The chauffeur was opening the door of the waiting car. It was a black car—a car with strangely familiar lines. Orme started. “Where did that come from?” he demanded.
Bessie smiled at him. “That is my surprise for you. My very dear friend, whom you so much desire to see, telephoned me here this evening and asked me to spend the night with her instead of returning to Chicago. She promised to send her car for me. It was long enough coming, goodness knows, but if it had appeared sooner, I should, have gone before you arrived.”
Orme understood. The girl had telephoned to Bessie while he waited there on La Salle Street. She had planned a meeting that would satisfy him with full knowledge of her name and place. And the lateness of the car in reaching Arradale was unquestionably owing to the fact that it had not set out on its errand until after the girl reached home and gave her chauffeur the order. Orme welcomed this evidence that she had got home safely.
Bessie jumped lightly into the tonneau, and Orme followed. The car glided from the grounds. Eastward it went, through the pleasant, rolling farming country, that was wrapped in the beauty of the starry night. They crossed a bridge over a narrow creek.
“You would hardly think,” said Bessie, “that this is so-called North Branch of the Chicago River.”
“I would believe anything about that river,” he replied.
She laughed nervously. He knew that she was suppressing her natural interest in the scene she had witnessed on the veranda; yet, of course, she was expecting some explanation.
“Bessie,” he said, “I am sorry to have got into such a muss there at the club. The Japanese minister was the last man I wanted to see.”
She did not answer.
“Perhaps your friend—whom we are now going to visit—will explain things a little,” he went on. “I can tell you only that I had in my pocket certain papers which the Jap would have given much to get hold of. He tried it by accusing me of stealing them from him. It was very awkward.”