“I think he did,” I admitted, for Wise’s statement of the matter was convincing,—and beside, Norah thought so, too.
“Well, you think again!” came in a wild little voice, and there was Zizi at my elbow fairly shaking her little clenched fist in my face. “Mr. Badman Brice, you’ve got a lot of follow-up thinks a-coming to you, and you’d better begin ’em right now!”
She looked like a little fury as she danced around my chair and exploded the vials of her wrath. “That Mr. Rivers is a perfectly good man,—I know! He and Miss Olive are in love,—but they don’t hardly know it themselves,—bless ’em! And Mr. Rivers he won’t tell her, anyway, ’cause he’s a nobleman,—one of Nature’s maybe,—and again, maybe he’s a real one from Canada, or wherever he hails from. But, anyway, he no more killed anybody than I did!”
“All right, Ziz,—bully for you! As a loyal friend you’re there with the goods!” Wise smiled at her. “But after all, you’ve got only your loyalty to bank on. You don’t know all this.”
“I’ve got a hunch,” said Zizi, pounding one little fist into the other palm, “and when it comes to certainty,—Death and Taxes have nothing on my hunches!”
CHAPTER XVIII
Clear as Crystal
“Hello, people! What’s the matter, Zizi? I’ll be on your side! Bank on me, little one, to the last ditch. And, by jumping Jupiter, Brice, I believe the last ditch is coming my way! No, I haven’t got a strangle-hold on that eloping memory of mine yet, but I ’ave ’opes. I’ve had a glimmer of a gleam of a ray of light on my dark, mysterious past, and I beflew myself straight to good little old Doctor Rankin, who’s my Trouble Man every time. And he says that it’s the beginning of the end. That any day, almost any hour now, I may burst forth a full-memoried and properly christened citizen.”
“Good for you, old chap,” and thrilled at the elation in his tones, I held out my hand. “Go in and win!”
“Oh, won’t it be fine when you remember?” cried Mrs. Vail, wringing her hands in excitement; “why, I knew a man once——”
“Yes,” Rivers encouraged her, in his kindly way, “what happened to the lucky chap?”