"Meeting a stray Miss Copley is one thing," he assured her. "Meeting October Copley is quite another matter."
It was impossible for her not to be touched by such sincere, whole-hearted enthusiasm. Her throat tightened queerly. Bates, too, an astonished spectator of the scene, was discreetly impressed. A stand-offishness that he had felt toward Peter Creighton, the detective, was weakened in favor of a man who thus appreciated his own Miss Ocky. An artist in simple gestures, he testified to his new approbation by refilling the wineglass beside Creighton's plate.
"Now, tell me what you are doing here. I can't believe it is really you sitting opposite me, there! If any one had asked me ten minutes ago where I supposed you might be, I would have answered that you were probably hunting hippopotamusses in the Himalayas or—or—"
"Tigers in Africa!" suggested Miss Ocky. "No, here I really am." Creighton had already noticed that she was usually divided between two moods, an amused, faintly mocking one, and another that had somehow an undercurrent of sadness. This last seemed to hold her as she added, "Here to stay, I think. My wanderings are done and now I must—settle down."
"Another great light has just burst on me," exclaimed Creighton. "Janet Mackay! She must be the companion you refer to so often in your travel books. By golly, was it she who dove beneath an ice-pack and brought you back to the air-hole through which you had fallen?"
"That was indeed Janet! I repaid the favor later by valiantly dashing into a burning hotel and releasing her from a beam that had dropped across her—well, she'd call 'em limbs! Regular movie stuff. Yes, Janet and I are now fearfully responsible for each other."
"There was no mention of the fire in any of your books."
"Mmph. I'd be apt to bust into print with that, wouldn't I? But I don't mind informing you—just between us girls, as your friend Mr. Krech would say—that you're in the presence of an honest-to-goodness heroine!"
"I knew that," said Peter Creighton simply.
There followed for him a somewhat curious evening. No detective worth his salt will permit extraneous matters to thrust themselves between his mind and the immediate problem with which it should be occupied, and Creighton really had a very high sense of duty. When they had taken themselves out of the house and settled down in the cozy corner of the big veranda, he punctiliously strove to concentrate on a dagger and a notebook and a murder, but ever and anon, as he tried to post himself on the manifold ramifications of the affair to date, the conversation would persist in taking unexpected trips to the Orient. His interest in this topic was so keen that he blamed these divagations on himself, and since a clever woman is cleverer than the cleverest man, it never once occurred to him that the guiding-reins of their talk lay in a pair of slender, capable, sun-browned hands. Miss Ocky preferred almost any subject that evening to the one of paramount importance.