O'Reilly looked grave. "I love you," he said, "more than I ever thought it was in me to love, though I had an idea it might go hard with me when my time came. But I gave the papers to Heron, whose property they were—and are. I was only keeping them for him because he had reason to think they weren't safe in his possession."
"John Heron!" Clo echoed. A thought had suddenly started out from the background of her mind, pushing in front of her fears for Beverley. "Yes, of course, he's a friend of yours! But he's in worse danger than his papers ever were. From things they said, I believe Pete came East on purpose to kill him. Of course, there were the papers to get as well. But he wanted to kill John Heron. It was Chuff who ordered him to get the papers. Pete had some grudge of his own against Mr. Heron, so he made a good catspaw. When Pete was killed, Chuff had to find someone else to do the job. I don't know John Heron, and never saw him in my life, so I——"
"There you're mistaken," O'Reilly broke in. "Did you notice any one coming out of a room next to my suite when you were letting yourself in with my key which you had—er—found?"
"Yes!" cried Clo. "A beautiful woman in a black dress with gorgeous jewellery; and a tall man with reddish hair and beard and—Oh, eyes! Great dark eyes that looked at me in a strange way. I felt them in my spine."
"That was the first time you saw John Heron, the man his enemies still call the Oil Trust King—though thanks to Roger Sands they daren't call him that out aloud. The second time must have been in Heron's own room. But you shall judge for yourself. He'd been downstairs with his wife. He went up to his rooms again for something, and in the hall outside his own door—which he'd just unlocked—he fell down in a sort of fainting fit. Well, putting two and two together, after you told me your adventure creeping along the ledge from my window to his, it occurred to me that there'd been just cause for the seizure. I didn't think Heron was the man to keel over in a faint, even for a thing like that. All the same, seeing that ghostly vision would account for his attack."
"I understand," said Clo. "I saw he was flabbergasted. But that first time at the door, when he was with his wife, he didn't look at me as if I were a stranger. It was as if he knew me, and almost fell over himself to see me again. That was the feeling I had, but I was—a little excited."
"Most girls would have been corpses!"
"I felt like a live coal. But we mustn't let the gang make a corpse of Mr. Heron, must we? Let's warn him. Where are we, anyhow?"
"Same house you were in. Doctor said it wouldn't be safe to move you. We disinfected the best we could in a hurry, and he extracted the bullet from your poor little shoulder. Thank God, I was in time, or there might have been another bullet or two, that couldn't be extracted! You're all right now, or will be with a little rest, and we'll get you into a nursing home. As for Heron, he and his wife have gone to Narragansett. That's close to Newport, you know, where Mrs. Sands is."
"Angel in Newport already! Then the pearls—but I told Ellen Blackburne to take them there if she had to. Do you think she will?"