“I give you my word for that, Warren.” Shirley rose, putting the torn-up papers into his pockets. “I am sorry for the past—but you have made the present for yourself. Good-bye.”
Warren returned to his cell and the detective to the club house.
There he found an additional cable message. It said: “Countess Laschlas has been dead ten months.” It was signed like the other.
Shirley tore up the message, and blinked more than seemed necessary.
“Poor little old lady, she knows it all now. I will not have to tell her.”
* * *
That afternoon Shirley called again at the Hotel California for Helene.
“I want you to go to a sweet, old-fashioned English tea-room, where I may tell you the rest of the story. There will be no tango music, no cymbals, no tinkling cocktails, nor, champagne. Can you pour real tea?”
“I am an English girl. I have been five days without it.”
As they were ensconced at the quaint little table, he realized how wondrously blended in her was that triad of feminine essential spirits: the eternal mother instinct, the sensuous strength of the wife-love and the wistful allurement of maiden tenderness.