Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/28

 was in trouble, regardless of how beautiful she was, but—her hair was sort of copper, you know, burnished copper like the old copper pots Grandma Morley used to have. And there had seemed to be lots of it, coils and masses and waves, tumbled and heaped and⸺

“Will you have your coffee here, sir?” asked Eddie.

“Er—yes, surely.”

To-morrow he would go ahunting Jessica Pomeroy—surely, she should not be so hard to find. It was not an ordinary name. She wouldn’t have that, of course. He could go no further into the matter of the books to-night, owing to an appointment for the evening.

It was after one o’clock when he returned, admitted by the apparently sleepless Eddie.

“Go to bed, Eddie,” he said. “Nothing to do till to-morrow.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Eddie, going to his room.

The little pile of books on the floor of the living room reminded him of the riddle of Jessica Pomeroy. Perhaps there was something in them he had overlooked—an address somewhere, perhaps, or He paused in hesitation for a moment.

On an impulse, he gathered up the books and took them to his bedroom with him, to look them over as he lay in bed.

By the light of his bedside lamp he went over each of the books carefully. Nothing. No trace of the identity of the girl with copper hair. He stifled a yawn politely, in deference to the fact that he was, in a way, communicating with a girl—the first one who had interested him since he had returned from France. The last book he picked up was the bible.

“Jessica Pomeroy,” he recited, looking at the school-