be possible!"

"I'll somehow make O'Reilly come," the girl promised. "I don't know how,
yet, but I know I will, if you can get Mr. Sands out of the house."

Beverley shuddered. "How horrid that sounds ... as if I were plotting
against him, the way women do who deceive their husbands."

"Well, anyhow, if O'Reilly took the papers, would he still have them, do
you think?" asked Clo, with the sudden eagerness of one who catches in
desperation at a new idea.

"It's just possible. I can see a reason why he might have been asked to
keep them," Beverley answered.

"If that's so, would he put them in a bank, or a safe somewhere, or
would he bring them to New York?"

"There might be a special motive for him to bring them to New York ... I
think there would be a motive."

"Well, it seems to me, the sort of man I imagined he is, would be too
smart to have such things on him if he came to your house, and didn't
mean to give 'em back to you. It would be tempting Providence, so to
speak!"

"If I were the kind of woman he thinks I am, he'd not expect me to stop
short of murder to get those papers," and Beverley laughed a bitter
little laugh.

"Good! If he comes to you and leaves the papers at his hotel, a certain
thing will happen, but it's safer for you not to know--till afterward."

IX

THE BLUFF THAT FAILED

"You must tell me!" Beverley insisted. "Tell me at once!"

"While Mr. O'Reilly is here with you, Miss Riley without the 'O', will
be at his hotel, in his room, helping herself to his--I mean
your--papers."

"My child, you're mad!" Beverley gasped.

"Not so mad as _he_'ll be when he finds out," crowed the girl. "Hurray!
The whole business is settling itself in my head. The one trouble is Mr.
Sands. The rest will be all right. Think what to do about him, Angel;
think hard!"

Beverley thought until her brain whirled.

"I might suggest Roger's dining at his club," she said. "But how I
should hate to do that! He's vexed already. He has a right to be! This
afternoon he gave me a wonderful present, a rope of pearls that belonged
to a Queen. It must have cost a quarter of a million! I hardly stopped
to thank him, I was in such frantic haste to get the envelope to you.
The rope caught in the key of a drawer; the string broke, and a lot of
pearls ran all over the carpet. I didn't wait to pick them up. I ran
down to you, and I was gone so long Roger went to my room to look for
me. I came back and found him p