On account of his momentarily expected cablegram it was a crushing suspicion. He spent an afternoon of aloof and goaded wandering, and at last, shielded as he hoped by the darkness and by the company of a whole group of entering diners, yielded to the temptation of the table d'hôte. He could not doubt it was encompassed by spies; he could not but attend the seizure, the crisis, the outcome. Here, more than anywhere, were the lines converging; here, for to-night, was the center of the web. He said to himself, then, in his ignorance, that nothing mortal should induce him to forsake it.
Under the sail-cloth there was no longer any room; but, within doors, save for a couple of men at a distant table, Herrick was quite alone. There was no change in the deportment of the place, no disturbance. The Italian proprietress, in her comings and goings, found time to reply that the old lady was still in the country but her prototype, the little gray parrot, which he had not seen for a long time, was climbing in and out of its cage and the angelic children still snuffled about the floor. It was on these innocents that Herrick began as usual to practise his Italian when the proprietress had gone affably to see about his order, but if he thought one of them would lightly drop Christina's address he was mistaken. Smother-y as the place was, with that same looming sultriness of a week ago, agitated in its daily business, its pulse did not beat so hard as his, its imagination did not quiver, like the figures of a cinematograph, reviewing the movements of a motor-car that until yesterday had sped through mire and dust and blood, through sunrise and midnight, past the spread, astonished wings of the marble Hoover lions, past the smoking-ruins of a post-office, past Riley's where the shadow danced, after a will o' the wisp. There was no suggestion, here, which could lift that phantom light; the customers ordered, the little fat boy, next in age to Maria Rosa, leaned familiarly against his knee, the parrot continued to clamber over its cage, talking steadily, rapidly and monotonously to itself, and then Herrick said in surprise,
"Why, the bird's speaking English!"
The parrot looked at him coldly, disinterred something which it had buried in its food-cup, gnawed on the treasure, and dropped it. The little fat boy picked it up and smiled at Herrick. Herrick said, "Let's see!" It was a silver ring, holding a bluish-green Egyptian scarab.
It seemed to Herrick that he had heard of such a ring before, and he tried to remember where. One of the men at the further table left and the other was buried in a foreign newspaper. Herrick got up and went over to the desk. That was English the bird was speaking. "No, no, no, no! I don't believe it. I don't beli—"
"Polly," said Herrick, "what are you talking about? And what do I know about this ring?"
The bird burst into a shriek of the ungodly laughter of its kind, pecked the ring out of his hand, backed away with it, dropped it again; and then, out of a perfect stillness, with its little eyes fixed on his face it replied—
"Ask Nancy Cornish!"