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Meanwhile, I 'must keep the papers and the secret' and wait. I felt relieved after that! I dared to let myself be happy. Then, that Sunday, when Clo and I went out in the motor, a man was waiting for me in the street. He made me understand that he came from Stephen. His name was Peterson. He said the Comrades had changed their minds. They wouldn't let Stephen come to me.
"Don't wanter meddle wid nothin' that recerns you," cried Vic, jumping at the prospect of a quarrel, since there was nothing to be gained by amicable words. "Jis' give me any of yer sarse," said Clo, "and I'll mark yer face smash wid dis ere dough, now I tells ye?" "Don't lay a finger on me, cause I won't stand it," shrieked Vic; "yer a cross ole, ole dat's what's de matter."
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 shot out of sight. Then, with the bag of jewels which Clo had tossed into her lap, she walked home. Her latch-key opened the door of the flat, she entered her boudoir, and fell into a chair, sitting as still as the dead Peterson had sat.
He was badly lame, too, if he wasn't pretending; and altogether, in spite of her newly mended ribs, Clo felt that she herself would be equal to knocking him down. "Yes, I am Mrs. Sands," Beverley answered, as if against her will. "I don't but perhaps someone has sent you with a message?" "In a way, yes, that's it," said the man. "I had a message for you.
There were many bitter things she held in mind which were secret from all others upon earth, she thought, but from himself and her who had been Clo Wildairs in days gone by, when, as it now seemed to her, she had been another woman living in another world.
"I don't want a confession from you!" she broke in. "Whatever you did was right. Even before you told me, I felt you knew about the pearls being gone " "Though I knew, I ought to have trusted you. I ought to have trusted you when I heard you telephone O'Reilly " "So you did hear! I was sure of it. I telephoned about Clo.
Now, concentrating upon the queer letter, Beverley understood each veiled hint. Clo wished her not to "worry." Clo was "picking up all she had lost." Clo "hoped to call before long, and show what good progress" she had made. All this could have only one meaning. And how like Clo, to have treasured in some brain-cell Léontine's queer name of "Rossignol"!
Only the chef and a woman assistant were at work. "I'm Clo Riley, the girl Mrs. Sands has been good to," she eagerly explained. "I'm well again, and I have to go out. Mrs. Sands has a visitor, and I don't like to disturb them. Will you let me down your way?" So speaking she laid a ten-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill side by side on a table.
"Sixty-nine years from this day was I born," he said, "and now 'tis done." "Nay," said she "nay God grant " "Ay," he said, "done. Would there were nine and sixty more. What a man I was at twenty. I want not to die, Clo. I want to live to live live, and be young," gulping, "with strong muscle and moist flesh. Sixty-nine years and they are gone!"
There she sat down with Clo's cryptic message, praying that Roger might not come till she had unravelled it. But, after all, the meaning of one sentence after another sprang quickly to her eyes. She had realized at once that Clo wrote to Léontine because she dared not use the name of Mrs. Sands. This suggested that she was in a house where the name of Sands was not unknown.
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