What happened was that the telephone began ringing in the next room—Peterson's room. It began when Clo had counted up to forty.
She had hoped not to go back to the room of the dead man. She had searched it from end to end. But now she knew the thing would have to be done.
Already the jet and steel bag hung by its ribbons over her arm. Clo switched off the electricity, and let herself out into the hall. Before she had finished her count of sixty seconds she was once more locked in Peterson's room. So confidently had she expected to hear the same foreign-sounding accents that she almost dropped the receiver and started away when her "Hello!" was answered by a strange voice.
Yet—was it a strange voice? As it went on to ask: "Is this Mr. Peterson?" Clo had a strong impression that she had heard the voice before. Assuredly it was not the one which had talked to "Kit," but it sounded astonishingly familiar. Though she could not yet identify the tones recognition was only a question of instants.
"This is Mr. Peterson's room," she replied. "He is—here. He wishes me to speak for him."
"I had better tell you before we go further, then, that I'm talking for Mr. John Heron. When you have explained that, Mr. Peterson will decide whether he'd rather come to the 'phone and attend to the business himself."
Clo was glad of the pause. "John Heron!" That was the man Peterson had mentioned during her second conversation with him. He had said that Roger Sands was "working for John Heron" when Roger and Beverley met in the train; and she—Clo—had heard the name with a queer thrill which she could not understand. So far as she knew, it was strange to her: yet she seemed to have heard it in dreams—sad dreams, where someone had sobbed in the dark. Through the strenuous adventures which had kept body and brain busy the girl had recalled it again and again, since the moment when the name had fallen from Peterson's lips. She had wondered if she would ever have the "cheek" to ask Angel who was John Heron. Whoever he might be, John Heron was in some way concerned with Beverley's secret, or Peterson would not have spoken his name in that connection.
She answered quietly: "Mr. Peterson allows me to go on speaking for him."
"Very well," returned the voice. "Mr. Peterson called Mr. Heron up not long ago, to say he could sell him a rope of fine pearls for Mrs. Heron, at a low price. He'd heard, it appears, that Mr. Heron wished to buy pearls, and he suggested an appointment for to-night. Mr. Heron did not receive this message himself; he was indisposed at the time it came, and Mrs. Heron took it, but was unable to answer for her husband. He asks me to say, in his name, that if Mr. Peterson has some particularly fine pearls to dispose of, he'll be pleased to look at them, not to-night, but to-morrow morning about ten o'clock, at his hotel, the Dietz."
"The Dietz!" cried Clo. "Now I know who's speaking to me. You're Justin O'Reilly!"
Inadvertently she had kept her lips at the receiver. The cry had flown to the man who held the line.
"And you're my girl burglar! By Jove, I thought I knew that voice! Are you in the pearl business, too? Has Mrs. Sands commissioned you and some fellow called Peterson to sell her pearls to Mrs. Heron? Now I begin to see light! She tried to make a bargain with me over those pearls. I refused in Heron's name and my own. What's her game now, when there's nothing left to bargain for, and you've sent the papers back?"
"Sent the papers back!" Clo gasped into the telephone. This coming into touch with O'Reilly over the wire had been a shock. But she forgot the surprise of it in the new surprise of his last words.
"Wasn't it you who sent them?" he went on.
She stopped to think before daring a reply. O'Reilly had got the papers back, or he wanted her to think so, for some reason of his own.
"Well, if you must know, perhaps I did send them," she prevaricated.
"I'm glad to have this chance to thank you for repenting. I felt at the time you weren't the stuff trick-confidence-ladies and burglaresses are made of."
"I didn't exactly repent," confessed Clo. "I had an object to gain. I'm glad the papers weren't lost on the way. You're sure no one had tampered with the envelope?"
"Apparently not. The messenger handed it to me sealed up and seemingly intact, with the address of my bank on it in my own handwriting. The boy wouldn't say how he knew I was staying at the Dietz. He is an ornament to his profession! I want you to know that I don't bear malice."
As Clo listened she was surprised at the soothing effect of his voice upon her nerves. It was like hearing the voice of a friend. After all, why should they be enemies, since of the two O'Reilly was the injured party, and had just assured her that he didn't "bear malice?" But he was going on to ask what was the "object" she had wished to gain. "Do you mean to tell me, or is it one of your many mysteries?"
"I realized I'd gone to work with you in the wrong way," she ventured. "Now I need someone's help. I need it horribly. It ought to be a man's help. And, except Mr. Sands, you're the only man I know."
She heard O'Reilly laughing. He wouldn't laugh if he could see what her eyes saw!
"So you want to call a truce?" he asked.
"Yes, if I could trust you."
"I like that! I wasn't the betrayer. But never mind. Your second thoughts are best. And anyhow, you weren't working for yourself. Do you really want my help?"
"Don't I? But it would be for—for——You know whom I mean. And you're her enemy, aren't you?"
"Not the least in the world. But I can't buy her pearls, and I'm sure Heron will refuse to bargain if——"
"The pearls aren't for sale any more. They've been stolen. She thinks you took them for a hold-up."
"The devil she does! But you know better. Tell me what you wish me to do for you, and I'll do it; I wanted to see you again. You were like a bad but interesting dream, broken off in the midst, that I longed to dream over again."
"Ifeelas if I had been broken off in the midst!" said Clo. "I may be broken past mending if somebody doesn't pick up the pieces good and quick! What I want you to do is to meet me outside the Westmorland. Will you? And if so, how soon?"
"I will," came the answer. "I'll be there in eight minutes, with a taxi. Does that suit you?"
"Yes. Have the taxi drawn up in front of the hotel, and as it slows down, I'll jump in. Give the chauffeur an order—before he starts—not to stop, you know, but to go on the instant I'm in. A lot may depend on that."
"What mischief have you been up to?" asked the laughing voice, which to Clo, in the room of death, seemed to come from another world.
She shuddered as her eyes turned to the figure in the chair.
"Good-bye!" she said, and hung up the receiver without another word.
Eight minutes! It would take her about three to get out of the room, down the stairs, and to the front door—if all went well. What was she to do with the other five? Now that her mission was ended, she could not stay where she was. She had reached, and almost passed, the limit of her endurance. One idle moment in that place would surely drive her mad! Yet she could not stand in the street, waiting for O'Reilly to come to the rescue. Kit and the man who had talked to Kit might be ready to pounce upon her there.
"Don't be frightened, Mums! It's only me, back earlier than I expected," Ellen Blackburne announced herself at the door of her mother's bedroom.
Mrs. Blackburne was propped up in bed, reading Young's "Night Thoughts."
"Of course, I'm not frightened!" she reassured her daughter. "I'm only surprised. That's what makes my hands tremble."
"I was in hopes you'd have gone to sleep," said Ellen, "and I could slip in without giving you a start. I stopped the taxi at the corner on purpose."
"I'm delighted to have you back. But why did you bring the pearls home to string? Now you'll be sitting up the whole blessed night!"
"Don't you worry!" Ellen soothed her. "I'm not going to sit up. I'm going to bed. Shall I leave the door open between the rooms while I undress, or shall I just kiss you good-night now, and let you rest in peace?"
The little woman had sat down on the edge of the bed, but as she spoke, she stood up. It struck the older woman that, for some reason, she was in a hurry to get away.
"There's something you don't want to tell me, isn't there, dear?" her mother quietly observed.
"Well, you have the most wonderful intuition!" Ellen praised her parent. "I believe you could see through a wall. It's only that I didn't want to wake you up and make you nervous, so you would have a bad night."
"I shall have a better night if I don't need to rack my brain thinking over what might have happened."
"Oh, all right!" sighed Ellen, and sat down again. "You're a grand safety valve, you know, Mums, because I can talk to you, and be sure that whatever I say will be locked up in your strong box. I meant to write all this down in my notebook, with initials instead of names; but the diary can't give advice. You can. Only—you're certain we hadn't best wait till to-morrow?"
"I shouldn't close my eyes!" said Mrs. Blackburne. "But I can say this to begin with: You did the right thing. You always do."
"This is different from anything that ever came into my experience," Ellen answered.
"I told you before I started, I thought I was in for an exciting job. It wasn't only that Mr. Sands is a sort of celebrity, and everyone has been talking of Mrs. Sands as a beauty. It was the man himself gave me a kind of thrilled feeling the minute I saw him. Mums, Roger Sands is the sort I could fall in love with, if I was the falling-in-love type. He's strong and silent. He isn't a bit a woman's man. I don't know how to describe him, exactly. He made me feel as if I longed to do something for him. I was mighty keen to see what Mrs. Sands would be like. I suppose to see what style of woman he'd worship enough to pick up from the gutter."
"Goodness me, child!" broke in Mrs. Blackburne, absorbed. "You don't mean that's where she came from? I never heard——"
"No—no! I oughtn't to have used that expression," Ellen confessed, "though they tell all sorts of stories about her origin. I daresay none of 'em are right, and not a soul knows the truth. People have given her a nickname: 'the girl from nowhere.' But you've only to see her to realize at once that whatever she was, she must have been brought up like a princess."
"Handsome?"
"A dream of beauty. She's worthy of her husband that way, but she's not in other ways. That's my excuse."
"Your excuse, lovey? For what?"
"For what I did. But you won't know why I did it, or forgive me for doing it, unless I tell you the story as I understand it."
"Go right on, dear, and take your time. I won't interrupt again." So Ellen gave her mother a succinct account of all that had befallen her, until the fateful moment when she discovered that the pearls were not in their case.
"The case empty! The pearls gone! My goodness me!" gasped the old lady.
"I never had such a scare in my life. Mrs. Sands had told me how she'd been dressing in her bedroom, with the door wide open into the boudoir, because the pearls were there, all ready for me to begin on, if I arrived before she'd got into her gown. She either believed the pearls were in the case, or else she wanted me to believe she believed it! The desperate state she was in, under her pretty manner, made me think maybe she was playing some dreadful trick, and after I'd got over the first shock of surprise I was mad with that woman. 'She doesn't care if she ruins me, so she can save herself from a scrape,' was what I thought about her. I made up my mind I wouldn't be catspaw, to pull her chestnuts out of the fire."
"What did you do?" breathed Mrs. Blackburne, sitting straight up in bed.
"I rang the bell for the butler. He came to the door in an instant. I told him to call Mrs. Sands at once, it was urgent. I thought that would fetch her, but it didn't. It was the man who came back. He seemed a bit embarrassed: Mrs. Sands was very busy at the moment, it would be a little while before she was at liberty. It came into my head that she was leaving me alone as long as possible in the room where her wonderful pearls were supposed to be, so she could accuse me of making away with them, when the truth had to come out, that the pearls were gone. I saw just one thing to do. I told the butler to call Mr. Sands, quick. 'Mr. Sands is just going,' he said. 'I was ready to help him on with his coat when you rang.' 'Well, beg him to step in here one instant,' said I. The man went out; and I couldn't have counted ten before Mr. Sands appeared. I pointed to the empty case that was open on the table, and explained in about a dozen words—I wanted to finish before Madam arrived!—that Mrs. Sands had told me to look in the case for the pearls; that she went out in a hurry; and when I looked, the pearls weren't there. 'I sent and asked her to come,' I went on, 'but she was busy.'
"Well, Mother, the face of that man just broke my heart! It was more as if some awful thing he'd half expected, had come true. I might have stuck a knife in his heart.
"'Does my wife know you asked for me when she couldn't come?' was the first thing he said after he'd stood quite still for a second or two. I told him no, I'd taken the responsibility on myself, and I hoped I hadn't done wrong.
"'Not wrong,' said he. 'You meant well, I'm sure. Still, I wish the news had come to me from my wife and no one else.'
"Then he walked over to the window, and stood looking out. If I hadn't known he was there, I shouldn't have seen him. The curtains were drawn, not all across, but partly, and it was a sort of bay window, so there was room for him to stand behind the curtains, in the shadow they made. He hadn't been there two seconds, I give you my word, when the door flew open, and Mrs. Sands bounced in.
"'You sent for me?' she asked, and threw a look round the room, as if searching for someone. I felt I should die if her husband came out—but he didn't. I managed to stammer that the pearls weren't in their case, and so on; and it seemed as if my words turned her to a block of marble! She just stared at me. 'Maybe you think I stole the pearls!' I said right out. She assured me quite nicely that she believed nothing so foolish, and that even if I'd wanted to steal the things, I couldn't have smuggled them away from the house. (Of course, I could, though, if there had been time.) My heart melted to her, I must confess. But I was thinking more of her husband. It was up to me to get him out of the fix. I suggested to Mrs. Sands calling in Clo, to see what she could make of the business. The instant she was gone, out from the bay window stalked her husband! By that time I was at the door. I'd opened it for Mrs. Sands. I hardly dared glance at him—it seemed so prying. All I know—for sure, now—is that he stopped for an instant at the table. He had to pass it, on the way from his hiding place to the door. I supposed then, when he paused there, that he would be gazing at the empty velvet case. But he may have been doing something different—I'll tell you why and what, in a minute.
"I stood without moving, and, as he came near the door he stopped again. 'Miss Blackburne,' he said, 'you've been mixed up against your will, and not by any fault of your own, in an unfortunate business. It's a family affair, and I feel certain you'll keep your own counsel. Don't think I'm trying to bribe you. I'm not. But I should like you to accept this.' My arms were hanging straight down at my sides, but he managed to stick something into one of my hands. What do you think it was?"
"Fifty dollars?" her mother guessed.
"Fifty fiddlesticks! It was five hundred!"
"My heavens! Enough to pay off the mortgage. But you couldn't possibly accept it?"
"I said no. I swore that I'd done nothing to earn a cent: that wild horses wouldn't drag from me anything I'd seen, or heard, or even imagined, in his house. But Mr. Sands insisted. 'It will give me pleasure for you to have the money. It's little enough,' he said. Then he walked right out. He must have gone back to his own room instead of leaving the flat just then, for I saw him again later. I'll tell you about that. But do you think it was wrong to keep the money?"
"In the circumstances, no," Mrs. Blackburne decided. "It would have hurt his feelings to give it back. Oh, my dear, five hundred dollars! It's like a fairy gift, just when we're needing it so much!"
"Well, I'd got the bills tucked away when Mrs. Sands came running in. She made for the table, the way a pointer goes for a shot bird. She hadn't a glance for the velvet case. She was searching for something else. Oh, Mother, it scared me to see her! She threw everything about. She was out of her head. A tall vase of flowers tipped over, and splashed water on the books, and even on the velvet case. I don't think she knew it had happened. Books fell on the floor. She didn't see or care. Then she sank all of a heap into a big chair close by. 'The envelope?' she gasped, as if she were choked by a hand on her throat. 'It was there. Where is it now?'
"I told her I hadn't seen any envelope, which was perfectly true. She described it: quite a big, long envelope, made of linen, and sealed up with several red seals. I swore over again I hadn't seen an envelope of any description. At last she had to believe me. But the worst was to come. 'Did you leave the room, for so much as a second, after I left you?' she asked, with her eyes on my face. I told her I hadn't stirred outside the door; but what I was scared of came next: 'Did any one come in?'"
"Oh, lovey, I hope you didn't have to tell a falsehood?"
"That depends on what you call a falsehood," said Miss Blackburne. "I hate fibs as much as you do. But it was an awful fix!"
"It was," Mums agreed.
"You see," Ellen went on, to make her position clear, "I had asked Mr. Sands not to let his wife know I'd called him in. Later, he pressed that money on me, and I accepted it. I felt as if it had bought me, body and soul. When he stood by the table, he must have seen that envelope, and taken it. Well, now, I ask you, could I give him away?"
"I don't see how you could," wailed the old lady.
"Neither did I. 'Did any one come in?' I echoed, when Mrs. Sands put the question. 'Wouldn't I have mentioned it to you the first thing, if any one had?' Was that a falsehood, or wasn't it?"
"It was a prevarication," answered Mrs. Blackburne, "and I think I should have done the same thing."
"Thank goodness!" sighed Ellen. "That's what I wanted to know. You don't blame me, then?"
"I feel you acted for the best. And it's done now!"
"Yes, it's done, and can't be undone," the pearl-stringer echoed.
Roger Sands dined alone at his club that night. Many men hailed him as he came in, very late, and in sixty seconds he received six invitations to dine. He refused them all, however.
It was with the hope of meeting a certain man that Roger had gone to the club. He had excused himself to Beverley on the plea of an appointment, because he had wanted to be alone, and had no intention of dining anywhere.
It was upon an impulse that he had taken the sealed envelope addressed to Justin O'Reilly. Afterward, he felt that his whole course of conduct, from the moment he had entered the room till the moment he had left the flat, was radically wrong. He ought, perhaps, to have shown himself to Beverley when she came in, despite Miss Blackburne's appeal. If he had done this, he would have learned the truth about that envelope. Seeing her husband at such a moment, Beverley must have betrayed herself, Roger thought, if there were anything to betray in connection with the envelope. Had its concealment been important, she would mechanically have sprung to hide it. Had it been left inadvertently by O'Reilly, for no concern of hers, Beverley's ignorance of his presence, or her indifference, would have cleared her in Roger's eyes.
He could not contemplate confessing to Beverley that he had hidden himself and then taken the envelope. She would probably say: "I never dreamed that you'd be mean enough to spy upon me! Why didn't you show yourself, like a brave man, instead of hiding?"
No, he would not tell Beverley that he had been a witness of the scene between her and the pearl-stringer; nor that he was responsible for the vanishing of O'Reilly's envelope. Let her think what she liked about its loss, just as he—Roger—was free to think what he liked about the loss of the pearls! He would wait for Beverley to tell him that the pearls were gone. Her carelessness, to say the best of it, her ingratitude and disloyalty, to say the worst, gave him the right to keep his knowledge to himself. He would wait and see what Beverley meant to do. Then he decided to send back the sealed letter to O'Reilly. Ten minutes after leaving home he had given the envelope to a messenger, with directions to take it at once to the Dietz.
It was when he had thus disciplined himself, that Roger turned toward the club. A man who was an old acquaintance of Roger's, and a friend of O'Reilly's, often dropped in there on a Sunday evening. Possibly he would come that night. Roger had thought of a question to ask. He saw that there might be a way to getting even with O'Reilly, a way just as efficacious, and more open, than the one he had sacrificed.
While he pretended to dine and read an "evening edition," a hateful little voice in Roger's brain chirped suggestions to him. What if Beverley had somehow been in O'Reilly's power? What if she had written him love letters which afterward she wished to get back, and he refused to surrender? What if she had contrived to steal them, and O'Reilly had followed, for reprisals? What if, since then, the man had been torturing her, and Clodagh Riley (a poor relation of Justin O'Reilly's, perhaps) had been acting as a go-between? What if the girl had pretended illness as an excuse to bring O'Reilly into the flat, and the man had frightened Beverley into giving him the pearls?
He was sipping his demi tasse, and had ceased to expect the man he wanted, when that man walked into the room. Before he could sit down at a neighbouring table Roger hailed him; a small, dark man of Jewish type, a man of forty-five, perhaps, with the brilliant eyes of a scientist and the arched brows of a dreamer.
"Hello, Doctor Lewis! I've been hoping you'd blow in!" Sands said cordially. "Won't you dine with me?"
"But you've finished. I'd be keeping you."
"I want a talk with you, my dear chap," Roger assured him.
The doctor sat down at Sands' table.
"I'd have got here a long while ago," Doctor Lewis went on to explain, "but just as I was leaving the Dietz, where I have a patient, I was asked to stop and see—whom do you think?"
"Your friend, O'Reilly, perhaps. Someone mentioned to me that he was there."
"No," said Lewis, "not O'Reilly, but as it happens, a friends of O'Reilly's, in the same hotel, who suddenly collapsed."
"I can guess, then," replied Sands. "I know the Herons are at the Dietz. Your patient was one of those two—Mrs. Heron, I should say. I don't somehow see Heron 'collapsing.'"
"My patient was Heron, not his wife. The attack was nothing serious, but Mrs. H—— was scared. You and Heron are as fast friends as ever, of course?"
"I admire John Heron in many ways," Roger answered, indirectly.
"And he ought to admire you, as certainly he does! A good many people thought you risked your life, throwing yourself into that business in California, the way you did, Sands. But you came out on top, and brought Heron out on top. Your reward was great!"
Roger smiled. He was thinking of the journey back, after his triumph, and of Beverley. She had been his reward. Once it had seemed great.
"Have you seen Heron since he got to New York?" said the doctor.
"Not yet," said Sands.
"Well, he's hardly more than just arrived. Heron's a wiry chap. It needs a good deal to knock him over. If it had happened last summer, or fall, when the big row was on, there'd have been plenty of excuse, as Mrs. Heron remarked. It appears the two had been quietly sitting together down below, in the big hall, watching the crowd, and waiting for Justin O'Reilly to go in with them to dinner. Mrs. H—— sent Heron back to their bedrooms to find something she'd forgotten. She got scared at last when time passed and neither Heron nor O'Reilly came down. She went to see for herself what was up, and found her husband in a fainting fit. She 'phoned just as I was leaving my other patient, and by the time I arrived on the scene O'Reilly had floated in from the next-door suite. He'd been out while the Herons thought he was dressing to dine with them. All's well that ends well. Heron will be as brisk as ever in a day or two."
"I'm glad to hear that," Roger said, gravely. "As you say, Heron's not a man to be knocked over easily. Last year, when I was in California, he came within an ace of being shot one night, and never turned a hair."
"His wife was asking him, when he came to, a lot of questions. Heron wouldn't want to worry her, naturally. Didn't she have some great shock last summer, or fall, while you were out West? A brother who was killed, or killed himself?"
"A brother who died suddenly. There was no proof of violence. The young man's death occurred the day I left, and not in California, but in New Mexico—near the town of Albuquerque, at a house belonging to Mrs. Heron. The Herons haven't been married many years," Roger went on. "Not more than eight or ten. Mrs. Heron can't be much over thirty. I never saw the brother. He was something of an invalid, and lived always at the Albuquerque place. His handsome sister stayed with him sometimes. He was a few years younger than she."
Sands had the air of giving these details somewhat grudgingly, as a concession to the very evident curiosity of Lewis: but having satisfied it as far as necessary, he turned the conversation to his own affairs: the affairs, in fact, which had suggested to him this meeting with the doctor.
"Whenever I have leisure just now I cut down to Newport to see how the decorators get on with an alleged 'cottage' I've bought there for my wife," he said. "It's been quite an amusement to me for the past few weeks. I'm tired of living in an apartment, though ours isn't bad, as flats go. I want a house, and I want an old one, or my wife does, with a little romance of history attached to it. I'd like to get hold of one, as a surprise for her. I know there aren't many in the market. I suppose there's nothing good down in your neighbourhood?"
"Well, as you know, Gramercy Park and all round there has been pretty thoroughly modernized," said Lewis, who lived in a big new house of apartments, not far from Gramercy Park. "The only fine, old-fashioned mansion I can think of, that would just suit you is Miss Theresa O'Reilly's—a patient of mine—when she's any one's patient. Do you know anything about the ancient dame?"
Roger knew so much that he had waited for Lewis entirely for the reason that Miss Theresa O'Reilly was a patient of his.
"Isn't she related to your friend, Justin O'Reilly?" he inquired.
"She's a distant cousin. As for the house, Justin feels that it ought to be his. I have this from her, not from him. The old lady told me the other day that she heard Justin had been hoarding up his money to buy the house, and was coming to New York on purpose to talk matters over, but she would refuse to see him."
"A cranky old bird!" Sands sympathized.
"You're right. Last year she mentioned to several people, me among others, that she thought of offering the place for sale if she could get a good price, because the New York climate gave her rheumatism, and she'd like to try the French Riviera. But the minute she'd spoken to me—a friend of Justin's—she could have cut out her tongue. You see, Justin's great-great-grandfather built the house: an Irishman who came over before the Revolution, and fought with the Americans against the English. It remained in the family till a few years before Justin's birth, when his father was obliged to sell through poverty, and move out West. This old lady, Theresa O'Reilly, was the purchaser. She was, of course, a youngish woman then, though no chicken. The story is that she loved Justin's father, and tried to catch him with her money—she was a rich heiress. He was on the point of engaging himself when he fell desperately in love with a poor girl Theresa employed as social secretary, or something of the sort. Out of revenge, Theresa went to work in secret ways to ruin Justin Senior, who was a gay, careless fellow, without too much money to lose, or too much patience to make more. She's said to have put men up to lead him into bad investments. Anyhow, she got the house, and California got the man and his family. I imagine there was a hard struggle out there at first. Young Justin has had to carve his own fortune: his father and mother, and an older brother, died when he was a boy. All this long story came out of your wanting an old house. It can't have interested you much, I'm afraid!"
"Certainly, there's enough romance attached to that house!" said Roger, with a short laugh. "But Miss O'Reilly has changed her mind, and won't sell?"
"So she assures me," answered Lewis. "You see, she couldn't be sure Justin wasn't standing behind a dummy buyer, now she knows he's definitely after the place, and able to purchase for a decent price. I take it that in the circumstances she won't sell to any one. Perhaps she never meant to when the test came."
"So poor O'Reilly wants the home of his ancestors?"
"He does. I've known of that dream for years. He told me once he'd grown up with it."
Roger made his comment upon this: but he determined to write to Miss O'Reilly the moment Lewis had gone.
Clo had been able to think very clearly, while there had been something definite to think about, but her brain refused this problem of an extra five minutes, which might mean success or failure. She couldn't stop where she was; she couldn't hang about in the street, lest the real Kit had given the false Kit away to the "gang"; yet to dawdle in the corridor, or on the stairs of the Westmorland Hotel, was unthinkable. When the murder of Peterson was discovered someone might remember that slim girl in brown. The police were diabolically clever—now and then. Who could say if they might not trace that girl in brown, and, finding her, eventually reach Beverley Sands?
"One minute must have gone, just while I've been thinking of it!" Clo told herself. "And Peterson hasn't come alive. Now, if I can only think hard enough, and forget him and the silence, for two or three minutes, I can start."
But the silence broke. Once more her nerves thrilled to the telephone bell. She was standing by the door, her back resolutely turned to the figure in the chair, when the sound began. The girl snatched the receiver and called "Hello" but no one answered. She must get out quickly, at the risk of having to wait in the street before O'Reilly could arrive.
"Unless they live close by, they won't have had time to reach me yet, even if Kit's given the show away," Clo thought. But of course, "Chuff" might have 'phoned from a house round the corner. Peterson might have chosen the Westmorland Hotel in order to be near his friends!
Clo locked the door, took out the key, and dropped it behind the trunk at the end of the hall. That would not be unfair to the owner of the trunk, she thought, for in any case, the blood stains would direct suspicion to Peterson's vanished neighbour. The key would be only a detail.
As she descended the stairways leading from the sixth story to the ground floor, she met two or three men, but they had the air of tired commercial travellers going up to bed. Apparently the veiled girl in brown had no special interest for them. Next came the ordeal of the entrance hall, and passing the desk; but there a new group of men had collected. Clo peered through her brown veil, but encountered no curious glances. Yet the worst was to come. The eight minutes could hardly have run out; besides, O'Reilly might be late. If "Kit" were true to her pals, and if she had seen from her hiding place in the trunk, who went into Peterson's room, the coming moment might hold the greatest peril of all. The girl hesitated at the door, then sprang into the street as she might have sprung into a wave.
Plenty of people were passing as she walked slowly away. She had not taken many steps, however, when a taxi separated itself from others in the double line of moving vehicles, and slackened speed near the curb. The window was open, and Justin O'Reilly was looking out. Clo gave a welcoming cry, and waved Kit's bead bag. He caught her eye, spoke to the chauffeur, and the taxi slowed down, short of the hotel entrance. The girl ran back. O'Reilly held the door ajar, and, putting out his hand, pulled her in while the car was in motion. He had not forgotten her orders, and had instructed the driver. On bounded the taxi, as the door slammed shut, and the sudden jerk, before Clo was seated, flung her into O'Reilly's arms. He held her for a second or two, and then carefully set her by his side.
"By Jove, I'm glad to have you safe!" he said in a warm, kind voice, which for some reason made Clo want to cry. "I've a hundred things to say and ask, you child or imp, but first of all, where do you want to go? Home, or——"
"To Krantz's Keller," Clo finished the sentence. "Do you know where it is?"
"Yes," said O'Reilly. "I know, though I've never been. But——"
"I've got to go there," said Clo. "If you don't like, you needn't."
"I do like!" he laughed. "What do you know about Krantz's Keller?"
"I'll tell you that, and other things, when we arrive," said Clo. "Please, what time is it?"
"No thanks to you that I have a watch, and can answer that question," he thrust at her slyly. The street lights turned to ivory the small face from which Clo had pushed back the veil. It was a child's face, though not impish or defiant now; but the great dark eyes, it seemed to the man, were a woman's eyes. He was conscious that never in his life had he been so intensely interested in a female thing. She had tricked him, she had deceived and she had robbed him. Yet his dominant feeling was joyous triumph at having found her when he had thought her lost. He was happy because she had summoned him, excited because they were going side by side toward some unknown adventure.
He looked at his watch which had been retrieved from the wall safe, and said that the time was twelve minutes to eleven. Krantz's Keller was in Fourteenth Street, and they could reach there at the hour, for already the cab was moving in the right direction. "Are you in a hurry?" he asked, "or shall we go a round-about way and talk things over? The Keller won't be at its best till nearly midnight."
"I've a—sort of appointment at eleven-thirty," Clo said. "But I'd like to be on the spot before that, for a look round to get my bearings. I daresay I can tell you the whole story in twelve minutes. I've learned the lesson to-night that almost anything can happen, and you can live years in the time that it takes to button a pair of shoes."
"Certainlyyoucan accomplish more in a few brief minutes than any other person I ever met! My own experience with you proves that!" O'Reilly laughed. But the girl's face was drawn. He remembered hearing that she had been dangerously ill. He wished her to realize that he was ready to give sympathy as well as help. "I don't want to talk of myself, but of you. Tell me what you care to tell. You may trust me."
"You're sure?" insisted Clo. "I'm putting my life in your hands."
"I've just my word to give," O'Reilly answered. "Look me in the face and decide if it's worth taking."
Clo looked him in the face, and said, "Yes! I'll tell you everything. Please don't ask questions, or speak till I finish."
Since the moment when he had been surprised by her voice at the telephone, and she had claimed his help, O'Reilly had thought of fantastic things, but they were commonplace compared to the story she flung at his head. To make him understand, in ten minutes, why she had to be at Krantz's Keller meant that she must spring all her facts upon him. Already, without knowing how she had escaped at the Dietz, O'Reilly had formed the opinion that she was a girl, not in a thousand but in many thousands. Now, listening in silence, he heard her tell what she had found, and what she had done, in Peterson's room. She spoke in simple words. Yet O'Reilly saw the scene as if his eye were at a keyhole; saw the girl realize that she was in the presence of a man not only dead, but murdered; saw the battle between horror and courage as she searched the room and the pockets of the corpse whose blood-stained clothing was still warm. He heard the bell of the telephone. He followed Clo into the room next door, and marvelled at the way in which she drew information from "Chuff." When the taxi slowed down in Fourteenth Street, she had but reached the point where she "made a dash for the street." O'Reilly's brain had been busy. He was ready to give the advice expected.
Clo was talking still, while he paid the chauffeur and sent him away. As they entered the restaurant below which lay Krantz's Keller, breathlessly she brought her story to an end. "There! You know all I know!"
While they went downstairs side by side, step by step, O'Reilly gazed at the girl's profile. "I'm going to fall in love with this strange child," he thought. "I'm in love with her already."
They penetrated the blue curtain of tobacco smoke which veiled the cellar restaurant. People of all sorts were sitting at small, uncovered wooden tables, which were painted green. There were long-haired foreigners; there were rich American Jews. There were girls who looked like "show girls" or chorus girls at least, companioned by fashionably dressed and silly-faced boys. And all the company drank wine from oddly shaped bottles, or beer out of stone or pewter "krugs." At the end of the long, narrow room stood two huge casks, one on either side of a small stage where three men in the costumes of Tyrolese peasants played a zither, a 'cello, and a violin, for a gaily dressed boy and girl to dance.
There were a number of tables still unoccupied, and of these a few were free. O'Reilly chose one close to the entrance. Seated there, he and Clo could see everybody who came in or went out. If they themselves wished to leave in a hurry it would be a convenient place.
Clo could not even pretend to eat. She asked for strong coffee, and not to be conspicuous O'Reilly ordered for himself beer, and food with an odd, Russian sounding name. Having thus bought their right to the table, he leaned across to the pale girl.
"The time's come when I can tell you what I think," he said. "First, what I think of you. You're the bravest person I ever met, and the most loyal. If the woman for whose sake you've done this is worthy of her friend, why, I'll be on her side from this night on."
"Thank you," said Clo, meekly. She was very tired, but vitality flowed through her newly at O'Reilly's words and look. "I don't deserve such a compliment, but she deserves everything. If I've behaved badly to you, it was for her."
"I know," said O'Reilly. "But you weren't precisely 'bad.' You were, on the whole, rather—wonderful. How did you get out of my room with the only door locked on the inside?"
"Oh!" the girl cried, surprised, "I thought you'd guess. I went along the stone ledge under the window of your bedroom till I came to an open window of a room in the next suite."
"I thought of that, when it was too late; but it seemed incredible."
"It wasn't as hard to do as I was afraid it would be," said Clo. "The other window was open, the curtain was blowing out. I caught hold of it, and got along somehow, through not looking down. Then in the room where I went in, there was a man. He was at the door, and I scared him popping in that way at the window, so he let me run past. That's all." Firmly the girl closed the subject.
"Let's talk about the pearls," she said. "Peterson was a wicked man. I can't pretend to be sorry he's been killed. He was acting for others higher up. I want to find Kit, not because I think she murdered him, but because I'm sure she's got the pearls. Who called out 'Come in!' in a man's voice, when Peterson was dead? We haven't got time to discuss the whole business before half-past eleven. Here comes my coffee! It's going to give me new life!"
"You must need it. Try to nibble a few crumbs of this rusk," O'Reilly advised. "I've been thinking hard since you told me how 'Chuff' 'phoned to 'Pete,' and took you for Kit. As for the voice that called 'Come in', the wall being thin, a man in the room close by might think the knock was at his door. You're almost surely right about Kit being in the hotel to watch Peterson. No doubt he was acting for men who have the power to—trouble Mrs. Sands. Don't look at me like a wild cat! I shan't tell what you don't want to hear, but there certainly are such men. Most likely Peterson followed us into the Sands' apartment without being noticed in the wild confusion of your fainting. He was there to get hold of the thing he was blackmailing her for, the thing you went back to my hotel to steal, and then repented stealing. Naturally Peterson didn't find it, as it was still in my safe at the Dietz, but he might have seen the pearls. The fellow must have been hiding close to Mrs. Sands and me, when we talked, or he wouldn't have known that John Heron had wanted to buy those pearls! He 'phoned, later, from the Westmorland to Heron, as you must have guessed from what I 'phoned back. As for Kit, she was in her room next door when he called Heron up, and heard about his having pearls to sell; or else she went in to help him pack, and saw them. But it strikes me that a young woman of her class wouldn't bash a man on the head, and risk the Chair, for the righteous joy of turning a fortune over to her pals. No, if she killed Peterson, she killed him because she wanted the pearls for herself or a 'sweetheart.'"
"There's Churn," said Clo. "He and Kit may be a 'case.' She may have gone straight to him with the pearls."
"'Churn's' possibly a nickname for that Lorenz Czerny, whose name you found written on a visiting card," O'Reilly said. "What with that card, and the memorandum, and Kit's bag, we ought to get on to the track of the gang. I'm on Mrs. Sands' side now. But I know a private detective who's worked for clients of mine. He's close as an oyster, and true as a compass. Chuff may keep his appointment, or he may not. If the real Kit's turned up and told the truth, perhaps he won't dare, for fear of a trap. Still, he may, if he's got pluck, and a good disguise—or if the police have nothing 'on' him. The gang won't want the false Kit to get away with what she knows if the real one's true to them. And they'll be eager to see whom they're up against. That's why I should like to have Denham—the detective—on the spot."
"Would that be the best way to get the pearls?" asked Clo.
"Can you suggest a better one?"
"Not on the spur of the moment."
"It's on the spur of the moment we must decide."
"Well—'phone Denham."
"I will," said O'Reilly. "I think I ought to get him now unless he's on some job. I'll be back in a few minutes. There's no danger of serious trouble for you here."
"I'm used to taking care of myself," said Clo. The hot, strong coffee had brought a faint colour to her face, and she looked up with one of those "cheeky" grins of hers, such as his "cousin" had given him at the Dietz. O'Reilly went away bewitched with the creature, absorbed in her. She had done so much for the love of a woman. What would she do for love of a man?
He had to go upstairs to the telephone, it seemed, at Krantz's. Then the line was busy. He was obliged to wait.
Meanwhile a tall girl, in a bright pink cloak over a pink dress, hurried through the gloomy restaurant. She paused only to glance at a clock on the wall, and then ran downstairs to the "Keller."
Clo sat watching the crowd. She had removed her veil, and the long, brown cloak lent by Beverley. The latter she had folded, and was sitting upon it.
It was then, when most of the tables were taken, and when a young tenor with a good voice had replaced the Italian peasants, that the girl in pink walked in. Clo sat with her face to the entrance, and happened to be looking that way. At sight of the girl, who came in alone, it was all she could do to sit still. She felt the blood stream to her face, and taking up the empty coffee cup, pretended to drink.
"Gracious, why did I never think of her!" she wondered. For this was the girl who had got out of the elevator at the Westmorland, and had been stared at by the men, when Clo and Beverley descended the stairs from Peterson's room. Would there have been time after they had turned their backs for Kit to get out of the brown trunk (if she'd been in it!), fasten the lid, and descend to the lift while the two women went down the six flights of stairs?
Yes, there would have been time. Clo was thankful that she had disposed of her veil, and was sitting on the cloak. Here at Krantz's she was only a girl in a white dress, with a brown toque which at the Westmorland had been hidden with a veil.
There were two or three tables still disengaged, but the one with the best view of the stage was the one nearest Clo. The girl in pink tripped to it, without hesitation, stood for a minute staring at the singer, and sat down. Clo watched her. She could not be certain, but she thought the girl had caught the eye of the singer and had made him a sign.
Not only had he a good voice, but he was good to look at, dark and rather "dashing," "almost like a second-hand gentleman," as Clo said to herself. His song pleased the audience, who clapped violently, demanding another. But the young man smiled, threw out his hands, shrugged, touched his throat, and bowed himself off the stage. By this time the girl in pink had ordered a bottle of wine which, to judge by the loving care of the waiter, must have been rare and expensive.
The singer sat down with his back to Clo, his companion at his side. Thus they were able to draw close, and talk without much fear of being overheard.
"Good Lord, Churn, I thought I'd missed you," were the first words Clo caught. As the girl spoke she flung a quick glance toward her little neighbour at the next table, but Clo had never looked so child-like. "I went to the Riche, and you'd gone," Kit continued. "To the Western; too late. Gosh! how I hiked for this place! I don't know what I'd done if I'd lost you!"
"Vot's de row?" Churn asked cheerfully, speaking with a slight and rather agreeable foreign accent. He poured himself a tumblerful of the deep-coloured red wine, and drank as if it were water.
"Say, Churn, a big thing's happened. I can't tell you here."
"You want I take you to de hotel?"
"No! I'm never goin' back there. And I can't go to my own digs either. I'll explain by and by. Could you take me home with you?"
"No, Jake'll be comin' in."
"Well, let's go to Chuff's. We must be somewhere! I've got a thing to show you, Churn. If there's two rooms free in the house we'll take 'em—or, no, better take one. You'll see why we must be together when you know. Say, here's money to pay the wine—looks better for you than me. Then we'll be off."
Clo gazed at the door. No O'Reilly yet. But if this pair went she would have to go, too. She mustn't lose them!
Churn beckoned a waiter with a ten-dollar bill thrust into his hand by Kit. The waiter came; but he had to get change. In Clo's lap, hidden under her napkin, was the bag she had found in Kit's room. Stealthily she opened it and took out a stub of pencil she had noticed among the contents. On the table lay a programme of the evening's entertainment. Neither she nor O'Reilly had glanced at it; but now the girl eagerly examined the list. Among the names was that of "Lorenz Czerny, Tenor"; and Clo underlined it with the pencil. Beneath, on the margin, she scrawled: "Kit's come and has been talking to him. They're going away. I must follow. I leave you all materials for the search—except the pearl. I keep that. Don't worry about me. I'll take care of myself."
Clo had plenty of money, supplied by Beverley, so a five-dollar bill was laid conspicuously on the crumbs of rusk.
Kit and Churn were on their feet. The waiter had given change, and Churn was counting it out. Both stood with their backs to Clo. Clo slipped the programme into the bead bag and the bead bag into a pocket of Beverley's brown silk coat, on which she had been sitting. She then whisked the folded garment from her own chair on to O'Reilly's, and covered it with his napkin.
"I hope to goodness I'll meet him on the way up," she thought, "or before I get out of the restaurant above. I daren't take the cloak where she might see it. Besides, he must have the bag and memorandum."
Churn gave the waiter a fifty-cent piece, and followed Kit, who had started. Neither looked back; and Clo beckoned the waiter. "I've an engagement," she said, "and can't wait longer for the gentleman I came with. He's upstairs telephoning. You tell him I've paid. Never mind the change. I'm leaving my coat for the gentleman to bring home. Can I trust you to be sure and give it to him?"
"You can, miss," said the man. "I'll take charge of it myself."
He looked trustworthy as well as grateful. Kit and Churn were winding their way among the tables. Clo pushed after them. O'Reilly was not on the stairs, nor was he visible in the dull restaurant above. He had the all-important envelope, it was true, and she could not guess who had returned it in a way to make him suppose it came from her. O'Reilly was, however, an honourable man, and he had promised to be "on Mrs. Sands' side." In the circumstances she saw only one course, and regretfully, even fearfully, took it. When Kit and Churn walked out into the street she walked after them, a few paces behind.
Clo had been gone precisely four minutes when O'Reilly tore downstairs burning to apologize and explain. Mrs. Denham had said that her husband was out, but she knew where he was, and would 'phone; if he—O'Reilly—would hold the line she'd have an answer "in no time." Presently he had been rewarded by "getting" Denham, who, on hearing that he was urgently wanted, promised to cut short some work he was doing late at the office, and taxi to Krantz's. This was good news, and O'Reilly was sure Clo would think it had been worth waiting for. He could not believe his eyes when he saw the deserted table. What could have happened to the girl?
He stood forlornly for a moment, staring round the room. As his eyes searched vainly, the waiter who had served him came hurrying up.
"The young lady's gone, sare. She had to go—very sorry. She left me dis to give you when you come back. She pay de bill, sare, but I keep de table for you. You not finish your supper."
O'Reilly had a stab of violent resentment against Clo. But the thought had only to pass through his brain to be rejected. The girl was a strange girl, audacious and unscrupulous in her loyalty to Mrs. Sands; but she could not have told her story in a way to impress its truth upon him unless she had been sincere.
"The young lady didn't give you any other message?" he asked.
"No, sare. She was in much hurry. But I see her mark on a piece of paper," the waiter replied. "Maybe she write you a note."
O'Reilly reflected. Which should he do, look for a message in the pocket of the coat Clo had left, or dash upstairs and find out which way she had gone? It was almost certain that he would now gain nothing by the latter course.
O'Reilly sat down at the table, in the chair where he had sat before. He found the one pocket in the brown coat, and in that pocket Kit's jet and steel bag. There was nothing else there, so he opened the bag cautiously in case some of Kit's friends had arrived. As he did so, the folded programme dropped out.
When Clo had shut the taxi door almost in Beverley's face, and had given the chauffeur orders to drive on, she had said to herself, "Angel will be so surprised she won't know what to do for a minute. And by the time she pulls herself together, she'll realize it's too late to stop me."
The girl had judged well. Beverley shrank back from the slammed door with a jump of the nerves. Then she guessed what Clo meant to do. She was in the act of tapping to stop the chauffeur, and tell him to turn, when the question seemed to ask itself aloud in her brain, "What good will it do for you to go back?"
Before she could reach Clo, if she returned to the hotel now, the girl would have learned the secret of Peterson's room. When she saw what Beverley had seen, she would know that there was nothing to be done with a dead man. She would slip away to avoid being mixed up in the business of the murder. She would not risk being caught. The girl was too sensible, and she had plenty of money as well as brains. She had shown herself equal to desperate emergencies. She would be equal to this. She was so quick-witted that she would know what to do, and how to do it. Beverley let the chauffeur drive on. He went to the corner where he had been hailed by his two passengers. There he stopped, and Beverley got out. She paid him; and making a pretence of examining her change in the light of a street lamp, stood still until the taxi had turned and shot out of sight. Then, with the bag of jewels which Clo had tossed into her lap, she walked home. Her latch-key opened the door of the flat, she entered her boudoir, and fell into a chair, sitting as still as the dead Peterson had sat. It was not much past ten o'clock.
Five minutes later she took off hat and cloak, and peeped into her bedroom to see if her maid were there. But the room was empty, and she put away the gray mantle and toque where she had found them. She did not forget to toss carelessly upon her bed the hat she had worn in the afternoon, and a pair of white gloves; then she rang for her maid who came almost at once. She had gone out, Beverley explained quietly, to help Miss Riley transact a little matter of business.
It was eleven-thirty when Léontine bade her mistress good-night and softly closed the bedroom door. She had noticed nothing strange in the manner of Madame, except an unusual lack of vitality.
Left alone, Beverley opened the door of the big, bare room. "Clo," she called softly.
No answer. She switched on the light. No one was there, and Beverley hurried on to the little room beyond, which had been Sister Lake's. It, too, was empty. Something grave, perhaps terrible, had detained the girl.
"She won't come—she won't come at all." Beverley said aloud. "What shall I do?" She could not abandon the fragile child who loved her, who had stood by her with wonderful strength and courage throughout this dreadful day. Yet what was there she could do?
Roger returned about one o'clock. He moved quietly, as if in order not to disturb his wife, but she heard the cautious closing of his door. She did not try or wish to sleep, but lay on her bed, waiting for day.
After six o'clock Beverley could lie still no longer. She stole into her bathroom, and bathed in cold water. But she felt as utterly spent after her bath as before.
This morning she did penance by putting on a tailor-made, white linen suit, of a slightly severe cut, and made her toilet without ringing for Léontine. She decided to breakfast at the customary hour and in the customary place, but she did not expect to be joined by Roger. She was still in her bedroom, fastening a brooch, when he tapped at her door.
"Come in!" she cried, eager for the meeting, yet sick with fear. Roger came in, fully dressed, looking cool and well groomed. To Beverley's sad heart it seemed that he had never been so handsome—or so hard.
"Good morning," he said, as he might have spoken to any friend. "I heard you stirring about, so I thought I might knock. Are you going out early?" as his eyes wandered over her dress.
"You mean because I'm dressed? No, I didn't think of it. I couldn't sleep. The night was hot, and the heat was on my nerves, I suppose, so I got up at six. I hope I didn't disturb you, Roger?"
"Not at all," he politely replied. "I've some business which will take me out half an hour sooner than usual. I suppose they can give us breakfast in time for that? Coffee and toast and grape fruit can't take long to make ready?"
"I'll ring for breakfast. I didn't know if——"
"Didn't know—what?" he caught up her sentence as it broke.
"Oh, nothing—important," she excused herself. Yet she was sure he knew what had stopped her short of saying that she didn't know if he would breakfast with her in the boudoir.
"Well, I daresay Johnson has put the newspapers in their place by this time," Roger said, ignoring her embarrassment. "I'll have a look, to save time. You'll come when you're ready? I've a suggestion to make that I think you'll like."
He spoke pleasantly, not at all as if he had a grudge against his wife. Many women would have been satisfied with such a manner; but Beverley was not of the "many women," and Roger had never been like other, ordinary husbands. For the first morning since that day in Chicago when he had asked her to be his wife, they had not kissed.
"It will always be like this from now on," she told herself. "I hope I shall die. I can't live without his love, and go on seeing him every day!"
Roger had not mentioned Clo, and Beverley held her peace. She thought it would be best to wait and see what the newspapers said. At the end of ten minutes, as the breakfast tray was being placed on the lace table cover, she strolled into the boudoir. Roger hardly looked up, feigning to be deeply interested in his paper. On other mornings—the servant being out of the room—he would have sprung from his chair to place hers, and perhaps to kiss the long braid of her golden brown hair, or the back of her white neck as it showed under her fetching little cap.
"Any exciting news?" she asked in a casual tone, as she sat down—the sort of tone which other wives perhaps use to other husbands.
"Nothing that interests us specially," Roger answered. "A rather sordid murder, at a third-rate hotel; there's a mystery, of course."
"What hotel?" Beverley ventured to ask, pouring coffee with a hand that would shake.
"One I never heard of before. Let me see, what's the name? Oh, the 'Westmorland.' You'll not be interested. Let's get to the thing I want to talk about. Can you guess what it is?"
Beverley shook her head. "I am a bad guesser."
"It's partly about your pearls. By the by, was the pearl-stringer satisfactory?"
"Oh, quite," Beverley murmured, sipping her coffee.
"I'm glad she made a good job. The rope looks as fine as if no accident had happened, I suppose?"
"It's a—wonderful rope," his wife managed to reply.
"I imagined you'd be wearing your gewgaws for breakfast this morning just to show they were all right!" Roger's eyes smiled coolly into hers. It was a cruel smile.
"A rope of pearls at breakfast—on a tailor gown of linen—and a queen's pearls at that! What bad taste! I shall wear these splendours only on the greatest occasions."
"Well, I've arranged a great occasion," said Roger. "That's principally what I want to talk about. I'd like you to send out invitations for a house party and a big dinner and dance directly after we're settled in the Newport cottage. And I'd like to move there sooner than we meant. I've decided to take a few weeks' holiday. We'll both be better out of the city."
"Oh, yes!" Beverley agreed.
"And I want you to do a thing to please me. Wear the queen's pearls—your pearls—on the night of the dinner and dance."