sufficiently to look as though some vestige of intellect remained in him. He saw her pick up a pad and pencil; the contour and grace of two deliciously fashioned hands arrested his mental process once more.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily; “what were you saying, Miss Southerland?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Gatewood. I did not speak.” And he realized, hazily, that she had not spoken — that it was the subtle eloquence of her youth and loveliness that had appealed like a sudden voice — a sound faintly exquisite echoing his own thought of her.

  Troubled, he looked at the slip of paper in his hand; it was headed:

  SPECIAL DESCRIPTION BLANK

  (Form K)

  And he read it as carefully as he was able to — the curious little clamor of his pulses, the dazed sense of elation, almost of expectation, distracting his attention all the time.

  “I wish you would read it to me,” he said; “that would give me time to think up answers.”

  “If you wish,” she assented pleasantly, swinging around toward him in her desk chair. Then she crossed one knee over the other to support the pad, and, bending above it, lifted her brown eyes. She could have done nothing in the world more distracting at that moment.

  “What is the sex of the person you desire to find, Mr. Gatewood?”

  “Her sex? I — well, I fancy it is feminine.”

  She wrote after “Sex” the words “She is probably feminine”; looked at him absently, glanced at what she had written, flushed a little, rubbed out the “she is probably,” wondering why a moment’s mental wandering should have committed her to absurdity.

  “Married?” she asked with emphasis.

  “No,” he replied, startled; then, vexed, “I beg your pardon — you mean to ask if she is married!”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean you, Mr. Gatewood; it’s the next question, you see” — she held out the blank toward him. “Is the person you are looking for married?”

  “Oh, no; she isn’t married, either — at least — trust — not — because if she is I don’t want to find her!” he ended, entangled in an explanation which threatened to involve him deeper than he desired. And, looking up, he saw the beautiful brown eyes regarding him steadily. They reverted to the paper at once, and the white fingers sent the pencil flying.

  “He trusts that she is unmarried, but if she is (underlined) married he doesn’t want to find her,” she wrote.

  “That,” she explained, “goes under the head of ‘General Remarks’ at the bottom of the page” — she held it out, pointing with her pencil. He nodded, staring at her slender hand.

  “Age?” she continued, setting the pad firmly on her rounded, yielding knee and looking up at him.

  “Age? Well, I — as a matter of fact, I could only venture a surmise. You know,” he said earnestly, “how difficult it is to guess ages, don’t you, Miss Southerland?”

  “How old do you think she is? Could you not hazard a guess — judging, say, from her appearance?”

  “I have no data — no experience to guide me.” He was becoming involved again. “Would you, for practice, permit me first to guess your age, Miss Southerland?”

  “Why — yes — if you think that might help you to guess hers.”

  So he leaned back in his armchair and considered her a very long time — having a respectable excuse to do so. Twenty times he forgot he was looking at her for any purpose except that of disinterested delight, and twenty times he remembered with a guilty wince that it was a matter of business.

  “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 passed 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 rhapsod
y 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 amusement. 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:

  “Hands?”

  “White, beautiful, rose-tipped, slender yet softly and firmly rounded—”

  “How can they be soft and firm, too, Mr. Gatewood?” she protested; then, surprising his guilty eyes fixed on her hands, hastily dropped them and sat up straight, level-browed, cold as marble. Was he deliberately being rude to her?

  CHAPTER IV

  As a matter of fact, he was not. Too poor in imagination to invent, on the spur of the moment, charms and qualities suited to his ideal, he had, at first unconsciously, taken as a model the girl before him; quite unconsciously and innocently at first — then furtively, and with a dawning perception of the almost flawless beauty he was secretly plagiarizing. Aware, now, that something had annoyed her; aware, too, at the same moment that there appeared to be nothing lacking in her to satisfy his imagination of the ideal, he began to turn redder than he had ever turned in all his life.

  Several minutes of sixty seconds each ensued before he ventured to stir a finger. And it was only when she bent again very gravely over her pad that he cautiously eased a cramped muscle or two, and drew a breath — a long, noiseless, deep and timid respiration. He realized the enormity of what he had been doing — how close he had come to giving unpardonable offense by drawing a perfect portrait of her as the person he desired to find through the good offices of Keen & Co.