Chapter 5

"Well, it seems to me, the sort of man I imagined he is, would be too smart to have such things on him if he came to your house, and didn't mean to give 'em back to you. It would be tempting Providence, so to speak!"

"If I were the kind of woman he thinks I am, he'd not expect me to stop short of murder to get those papers," and Beverley laughed a bitter little laugh.

"Good! If he comes to you and leaves the papers at his hotel, a certain thing will happen, but it's safer for you not to know--till afterward."

IX

THE BLUFF THAT FAILED

"You must tell me!" Beverley insisted. "Tell me at once!"

"While Mr. O'Reilly is here with you, Miss Riley without the 'O', will be at his hotel, in his room, helping herself to his--I mean your--papers."

"My child, you're mad!" Beverley gasped.

"Not so mad as _he_'ll be when he finds out," crowed the girl. "Hurray! The whole business is settling itself in my head. The one trouble is Mr. Sands. The rest will be all right. Think what to do about him, Angel; think hard!"

Beverley thought until her brain whirled.

"I might suggest Roger's dining at his club," she said. "But how I should hate to do that! He's vexed already. He has a right to be! This afternoon he gave me a wonderful present, a rope of pearls that belonged to a Queen. It must have cost a quarter of a million! I hardly stopped to thank him, I was in such frantic haste to get the envelope to you. The rope caught in the key of a drawer; the string broke, and a lot of pearls ran all over the carpet. I didn't wait to pick them up. I ran down to you, and I was gone so long Roger went to my room to look for me. I came back and found him picking up pearls. I felt my excuses did more harm than good. Roger pretended that he had an engagement. I saw by his face he wanted to walk off his anger in the fresh air. If he does walk it off--if he comes back ready to make up, and I send him away again, perhaps that will finish it! Things may never be the same between us any more!"

"He was angry because you didn't seem to care enough for his present," said Clo. "But if you can get him out of the house for an hour or so, and at the same time prove that you adore the pearls; how does that plan strike you?"

"How could I do both?"

"Beg him to go fetch a pearl-stringer, and bring her back here himself, to-night. Say you can't rest or sleep till the pearls are restrung."

"You forget it's Sunday, and----"

"I don't forget. But I know a pearl-stringer. She isn't just any old pearl-stringer, who might thread on a wax bead here and there, and keep a pearl or two up her sleeve. She's the best pearl-stringer in New York. The big jewellers and lots of swell society women have her. It's queer the way I came to know her, but it makes it good for us. We were crossing a street, she and I. I didn't know the woman from Adam--Eve, I mean. But it was slippery, and she missed her footing. I dragged her back, just in time, and held her up. She's a little woman, no bigger than me, or I couldn't have done it. But I got her on the sidewalk again, and she was grateful. She's Irish, too, and she invited me to go and see her the next Sunday. It's out at Yonkers, where she lives, in a nice little house she's bought. I went there once. She said if she could do some favour for me, she'd love to. But it's no favour I'll be asking, except for her to come out on a Sunday evening. So the only thing is to fetch her. Do you think Mr. Sands will go?"

"It depends upon how he feels when he comes in," said Beverley. "But Sister Lake would never let you out again."

"I shan't ask her. I'll get up and dress while you see if Mr. Sands is back. If I hear from you that all's well, I'll slip out before Sister comes."

"Clo, you're wonderful!" Beverley exclaimed. "How can I thank you enough?"

"Thanks from you to me! That's good! Just wait, Angel, anyhow, till I've done something. Oh, I forgot to give you the pearl-stringer's address. It's Miss Blackburne, 27 Elm Street, Yonkers. And tell Mr. Sands to mention my name. It might make a difference. She doesn't like leaving her mother in the evenings, but she'd do it for me."

Beverley was gone for fifteen minutes. When she flew in again she was surprised to see Clo in bed as before. But hardly was the door closed when the girl threw back the coverlet, to show that she was fully dressed.

"I was afraid Sister might pop in--by an evil chance," she explained. "I've only to put on my hat. Well, is it all right?"

"Roger will go," said Beverley. "He's 'phoning now for his car. I'm putting off dinner till half-past eight so he can have plenty of time to get home and change. He didn't make any difficulty when I told him about the pearl-stringer and wanting her at once. He agreed with me that it would be best to do such an errand himself, if it were to be done. And he was very kind. But his manner was different. I'm frightened."

"Don't be," said Clo. She was up now, had pinned on the pretty white hat, and was fastening her smart little cape. "I'll go first to the Westmorland and see our man; he said he'd be in, waiting till ten. I'll tell him things are in train, but he must give you till midnight, if necessary. From there perhaps I can 'phone the Dietz Hotel. It wouldn't be safe here. By that time O'Reilly ought to be in his room dressing for dinner. He'll see me, I'm sure, and the rest will arrange itself. Now, I'm off before Mr. Sands' automobile comes, or Sister Lake. If she finds the door shut and all quiet she'll think I'm asleep. Go back to your husband, Angel, and I'll slip away on my little jaunt."

"I've brought money for you," said Beverley. "Take this purse. There's change for taxis and lots of bills besides--fifty or sixty dollars."

Two minutes later Clo was in the street. The first thing that happened to her was a small piece of luck. She had been dreading the walk to a taxi-stand, when she saw a car about to drive away from a house near by. It was a public vehicle. Clo hailed the chauffeur and gave the Westmorland as her destination.

"Mr. Peterson" was in, according to promise.

"You again, is it? I looked for Mrs. Sands," he grumbled.

"I'm her messenger for the second time," said Clo, "and probably I shall be for the third, when it comes to settling up. If you get what you want, it doesn't matter who brings it, I suppose?"

"Then you suppose wrong. My business is with a woman, not a kid! All the same, if you've got anything for me----"

"I haven't--yet!" Clo snapped him up. "It isn't time. But I'm on to where the thing is, and how to get it. Only it may take till after ten o'clock. That's what I came to say."

"Save your breath! Ten o'clock's the time. If she doesn't want me to go back on my bargain she'd better not go back on hers."

He looked more than ever like a ferret, the girl thought.

"Mrs. Sands made no bargain as to time," she said. "And talking of time, what about the time _you've_ done?"

Peterson gave a cackling laugh. "What's the female for 'Smart Aleck'?" he sneered. "Guessed by my complexion, did yuh? Well, I don't need to make no secret of it. My gardeens wished me good-bye and Lord bless me when the nine months they run me in for was up."

Clo thought she could come close to guessing what the charge had been, and it would have needed more than the word of a ferret to assure her of his "innocence." The man was a born sneak-thief or pickpocket. His hands were slim and small as a girl's. Perhaps if temptation had been put in his way while he "waited at the newsstand" for Beverley, all those months ago, he had been unable to resist and thus had missed his appointment. Not that the girl much cared as to this detail; it was not her affair. But it was odd, almost "creepy," how the links were being joined together in the chain of evidence against O'Reilly, the man who had followed Angel into the Limited--the man against whom Clo had presently to try her wits. What concerned her most was that her first attempt at bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her disappointment with a little swagger.

"It suits us just as well as you, to finish up at ten o'clock and get it over," she said. "If we can, we will. If we can't, you'll have to wait. The way things are, you have to be in with us, you see, not against us."

"Oh, do I? I ain't so sure!" he flung back. "I ain't sure my fine madam's not in the game t'other way round--and her husband, too. I know now that she and Roger Sands travelled in the same train from where she started. Blowed if I see why she'd do it, but it might be they fixed a frame-up between them. I can see why it would suit Sands, if it wouldn't her, and a man's stronger than a woman. Sands was working for John Heron at the time. That means a lot."

"It doesn't mean that Mrs. Sands would be disloyal to her word. I know she's true as steel," Clo insisted. She spoke crisply, but her thoughts wandered. They had caught at the name of John Heron; Beverley had never mentioned it. The girl had no means of guessing how it might bear upon the case now in her small, determined hands. She did not see how, or where, she could have heard it before, yet it did not sound strange to her. The feeling she had on hearing it puzzled and even thrilled her vaguely. It was as if the name, "John Heron," had been whispered into her ear in a dream--a dream not forgotten, but buried under other things in her brain. The girl was suddenly alert. There was only one fact which she grasped with straining certainty. In that buried dream there were other sounds connected with the whispered name: sounds of sobbing, as of someone crying in the dark.

"Anyhow," Peterson went on, "there was a frame-up, and those that was in it has got to pay me for what I went through. That's partly why I'm here in Noo York. If I don't have those papers by ten I'll show up at the Sands flat and ask for the missis."

"You wouldn't find Mr. Sands at home," the girl cut in. "He's out. When he comes back he's likely to go away again at once."

"Aw, he is, is he?" echoed Peterson. His personality waked up secretively, like that of some weak, night animal hiding in a wood. Clo eyed him, striving to make him out.

"Better go home, kiddy," he advised. His tone was good-natured. "Shall I see you back to where you live, or----"

"I have another errand to do," the girl announced with dignity. She had meant to telephone from the Westmorland to the Dietz, and learn if Justin O'Reilly was in; but now she determined not to do so. Better waste a little time rather than Peterson should hear her inquiring for O'Reilly. Instead of waiting to telephone, she walked to the door and asked a half-baked youth in hotel livery to call her a taxi.

"If ferret-face tries to follow I'll lead him a dance!" she thought. But ferret-face seemed to read her mind, and be willing to relieve it.

"So long!" he said. "I've got a job o' work, too. It will take me till about ten. After that I shall be lookin' for a call from you or her ladyship."

He turned his back and sauntered to the elevator. Before the taxi had arrived he had been shot up to regions above.

"So that's all right!" Clo muttered to herself, spinning toward the Dietz. Yet, as she said the words, she wondered if it _was_ all right. Why had Peterson's whole personality made a kind of "lightning change" on hearing that Sands (whom he expressed a wish to see) would not be at home that night? Ought she to 'phone to Beverley and put her on guard? Yes, she would telephone from the Dietz, while waiting to see O'Reilly. It would be safe, because Roger by this time should be far away.

X

THE BLUFF THAT WON

Justin O'Reilly had a modest suite in the magnificent Dietz. It adjoined the luxurious suite of Mr. and Mrs. John Heron, and consisted of a small sitting-room, a bedroom, and bath. He was tying his necktie when the telephone bell rang. He grabbed the receiver as if it were a snake that had to be throttled, and gave it a grudging "Hello!"

"A lady to see you," a voice answered.

"She wasn't told I'm in, I hope? A nice thing for a well-regulated hotel if----"

"No, but she says it's important. She's Miss O'Reilly."

Miss O'Reilly! The man of that name was perplexed. The only Miss O'Reilly who, as far as he knew, could possibly call on him, was the last woman he would have expected to do so. He had come to New York largely in the hope of seeing her. She had refused to see him.

"Tell her I'll be down in three minutes," he replied.

"She particularly doesn't want you to come down. She says she has some private news for you, and asks if you'll see her in your own sitting-room."

"All right," he tried to answer calmly. "Have the lady shown up."

He rushed back into his bedroom to wrestle once more with the tie. He must be ready to receive Miss O'Reilly at the door, and his waistcoat and coat were yet to put on. But it could be managed. The suite was on the fifteenth floor, and a full minute's walk from the lift for an old person like Miss O'Reilly. Bungling everything in his haste, he tried to think what it might mean. It looked as if she must have changed her mind, and be ready to sell him her house, the dear old house on which he had set his heart. Perhaps she would demand a higher price than he had offered. Well, he must pay it somehow. Heron would lend him the money--but no, there were reasons why O'Reilly didn't wish to accept favours from Heron, often as they had been pressed upon him. As he slipped into his coat, he heard the expected rap at his sitting-room door, and hurried to open it. A page-boy, acting as guide, had run ahead of the lady, to knock.

"Miss O'Reilly to see Mr. O'Reilly," he announced, with Irish relish of the Irish name. Then he erased himself. O'Reilly stood on the threshold, waiting for the right lady to appear, and meanwhile dodged back from the wrong one, a small, slim flapper in white, who for some reason had paused before his door. She stood quite still, and stared up at him unwinkingly, as a child stares.

"I beg your pardon," O'Reilly said, wanting to laugh. "May I pass? I must look for a lady who----"

"I'm the lady," the creature in white intervened. "That is, I am if you are Mr. O'Reilly."

"O'Reilly's my name," he admitted. "But I was expecting--or--perhaps my cousin sent you?"

"Perhaps I am your cousin," suggested the girl who (Justin saw, now that he looked her deliberately in the face) had the biggest, blackest eyes, and the whitest skin he had ever seen. She had, also, red hair under a fetching hat. Although the child was no beauty, she had an amusing, elfin air.

"Delighted, I'm sure," he felt obliged to answer. "I thought I had only one cousin in the world, Theresa O'Reilly, of Gramercy Park. But----"

"It sounds like the chorus of a song; 'Theresa O'Reilly, of Gramercy Park,'" Clo was unable to resist remarking, with her strongest brogue. "Will you please ask me in?" she said. "My errand's very pressing."

Mechanically the man stepped aside and let her walk into the room. He began to suspect that he had been "spoofed." He did not invite the young person to be seated, but looked at her expectantly. Her first move was to shut the door. She did not speak.

"May I know your name?" he inquired, as they faced each other.

"The same as yours, but for a letter or two," said Clo, marking time. "That's why I may be a cousin; one never knows. I didn't come to talk about the family tree, though, Mr. O'Reilly. I came to beg--not for money, so don't be frightened."

"I'm not conscious of fear," laughed O'Reilly. He couldn't help laughing. He didn't believe the girl's name was the "same as his." "If I'm not afraid, I am curious," he confessed. "What are you going to beg for, if not money? Is this a message from my cousin----?"

Clo ceased suddenly to be impish. She had got into the enemy's fastness by her impishness, but she could go no further on that line. This man, being the exact opposite of the type expected, upset her plan. A big danger was that she might like this O'Reilly instead of hating him, he was so pleasant and gallant-looking, more a protector than a persecutor of women. She might hesitate to cheat or trick him in whatever way came handy, and thus fail the Angel on top of all her boasts. In her hot little heart Clo prayed for the wisdom of the serpent, and as her elfin face took on anxious lines, she became more interesting to O'Reilly. Her white face looked pinched and desperate. "If I were Marat, and she Charlotte Corday," was the thought that jumped into his head, "she would stab me."

"It's a good thing for me you have a cousin, or maybe you wouldn't have let me in. I know now why God gave me the name of Riley. I guess he'll forgive me for borrowing the 'O.' I was obliged to get to you somehow. That was the one way I could think of."

"It was a pretty smart way," O'Reilly flattered her. "But you haven't told me----"

"I will. Only--I think I'll have to sit down. I feel rather--queer----"

"Good lord! You can't faint here!"

"I won't, unless you make me, I'll promise that!" She had her cue now.

"Sit down, for heaven's sake!" said O'Reilly, pulling up the biggest chair in the room. Clo sank into it. Closing her eyes, she drew in a gasping breath which made her girlish bosom heave.

The man stood by, feeling absurdly helpless.

"Shall I ring for brandy?" he suggested.

"No--please!" She opened her great eyes again. "Only listen. I've come from Mrs. Roger Sands--to beg you for those papers of hers."

"Mrs. Roger Sands! Her papers? I know nothing of any papers belonging to Mrs. Roger Sands," O'Reilly exclaimed. "What papers are you talking about?"

"The ones you hired a man to steal when the train got to Chicago."

O'Reilly started. "Whose accusation is that?" he asked sharply.

"Not hers; it's mine."

"Yours! Once again, who are you? What are you in this?"

"I'm nobody! I'm only--a lion's mouse."

O'Reilly did not ask what it meant to be a lion's mouse. He understood. His mind was not less quick than hers.

"And I'm the net you hope to gnaw! Miss Mouse, your little teeth will find me tough. I may say I'm a patent, ungnawable net. The best thing for you is to go home as fast as you can and tell those who sent you----"

"I sent myself," Clo explained, with tired obstinacy. "I told you I had to see you somehow. Oh, Mr. O'Reilly, you don't look the sort of cruel pig I thought you would be. If you dreamed what Mrs. Sands is going through you'd give her back the papers. Don't pretend not to know what I mean."

"I won't pretend anything," O'Reilly said. "I do know what you mean, and I got the documents (which were not the property of Mrs. Sands) more or less as you think I got them. But no mouse, no mastodon could induce me to hand them over to your friend."

Clo's eyes travelled over his person. He looked slim and soldierly in his well-made evening clothes. There could be nothing thicker than a watch, and that a thin one, in his pockets.

"If you would see Mrs. Sands, maybe you'd change your mind," she pleaded, in her creamiest Irish voice. "Take me back to her, and take the papers along. Then, if you----"

"I can't do either," was O'Reilly's ultimatum. "I'll take you downstairs and put you in your car if you've got one, or a taxi if you haven't. But----"

"You'll have to take me home," said Clo. "I won't try to start without you. I've gone through enough. I'll just let myself collapse. I promised not to faint unless you made me. Now you are making me."

"You deserve to be thrown out of the window!"

"I have been, once," the pale girl announced. "It was four storeys up, and all my ribs were smashed. This is my first day out of bed. I thought I could manage it, if you were kind. I'd gladly die for Mrs. Sands. And if I do----"

"Brace up!" O'Reilly cried. "I'll take you home. I know where the house is. I passed it this afternoon. There was a man who----But no matter. Have you got a car below?"

Clo was almost past answering; almost, not quite. But weakness was her "cue," as well as the line of least resistance. Having now an incentive to let herself go rather than "brace up" as O'Reilly urged, she enjoyed collapsing. Yet something within was on guard, and knew that O'Reilly had to be watched.

He dashed to the telephone and ordered a taxi. Then he returned to the girl in the chair. Her eyes were half shut, a rim of white showing between the lashes. The man could not help believing the queer story she had gasped out, about the fall, and the broken ribs, and this being the first day she had left her bed. That would account for her thinness and paleness. He touched her hand, which hung over the arm of the chair. There was no glove on it, and the pathetically small thing was icy cold.

"She's fainted, fast enough," he growled. Clo heard the words dimly, as though she had cotton wool in her ears. Her duty was to trick the man, but she didn't like doing that duty.

O'Reilly gently laid down the tiny paw he had taken in his. It was limp as the hand of a dead girl. Clo would have felt less compunction if he had dropped it roughly. He took a few brisk steps, as though he had come to some decision. She forced herself back from the brink of unconsciousness to realize that he was going toward the door--not the outer door, through which she had entered, but another. He opened this, and Clo saw that beyond was a bedroom. Quickly he went to a table where stood a tall glass jug filled with crushed ice and water. His back was turned to the girl as he began pouring the jug's contents into a tumbler, but suddenly, as if on a strong impulse, he turned. Clo did not even quiver. Something told her that the thing she had prayed for was about to happen.

XI

O'REILLY'S WAISTCOAT POCKET

O'Reilly's first look into the sitting room was not for the girl. Involuntarily, it seemed, he sent a lightning glance to the left, to that side of the room farthest from the big chair where she sat. Clo's desperate need to know what was in his head inspired her with clairvoyance. Consciousness lit her brain once more. She was sure that she had read his thoughts. He feared that after all she was fooling him. He was saying in his mind: "What if she meant me to go and fetch this water while she looks for what she wants to find?"

Now Clo was certain at last, not only of his having the papers, but that they were in the room, somewhere on that left side, where his glance had flashed. It was hard to keep still, without the flicker of an eyelash; but she believed, as O'Reilly came back to her, that she had stood the test of his stare.

He moistened his handkerchief, and gingerly dabbed the girl's forehead. It was a relief to "come to," to be able to start, and draw a long breath.

"There! You're better, aren't you?" he asked.

"Yes," she breathed. "I should like to go home, but I'm afraid----"

"Don't be. I'm going with you," he said. "By this time a taxi's waiting for us. Do you think you can walk if I give you my arm?"

"I'll try," Clo answered, gratefully.

No pretence of weakness was needed. She felt like a rag. O'Reilly took her by the hand, and with an arm round the slim waist raised the girl to her feet. Once up, she swayed as if she might fall, but he held her firmly. "Lean against me," he said, in a kind voice.

She had never before been so near to a man in her life. "You're very good to me," she whispered. "I should like you, please, to remember that I thank you."

"I'm sorry I said you deserved to be thrown out of the window," O'Reilly absolved himself. "Whatever else you may be, you're a good plucked one. Now, here we are at the door. Are you sure you can walk to the elevator? Hang on to my arm."

She hung on to it.