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For instance, has she ever given you any keepsake, a glove, a handkerchief, something some trifle she was wearing at a dance when when you flirted with her? Girls do that kind of thing, so my niece there has told me." Zena smiled and made no denial. "Nothing of the kind has happened between Mademoiselle and myself," said Lanning.
But she explained matters so ingenuously that I, for one, was released with an injunction from the mayor and the Austrian commissary of police to go back to Rome. Zena, who let the heirs of the Uscoque and the judges get most of the old villain's wealth, was let off with two years' seclusion in a convent, where she still is.
A whisper breathed into my ear, 'He sleeps! Then, as we were sure that nobody would see us, we went to walk, Zena and I, upon the ramparts, but accompanied, if you please, by a duenna, as hideous as an old portress, who didn't leave us any more than our shadow; and I couldn't persuade Madame Pirate to send her away.
She was pretty, too, and her scarlet dress with its white pompons, and her pierrot's hat to match, suited her to perfection. I was amongst the last left in the tent after the performance, partly owing to the position of my seat, partly, at least so Zena would have it later, and I did not contradict her, because I was lingering in the hope of getting another glimpse of Pomona.
Quarles, when at last we foregathered in the empty room, was sympathetic but not surprised; Zena, who had come back to town immediately on receiving a letter from me, was furious that I should be suspected. "I have been busy," said the professor. "I opened those letters, Wigan. Of course Zena's first question on her arrival was why Mr. Parrish had not opened them.
Pupkin owned that he had had the strangest feeling that morning as if something were going to happen a feeling not at all to be classed with the one of which he had once spoken to Miss Lawson, and which was, at the most, a mere anticipation of respect. But, as I say, Pupkin met Zena Pepperleigh on the 26th of June, at twenty-five minutes to eleven. And at once the whole world changed.
He would be likely to carry through any enterprise he set his mind to. His wife, without being beautiful, was attractive, the kind of woman you begin to call pretty after you have known her a little while. That night I wrote a full report to Christopher Quarles with my own comments in the margin, and three days later I had a wire from Zena, saying they were returning to Chelsea at once.
I hesitated until he began to get angry, and then I told him the story as I have told it here. I had just finished when Zena came in. "You, Murray! What has brought you here at this hour of the day?" she asked in astonishment. "Two pieces of lead," murmured Quarles. "A case! Have you got interested in a case, dear? I am glad. What is the mystery, Murray?" "Where is the key of my room, Zena?"
Zena was out when I got to Chelsea, but the professor seemed pleased to see me. "Are you out of work, Wigan?" he asked, looking at the clock. I did not want him to think I had come with any deliberate intention, so I answered casually: "No. As a fact I am rather busy. I came out to Chelsea to think. Chelsea air is rather good for thinking, you know." "It used to be," he answered.
He rode fifteen miles to pass the house twice, and even then it took all the nerve that he had. The people on Oneida Street thought that Mr. Pupkin was crazy, but Zena Pepperleigh knew that he was not. Already, you see, there was a sort of dim parallel between the passing of the bicycle and the last ride of Tancred the Inconsolable along the banks of the Danube.
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