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.
XXIV
ROGER'S APPOINTMENT AT THE CLUB
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.
XXV
KRANTZ'S KELLER
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."
"Certainly _you_ can 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!"