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