O'Reilly started. "Whose accusation is that?" he asked sharply.
"Not hers; it's mine."
"Yours! Once again, who are you? What are you in this?"
"I'm nobody! I'm only—a lion's mouse."
O'Reilly did not ask what it meant to be a lion's mouse. He understood. His mind was not less quick than hers.
"And I'm the net you hope to gnaw! Miss Mouse, your little teeth will find me tough. I may say I'm a patent, ungnawable net. The best thing for you is to go home as fast as you can and tell those who sent you——"
"I sent myself," Clo explained, with tired obstinacy. "I told you I had to see you somehow. Oh, Mr. O'Reilly, you don't look the sort of cruel pig I thought you would be. If you dreamed what Mrs. Sands is going through you'd give her back the papers. Don't pretend not to know what I mean."
"I won't pretend anything," O'Reilly said. "I do know what you mean, and I got the documents (which were not the property of Mrs. Sands) more or less as you think I got them. But no mouse, no mastodon could induce me to hand them over to your friend."
Clo's eyes travelled over his person. He looked slim and soldierly in his well-made evening clothes. There could be nothing thicker than a watch, and that a thin one, in his pockets.
"If you would see Mrs. Sands, maybe you'd change your mind," she pleaded, in her creamiest Irish voice. "Take me back to her, and take the papers along. Then, if you——"