Clo had been able to think very clearly, while there had been something definite to think about, but her brain refused this problem of an extra five minutes, which might mean success or failure. She couldn't stop where she was; she couldn't hang about in the street, lest the real Kit had given the false Kit away to the "gang"; yet to dawdle in the corridor, or on the stairs of the Westmorland Hotel, was unthinkable. When the murder of Peterson was discovered someone might remember that slim girl in brown. The police were diabolically clever—now and then. Who could say if they might not trace that girl in brown, and, finding her, eventually reach Beverley Sands?

"One minute must have gone, just while I've been thinking of it!" Clo told herself. "And Peterson hasn't come alive. Now, if I can only think hard enough, and forget him and the silence, for two or three minutes, I can start."

But the silence broke. Once more her nerves thrilled to the telephone bell. She was standing by the door, her back resolutely turned to the figure in the chair, when the sound began. The girl snatched the receiver and called "Hello" but no one answered. She must get out quickly, at the risk of having to wait in the street before O'Reilly could arrive.

"Unless they live close by, they won't have had time to reach me yet, even if Kit's given the show away," Clo thought. But of course, "Chuff" might have 'phoned from a house round the corner. Peterson might have chosen the Westmorland Hotel in order to be near his friends!

Clo locked the door, took out the key, and dropped it behind the trunk at the end of the hall. That would not be unfair to the owner of the trunk, she thought, for in any case, the blood stains would direct suspicion to Peterson's vanished neighbour. The key would be only a detail.

As she descended the stairways leading from the sixth story to the ground floor, she met two or three men, but they had the air of tired commercial travellers going up to bed. Apparently the veiled girl in brown had no special interest for them. Next came the ordeal of the entrance hall, and passing the desk; but there a new group of men had collected. Clo peered through her brown veil, but encountered no curious glances. Yet the worst was to come. The eight minutes could hardly have run out; besides, O'Reilly might be late. If "Kit" were true to her pals, and if she had seen from her hiding place in the trunk, who went into Peterson's room, the coming moment might hold the greatest peril of all. The girl hesitated at the door, then sprang into the street as she might have sprung into a wave.

Plenty of people were passing as she walked slowly away. She had not taken many steps, however, when a taxi separated itself from others in the double line of moving vehicles, and slackened speed near the curb. The window was open, and Justin O'Reilly was looking out. Clo gave a welcoming cry, and waved Kit's bead bag. He caught her eye, spoke to the chauffeur, and the taxi slowed down, short of the hotel entrance. The girl ran back. O'Reilly held the door ajar, and, putting out his hand, pulled her in while the car was in motion. He had not forgotten her orders, and had instructed the driver. On bounded the taxi, as the door slammed shut, and the sudden jerk, before Clo was seated, flung her into O'Reilly's arms. He held her for a second or two, and then carefully set her by his side.

"By Jove, I'm glad to have you safe!" he said in a warm, kind voice, which for some reason made Clo want to cry. "I've a hundred things to say and ask, you child or imp, but first of all, where do you want to go? Home, or——"

"To Krantz's Keller," Clo finished the sentence. "Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," said O'Reilly. "I know, though I've never been. But——"

"I've got to go there," said Clo. "If you don't like, you needn't."

"I do like!" he laughed. "What do you know about Krantz's Keller?"

"I'll tell you that, and other things, when we arrive," said Clo. "Please, what time is it?"

"No thanks to you that I have a watch, and can answer that question," he thrust at her slyly. The street lights turned to ivory the small face from which Clo had pushed back the veil. It was a child's face, though not impish or defiant now; but the great dark eyes, it seemed to the man, were a woman's eyes. He was conscious that never in his life had he been so intensely interested in a female thing. She had tricked him, she had deceived and she had robbed him. Yet his dominant feeling was joyous triumph at having found her when he had thought her lost. He was happy because she had summoned him, excited because they were going side by side toward some unknown adventure.

He looked at his watch which had been retrieved from the wall safe, and said that the time was twelve minutes to eleven. Krantz's Keller was in Fourteenth Street, and they could reach there at the hour, for already the cab was moving in the right direction. "Are you in a hurry?" he asked, "or shall we go a round-about way and talk things over? The Keller won't be at its best till nearly midnight."

"I've a—sort of appointment at eleven-thirty," Clo said. "But I'd like to be on the spot before that, for a look round to get my bearings. I daresay I can tell you the whole story in twelve minutes. I've learned the lesson to-night that almost anything can happen, and you can live years in the time that it takes to button a pair of shoes."

"Certainly you can accomplish more in a few brief minutes than any other person I ever met! My own experience with you proves that!" O'Reilly laughed. But the girl's face was drawn. He remembered hearing that she had been dangerously ill. He wished her to realize that he was ready to give sympathy as well as help. "I don't want to talk of myself, but of you. Tell me what you care to tell. You may trust me."

"You're sure?" insisted Clo. "I'm putting my life in your hands."

"I've just my word to give," O'Reilly answered. "Look me in the face and decide if it's worth taking."

Clo looked him in the face, and said, "Yes! I'll tell you everything. Please don't ask questions, or speak till I finish."

Since the moment when he had been surprised by her voice at the telephone, and she had claimed his help, O'Reilly had thought of fantastic things, but they were commonplace compared to the story she flung at his head. To make him understand, in ten minutes, why she had to be at Krantz's Keller meant that she must spring all her facts upon him. Already, without knowing how she had escaped at the Dietz, O'Reilly had formed the opinion that she was a girl, not in a thousand but in many thousands. Now, listening in silence, he heard her tell what she had found, and what she had done, in Peterson's 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 whose sake you've done this is worthy of her friend, why, I'll be on her side from this night on."

"Thank you," said Clo, meekly. She was very tired, but vitality flowed through her newly at O'Reilly's words and look. "I don't deserve such a compliment, but she deserves everything. If I've behaved badly to you, it was for her."

"I know," said O'Reilly. "But you weren't precisely 'bad.' You were, on the whole, rather—wonderful. How did you get out of my room with the only door locked on the inside?"

"Oh!" the girl cried, surprised, "I thought you'd guess. I went along the stone ledge under the window of your bedroom till I came to an open window of a room in the next suite."

"I thought of that, when it was too late; but it seemed incredible."

"It wasn't as hard to do as I was afraid it would be," said Clo. "The other window was open, the curtain was blowing out. I caught hold of it, and got along somehow, through not looking down. Then in the room where I went in, there was a man. He was at the door, and I scared him popping in that way at the window, so he let me run past. That's all." Firmly the girl closed the subject.

"Let's talk about the pearls," she said. "Peterson was a wicked man. I can't pretend to be sorry he's been killed. He was acting for others higher up. I want to find Kit, not because I think she murdered him, but because I'm sure she's got the pearls. Who called out 'Come in!' in a man's voice, when Peterson was dead? We haven't got time to discuss the whole business before half-past eleven. Here comes my coffee! It's going to give me new life!"

"You must need it. Try to nibble a few crumbs of this rusk," O'Reilly advised. "I've been thinking hard since you told me how 'Chuff' 'phoned to 'Pete,' and took you for Kit. As for the voice that called 'Come in', the wall being thin, a man in the room close by might think the knock was at his door. You're almost surely right about Kit being in the hotel to watch Peterson. No doubt he was acting for men who have the power to—trouble Mrs. Sands. Don't look at me like a wild cat! I shan't tell what you don't want to hear, but there certainly are such men. Most likely Peterson followed us into the Sands' apartment without being noticed in the wild confusion of your fainting. He was there to get hold of the thing he was blackmailing her for, the thing you went back to my hotel to steal, and then repented stealing. Naturally Peterson didn't find it, as it was still in my safe at the Dietz, but he might have seen the pearls. The fellow must have been hiding close to Mrs. Sands and me, when we talked, or he wouldn't have known that John Heron had wanted to buy those pearls! He 'phoned, later, from the Westmorland to Heron, as you must have guessed from what I 'phoned back. As for Kit, she was in her room next door when he called Heron up, and heard about his having pearls to sell; or else she went in to help him pack, and saw them. But it strikes me that a young woman of her class wouldn't bash a man on the head, and risk the Chair, for the righteous joy of turning a fortune over to her pals. No, if she killed Peterson, she killed him because she wanted the pearls for herself or a 'sweetheart.'"

"There's Churn," said Clo. "He and Kit may be a 'case.' She may have gone straight to him with the pearls."

"'Churn's' possibly a nickname for that Lorenz Czerny, whose name you found written on a visiting card," O'Reilly said. "What with that card, and the memorandum, and Kit's bag, we ought to get on to the track of the gang. I'm on Mrs. Sands' side now. But I know a private detective who's worked for clients of mine. He's close as an oyster, and true as a compass. Chuff may keep his appointment, or he may not. If the real Kit's turned up and told the truth, perhaps he won't dare, for fear of a trap. Still, he may, if he's got pluck, and a good disguise—or if the police have nothing 'on' him. The gang won't want the false Kit to get away with what she knows if the real one's true to them. And they'll be eager to see whom they're up against. That's why I should like to have Denham—the detective—on the spot."

"Would that be the best way to get the pearls?" asked Clo.

"Can you suggest a better one?"

"Not on the spur of the moment."

"It's on the spur of the moment we must decide."

"Well—'phone Denham."

"I will," said O'Reilly. "I think I ought to get him now unless he's on some job. I'll be back in a few minutes. There's no danger of serious trouble for you here."

"I'm used to taking care of myself," said Clo. The hot, strong coffee had brought a faint colour to her face, and she looked up with one of those "cheeky" grins of hers, such as his "cousin" had given him at the Dietz. O'Reilly went away bewitched with the creature, absorbed in her. She had done so much for the love of a woman. What would she do for love of a man?

He had to go upstairs to the telephone, it seemed, at Krantz's. Then the line was busy. He was obliged to wait.

Meanwhile a tall girl, in a bright pink cloak over a pink dress, hurried through the gloomy restaurant. She paused only to glance at a clock on the wall, and then ran downstairs to the "Keller."