The door of the room was thrown open. The proprietor's wife, shaken with hysterical laughter, ushered in the crowd. She was a flushed, stout woman in the gaudiest of kimonos, larger than the fat man in the driving-coat to whom she appealed. "My brother here 's from Mizzouri and I was just showing him how the shadow must have done—you can't earn any reward's round here! Anyhow, you don't suppose that hussy spends all her time giving signals for murders, do you?"—"But the shadow was so slim!" somebody said, as Mrs. Riley scornfully assisted Thompson in his researches. These coming to nothing the young men were powerless to refuse going oil to Benning's Point and telephoning from there—Thompson had begun to be suspicious of this exchange.
They had gone perhaps a mile, moving slowly, watchful of the leaves in every bush, and Herrick was remounting from the examination of a false alarm when they heard a hail in their rear and beheld approaching through the moonlight a hatless figure on a motorcycle.
The elderly cousin of Joe Patrick, whom they had not seen since he first welcomed them, bore down upon them in timid and disheveled haste.—"Yis, sor. I tried to see y' alone, sor, but yeh were gone. 'T is the reward, sor; I'd not be sharin' it with the policeman an' him takin' th' whole of it, not a doubt! An' impidence, beside, they do always give yeh! But a gintleman, sor, I don't mind tellin' him; if yeh 'll exscuse me sayin' so, Mrs. Riley's a liar!"
Not that he really knew anything. "No more than yirselves! But the piana, sor! It stands there fer the upstairs dances, an' her not knowin' wan note from another!—An' what's more, comin' down the back stairs from that same room wid the dhirty dishes, what did I see standin' at the back door but a car like yer own—only still as death an' no lights in its head! Wasn't that a queer thing, now? An' it gone whin I rode out."
What was that?—down the road which crossed theirs, where they had just reconnoitered for a sound! Nothing but their distorted fancy, their roused longing! "An' all I can tell surely, sor, is that awhile back, whin Riley sinds me upstairs with a bite o' supper for Mrs. Riley's brother that's just come in, barrin' the long drink, stheamin' hot, 'twas chicken an' like that yeh'd give to a lady. He has his own room, has the brother, but 'twas to hers I took the thray. An' though I saw no wan an' I heard no wan, yit sure there was some wan beyond Riley she was yellin' at an' him prayin' her 'Hoosh! Hoosh!' as I come to the door!"
"Did you hear anything of what she was saying?"
"Just the wan thing, sor, an' you'll remimber 'twas me told yeh. She said, 'I'll thank yeh to hand over that diamond necklace!'"
There was something there! They could not hear, but they could somehow feel from far behind them a stealthy purring. They turned; no lamp nor headlight but their own was anywhere to be seen. The second and less traveled road crossed theirs just above them at a narrow angle; but it, too, lay untenanted, not a breath quivering on the stillness. They saw themselves quite alone beneath the moon, breathing a night silence drenched with coldest sweetness; the last words rang in their blood with an accent that could not leave them wholly sober; they were, perhaps, a little "fey." At any rate, it was by an impulse with which reason had nothing to do that, as the old waiter continued—"'Twas for her, surely, they'd have that dark car waitin'!" Herrick held up a warning hand. The waiter hushed himself, stricken, and huddled in against their car; Herrick bent forward in a passionate readiness, and from far in the rear, but nearing swifter than the flight of time, along the intersecting road came the tremulous vibration of a second automobile.