The Lion's Mouse Part 14

Even that supposition wasn't enough to account for the flash.

Frightened, she slid the key into the lock, and almost falling into the room slammed the door behind her. She did not need to lock it, for without a key it could not be opened from the outside.

"I can hold the fort a few minutes now, whatever happens!"

In the corridor John Heron and his wife lingered in front of their own door.

"Well, if that's not the queerest thing I ever saw or heard of!" Heron exclaimed.

Coming out of their suite, they had caught an impressionist glimpse of a figure in white bent over the keyhole, then the figure had stooped for the dropped key, and mechanically they had paused in surprise.

"I wonder if she's made a mistake in the room?" Mrs. Heron had whispered, and Heron had returned:

"Yes, I think that must be so. She'll find it out and go somewhere else.

O'Reilly isn't----"

There he had stopped short when the girl raised her head to face them; and when she presently vanished into his friend's room like a whirlwind, he neither finished his sentence nor answered his wife.

"What's the matter, Jack?" Mrs. Heron asked. "How odd you look!"

("Jack" was not a nickname that suited Heron, but his wife thought it debonair.)

"Why don't you speak?" she persisted.

"I was thinking," Heron said at last.

"Thinking what we ought to do?" his wife caught him up. "Shall we knock and ask O'Reilly if he's ready to go down with us?"

"No. We can't do that."

"I suppose not. But weren't you going to say it isn't like O'Reilly to have a girl calling on him in his rooms?"

"I don't remember what I was going to say," he snubbed her. "It doesn't matter, anyhow. After all, why shouldn't he? What is it to us?"

"Well, I feel queer about it," objected Dolores Heron. "The creature may be a hotel thief?"

"Nonsense!" fumed the man. "The girl was a child--sixteen or seventeen.

We can't mix ourselves up in such an affair. Let's mind our own business."

"You needn't be so cross. I haven't done anything," Dolores reproached him. They went down together, and sat side by side on a rose-coloured brocade sofa in the immense salon generally known as the "hall." Not one of the ladies present was handsomer than Mrs. Heron, not one had more beautiful jewels or a more perfect dress, and all the men openly admired her--except her own husband.

Upstairs the girl in question was making the most of every moment. The queer little key attached to O'Reilly's watch couldn't belong to the desk, still, there might be a box inside the desk which it would fit.

Clo searched everywhere and everything. At last, it seemed that nothing was left to try, when suddenly she recalled a paragraph in a newspaper.

She had seen it in a Sunday Supplement. Why, yes, Miss Blackburne, the pearl-stringer, had given her the paper that Sunday long ago at Yonkers, to read on the journey home. The paragraph described the up-to-date feature added to some important hotel. Small safes had been placed in the walls of rooms for the benefit of guests, each key being different in design from every other. Clo could not remember the name of the hotel referred to. Perhaps it was this one. If not, the Dietz wasn't likely to let a rival get ahead of it. The girl stared at the wall. Any one of those panels might conceal a safe! There were lots of panels of different sizes, painted a soft gray and edged with delicate white mouldings. To test each would take hours (unless she had luck and hit on the right one first) for there might be a spring hidden in the flowery pattern of the moulding. But--it was to the left side of the room that O'Reilly had flung his anxious glance. She would begin, and hoped to end, her work on the left side. A few minutes spent in thinking out the situation, however, might save many minutes by and by. About those panels, for instance? Which were the most likely to hide a secret?

A frieze or skirting-board of gray painted wood ran round the room to a height of three feet above the pink-carpeted floor. Above this frieze, distributed at regular intervals, were large plaster panels, two on each side of the room, forming backgrounds for gold-framed, coloured prints; and between these were small, narrow panels, ornamented with conventional flower designs. Beneath and above the latter were panels still smaller, placed horizontally, and outlined with white curlicues and flutings. They were about four inches in height by ten inches in length; and on the left side of the wall there were two.

"Just the right size for nice big jewel boxes," Clo thought. "And the lower one's just the right height to open without stretching up. If I were putting a safe into a wall that's the place I'd choose!"

She pa.s.sed her finger round the edge of one, the white-fluted edge, rather like the decoration of a fancy cake. Nothing happened. No spring clicked. She tried the other with the same result, then stood disappointed, only to return to the attack with new inspiration.

"I bet it pulls out!" she told herself. And--oh, joy, oh triumph!--it did pull out as she pressed her sharp little nails under the white fluting. The whole thing came away from the wall like the loose side of a box, having been kept in place by thin p.r.o.ngs of metal. Behind this cover was a steel or iron door of practically the same dimensions as the panel. It also was painted gray, and showed a tiny keyhole like a slit made with a pair of sharp scissors.

Clo deposited the cover close by on the desk, where it would be within reach if wanted in a hurry. Then she inserted the key attached to O'Reilly's watch. It slipped into place. It turned. It opened the small iron door, and Clo peered into the aperture. In the receptacle lay a pile of greenbacks held together with a paper band. There was also an envelope, but not the envelope the girl had pictured. It was larger, longer, wider, and thicker. It seemed to be made of coa.r.s.e linen, and instead of the dainty gold seals with the monogram there were five official-looking red ones. Clo's heart contracted. It seemed too bad to be true. But there was plenty of s.p.a.ce in this envelope to contain the other, as well as its contents.

"I'll have to open the thing and look," Clo half decided. But if she did, how could she make sure of what she wished to know? If the envelope with the gold seals had been removed, she had no means of recognizing the doc.u.ments it had contained.

She took the linen envelope from the safe, and turned it over. Upon the other side was an address, written in a strong, peculiar hand: "Justin O'Reilly, care of The Manager, Columbian Bank, New York City," she read.

There was just one reason to believe that the envelope contained Mrs.

Sands' papers; Clo's own strong, instinctive conviction.

Tentatively she pressed one of the seals. It cracked across. Another went the same way, and as she touched the third there came a sound of talking outside the door. "Open it for me with your pa.s.s-key, please," a man said. It was O'Reilly's voice.

XIII

"THERE CAN BE NO BARGAIN"

When Beverley Sands had shut the door between Clodagh's room and Sister Lake's, she stood silent before Justin O'Reilly.

"Well, Mrs. Sands," he said, "I must congratulate you."

"On--what?" she stammered. She looked very young and humble, not at all the proud princess who had captured Roger Sands against his will.

O'Reilly answered, still smiling his cruel smile, "It's not too late for congratulations on your marriage, is it? By the way, perhaps one wishes well to the bride and congratulates the bridegroom! I mean nothing invidious."

"You mean to hurt me all you can!" Beverley cried.

"I'm on the other side, Mrs. Sands."

"Don't I know that!" she answered bitterly. "I've known since I saw you on board the Santa Fe Limited that day last September. I expected--some one else, not you. But I guessed in an instant why you had come."

"I accepted the obligations of friends.h.i.+p," O'Reilly deigned to explain.

"And that brings us to one of the subjects for congratulation: your friend. A wonderful young person. I congratulate you highly upon her.

She informed me that she'd gladly die for you. Judging from her looks, she isn't far from doing so. I'm sure you must want to go to her now.

Oh, by the by, one more congratulation: the pearls."

"How did you know?" Beverley forgot her humiliation in sheer amazement.

"Weren't you told that Heron was trying to buy them for his wife?"

O'Reilly waived her question with another.

"No, indeed! They were a surprise present to me this afternoon from my husband. If I'd known that Mr. Heron...."

"You don't expect me to believe you'd have sacrificed them to Heron, or his wife, do you, Mrs. Sands?" O'Reilly laughed.