nly to pass through his brain to be rejected. The girl was a
strange girl, audacious and unscrupulous in her loyalty to Mrs. Sands;
but she could not have told her story in a way to impress its truth upon
him unless she had been sincere.

"The young lady didn't give you any other message?" he asked.

"No, sare. She was in much hurry. But I see her mark on a piece of
paper," the waiter replied. "Maybe she write you a note."

O'Reilly reflected. Which should he do, look for a message in the pocket
of the coat Clo had left, or dash upstairs and find out which way she
had gone? It was almost certain that he would now gain nothing by the
latter course.

O'Reilly sat down at the table, in the chair where he had sat before. He
found the one pocket in the brown coat, and in that pocket Kit's jet and
steel bag. There was nothing else there, so he opened the bag cautiously
in case some of Kit's friends had arrived. As he did so, the folded
programme dropped out.

XXVII

WHEN BEVERLEY CAME HOME

When Clo had shut the taxi door almost in Beverley's face, and had given
the chauffeur orders to drive on, she had said to herself, "Angel will
be so surprised she won't know what to do for a minute. And by the time
she pulls herself together, she'll realize it's too late to stop me."

The girl had judged well. Beverley shrank back from the slammed door
with a jump of the nerves. Then she guessed what Clo meant to do. She
was in the act of tapping to stop the chauffeur, and tell him to turn,
when the question seemed to ask itself aloud in her brain, "What good
will it do for you to go back?"

Before she could reach Clo, if she returned to the hotel now, the girl
would have learned the secret of Peterson's room. When she saw what
Beverley had seen, she would know that there was nothing to be done with
a dead man. She would slip away to avoid being mixed up in the business
of the murder. She would not risk being caught. The girl was too
sensible, and she had plenty of money as well as brains. She had shown
herself equal to desperate emergencies. She would be equal to this. She
was so quick-witted that she would know what to do, and how to do it.
Beverley let the chauffeur drive on. He went to the corner where he had
been hailed by his two passengers. There he stopped, and Beverley got
out. She paid him; and making a pretence of examining her change in the
light of a street lamp, stood still until the taxi had turned and sho