The Lion's Mouse Part 39

Justin kissed his bride of a few hours good-bye for a few minutes, and jumped out.

While Clo kissed her hand, almost timidly, because Justin had kissed it, Justin himself walked on to the other car.

"You!" exclaimed Dolores Heron. "So it was you in the limousine that hailed us? Funny I didn't recognize your voice, but the chauffeur's tinkering made such a noise----"

O'Reilly was about to ask for Heron when Dolores introduced him to Mr.

Hammersley-Fisher. "He's our host at Narragansett, and is taking us over to Roger Sands,'" she said. "Jack's in the car, very bored. I believe he's gone to sleep."

"No, he hasn't," Heron's voice answered rather testily, for he secretly disliked Dolores' habit of calling him "Jack." "He's only waiting for a chance to speak!"

O'Reilly went to the window of the car, and shook hands with his friends.

"It's not possible that you're going to the Sands'?" Heron said.

"I should have made the same remark about you a few days ago," retorted O'Reilly. "But--circ.u.mstances have altered cases with us both."

"My wife is the circ.u.mstance that has altered my case," Heron replied, in the tone of a man with a grievance.

"So is mine!" returned Justin, in a purposely subdued tone.

"Your--what?"

"My wife. But let's take a walk. Your friend's auto won't be ready to move for some time, I should judge."

The elder man, who had been feeling ill and tired, sprang out of the car with a sudden increase of liveliness. Dolores and Hammersley-Fisher stood with their backs to the two men. Heron's wife turned for a glance, but let them walk away without a question. She was flirting with her host.

Dolores was saying to Hammersley-Fisher: "I dislike Mrs. Roger Sands intensely. I wouldn't dream of going to her house if her husband hadn't at one time done quite a service--legally, I mean--to mine. I don't often talk like this about people I'm going to visit. But if I could tell you the things that woman has done you wouldn't blame me."

To O'Reilly Heron was repeating, as they walked along:

"Your wife, did you say?"

"I did say. But before I go on I've a question or so to ask. You got my wire, advising you to be careful, and hinting that some of the old lot had bobbed up along your life line?"

"Yes. We were out all the afternoon. I found the wire this evening when we got back to Hammersley-Fisher's place to dress for this show at Roger Sands'. Now will you tell me----"

"I'll tell you this, that my opinion of Mrs. Roger Sands has changed.

You shall hear why presently. I rather think it will give you pleasure to change yours--when you can conscientiously. As for Sands himself, I've learned that we have both done him an injustice in regard to those papers."

"How have you learned all this?"

"From the same person who wished me to put you on your guard--made me call you up at Narragansett, and wire when I couldn't reach you by 'phone!"

"Who is this person?"

"My wife. And if you want to know who she is----"

"I most certainly do."

"I could introduce you to her in about two minutes if I weren't afraid of her giving you another shock."

"Another--shock?"

"As she did on the Sunday night at our hotel when you had your--little attack. Heron, I've married that girl; the most wonderful girl in the world."

Heron stopped short.

"That girl!--you--have--_married_ that girl?"

"Yes," said Justin, "I married her this morning. So, if you'd been inclined to forbid the banns, you're too late."

For an instant Heron did not speak. But when words came, he seemed to fling them at his friend: "You're not joking when you say that, O'Reilly. You have a meaning. What's in your mind?"

"Perhaps--the same thing that's in yours, Heron."

"Speak out plainly."

"I'm not prepared to do that without encouragement. You and I are both of Irish blood, Heron, so you know as well as I do that imagination gets out of hand now and then with us Celtic folk. We generally flatter ourselves it's second sight, whereas it may be--just nothing at all."

"I give you leave to speak."

"Long ago, when I first knew you, while my father was still alive, and before you married Miss Moreno, you once came to stop with us. You were run down and ill. My father thought we could do you good. One day you spoke rather frankly about a certain incident in your past. Never since have we mentioned that conversation, and I never expected to do so again. Yesterday I heard the story of another incident which matched it about as perfectly as two bits of a broken coin can join together. This second incident concerned two Irish girls. The first died years ago. The second--is my wife."

"And the first was mine."

"I was wondering. You see, that collapse of yours on Sunday night wasn't like you, in the normal course of things. It had to be accounted for, and so----"

"The girl told you!"

"She told me that she'd met outside my door a tall man with red hair and beard, and extraordinary eyes that pierced her through and through. She told me that, after she'd walked on to a stone ledge from my window to yours, and climbed in there----"

"Great Heavens!"

"I mentioned that she was the most wonderful girl in the world. You'll hear the story some day. She didn't know who you were, then. When she learned your name, although she wasn't conscious of having heard it in the past, it affected her strangely. She seemed to a.s.sociate it with wakeful nights in her early childhood, and the sound of a woman's sobs in the dark."

"Don't, Justin. I can't stand any more--now. The sight of her face that Sunday at the Dietz--the ghostliness of her, in my locked room--I thought I was haunted."

"Would you like to see her again, and judge for yourself whether----"

"Take me to her," Heron broke in.

They started on again toward the gray limousine drawn up at the roadside only a few yards away; but before they had gone a dozen steps Heron stopped O'Reilly once more.

"Does she know?" he asked abruptly.

"I have said nothing to her," Justin a.s.sured him. "She cannot know. Yet I think, what one would call her 'subconscious self' is aware of a tie between you and herself. She's Celtic, too! She hasn't been able to rest since she learned (in a way you shall hear about later) that your life was threatened. I'm certain that something above Fate has brought us three together on the road to-night. I didn't see you in the car. She saw you. She made me turn back."

Without another word Heron began to walk very fast. Justin kept at his side, but did not speak until they had nearly reached the car which contained Clo. Then he warned Heron hastily that the girl had had an accident. "That is," he corrected himself, dryly, "she was shot by the leader of the band that's after you. If you want to tell her here and now what you think you are to each other, I don't forbid it. Happy news seldom hurts. (By the by, she explained to me that she came over to America because she thought the States looked small on the map, and she might meet her American father!) Go gently with her, that's all I ask."