Part 58

"I thought I was dead," she explained.

"I thought so, too, for a minute, and it was the worst minute and the worst thought I ever had. But you're alive. And you're going to live. I tell you that on the doctor's authority. He and the nurse are having a confab in the next room. In fact, when we saw you coming to all right, after the anaesthetic (a bullet had to come out of your poor little shoulder!) I asked them to leave me alone with you. I wanted to be the first one your eyes saw. You're going to live for me, aren't you? Because I adore you, you know!"

"I know," the girl echoed, floating on a strange, bright wave of joy.

"You know I adore you?"

"Something told me it would come out like that," she said. "In those long days when I had to lie still in my room and listen to Kit and Churn, another voice--so different from theirs!--seemed to say it in my ear. Your message for me in the newspaper--I was sure it was for me--put it into my head. I couldn't answer. But the message was the greatest comfort! I didn't feel alone after that."

"Precious one! You're a star heroine, and a martyr and a saint, and I don't know what not. But most of all, you are my life--my very life. I've had a big disappointment since I parted from you--lost a thing I'd wanted for years--lost it to Roger Sands. His revenge for--I hardly know what! Yet finding you and holding you like this shows me that nothing else matters. What's a house, anyhow, except this darling house not made with hands--your little body, house of your soul? When you know me better, could you learn to love me, do you think, if I try hard to teach you?"

"Oh, but I do love you already," said Clo, as a matter of course. "Even that first night--there was something about you--I hated to cheat and rob you the way I did. And it was wonderful hearing your voice in the telephone, in Peterson's dreadful room. It wasn't only that I hoped you'd help, it was because it was you--because you were different for me from anybody else, different even from Angel."

"Good Lord, I should hope so!"

"And I've wanted you dreadfully ever since. That's why I thought it must be heaven when I woke up just now and saw you."

"You angel!"

"How funny you should call me that. Oh, I've almost forgotten my poor Angel! I must get to her, somehow." Clo looked around hastily, and realized that she was lying on a bed in a peculiarly unattractive room, and that O'Reilly was kneeling on the floor by the bedside. "How wicked of me to think more about you than her!"

"If you mean Mrs. Sands, you shall go to her when you're able. Mrs. Sands is all right. You sent her something rather important by Miss Blackburne, the pearl-stringer that you told me about that night in the taxi--and in Krantz's Keller. I talked to the woman--and cursed myself afterward for stopping to speak, when I found you and saw how every instant had counted. I oughtn't to have waited even for a second."

"Oh, you couldn't have saved me if you'd come up without speaking to Ellen. The shot was fired before I threw out the bag with the pearls," Clo broke in. "I remember now. Someone fired through the hole in the door. It was Chuff, I'm sure. It didn't hurt much. It was like a heavy blow, and I couldn't help dropping on my knees at the window. I felt weak and queer, but I called to Ellen. Then somebody picked me up--Kit, I think. I could hear them arguing what to do with me. Funny! I thought of you then--and that's the last I remember till now."

"I must have been in the house by that time," O'Reilly soothed her. "I had come for you! I was sure you'd be where Kit was, because of the pearls. Denham and I had been trying to track Churn and Kit and Chuff--all the lot you told me about--ever since you turned me down, in Krantz's Keller."

"I didn't turn you down!"

"No, I don't mean that! You were a brave little soldier going into battle on your own."

"A soldier? No, I was only a mouse."

"I know. 'The lion's mouse.' And to gnaw the net the lion was caught in, you had to stick your head into another lion's den. But some memoranda you'd picked up and left for us put Denham on the right trail. He doesn't need much of a pointer, that chap! He fairly jumped on to the track of a fellow named Isaacs--at least Isaacs is his 'alias'--a man who's been suspected for a long time as a receiver of stolen goods--a fence. When I got the tip that Kit and Churn were staying in the house where we were to spot Chuff, I was sure I had the clue to you. I wish to God we'd been five minutes earlier; but I thank Him we weren't five minutes too late! If the police eventually bring the crime home to Kit (that's improbable, Denham thinks) there's nothing to link up the story with the name of Mrs. Sands."

"Oh, I'm not sure!" breathed Clo. "Kit knows about her. She told Churn."

"She won't tell any one else, you may depend on that. If she's accused of the murder, she won't confess to stealing somebody's pearls as her motive. She'll say that Peterson insulted her, and she feared him; some sob-sister stuff of that sort."

"She did complain to Churn that Pete was horrible to her, and that if Churn had been there to hear what he said, he'd have killed him quick," Clo remembered.

"You see, she wanted to clear herself in the eyes of her best young man! How much more anxious she'd be to keep on the same line if it came to saving herself from the Chair! You can make your mind easy about your friend Mrs. Sands. I won't say a word against her. You love her. You may be right, I may be wrong. I'm growing humble. I don't set my judgment against yours, even though I know some things about the lady which it's probable you don't know. But she's been good to you. That makes all the difference to me. She's to be saved from the consequences of things which--you'll never hear from my lips. Saved she shall be if it depends at all on yours ever. But you've done so much that little more remains."

"Then you'll give her the papers?"

"The papers you returned to me that Sunday night?"

"It wasn't I who returned them. I don't know who did send them. It's the greatest mystery! But if you love me, you'll hand them back."

O'Reilly looked grave. "I love you," he said, "more than I ever thought it was in me to love, though I had an idea it might go hard with me when my time came. But I gave the papers to Heron, whose property they were--and are. I was only keeping them for him because he had reason to think they weren't safe in his possession."

"John Heron!" Clo echoed. A thought had suddenly started out from the background of her mind, pushing in front of her fears for Beverley. "Yes, of course, he's a friend of yours! But he's in worse danger than his papers ever were. From things they said, I believe Pete came East on purpose to kill him. Of course, there were the papers to get as well. But he wanted to kill John Heron. It was Chuff who ordered him to get the papers. Pete had some grudge of his own against Mr. Heron, so he made a good catspaw. When Pete was killed, Chuff had to find someone else to do the job. I don't know John Heron, and never saw him in my life, so I----"

"There you're mistaken," O'Reilly broke in. "Did you notice any one coming out of a room next to my suite when you were letting yourself in with my key which you had--er--found?"