"With all my heart," she agreed. "What are your conversational preferences?"

"Anything but shop. May I ask you a personal question?"

"Personal questions are always the most interesting."

"I've heard you addressed once or twice as 'Miss Ocky,' and I've been wondering just what the abbreviation stands for?"

"Oh! You've landed squarely on a sore spot, but no matter. My father, bless him, was one of the dearest men that ever lived, but now and then he would get some particularly quaint idea into his head and proceed to carry it out in spite of every opposition. I arrived in this world on a chilly autumn day and was duly presented to my father's gaze. He was quite inexperienced about babies and it's recorded of him that he stared at me aghast and said: 'My gad, what a bleak-looking object!'

That inspired some by-standing lunatic to observe that I doubtless took after the month, and my father promptly exclaimed: 'October! What a jolly fine name for her. We'll call her October!'" Miss Ocky sighed resignedly. "They let him get away with it. I was christened October.

It has the sole merit of being distinctive!"

"My golly!" Creighton had listened to the concluding phrases of her anecdote with wonderment writ large on his face. He carefully put his knife and fork on his plate and leaned back in his chair while he continued to regard her with a rapt expression. "Are _you_ October Copley?"

"Yes!" laughed the lady.

"_The_ October Copley?"

"I'm quite unique, I believe," said Miss Ocky cheerfully.

"Did _you_ write 'Thibetan Trails,' 'Pa.s.sages from Persia' and those bully Chinese things with the queer t.i.tle?"

"'Chiliads of China.' Yes, I wrote 'em. Don't sit there and tell me you've read them!"

"Read them--I've _loved_ them! It's a wonder I didn't connect your name with them at once. My wits have been woolgathering. But, hang it! Who could have expected to find an internationally famous writer and traveler stuck away in this corner of the world? Why haven't seventeen or ninety people _told_ me who you were?"

She laughed at his eager interest.

"A prophet is without honor in his own country," she said. "To my family I'm just Ocky; to the natives of Hambleton I'm only 'that Copley girl with the queer name who's come back from furrin parts'."

She laughed again, half surprised and half embarra.s.sed, as he suddenly rose from his chair, marched around the table, shook hands with her and solemnly marched back again to his seat.

"Meeting a stray Miss Copley is one thing," he a.s.sured her. "Meeting October Copley is quite another matter."

It was impossible for her not to be touched by such sincere, whole-hearted enthusiasm. Her throat tightened queerly. Bates, too, an astonished spectator of the scene, was discreetly impressed. A stand-offishness that he had felt toward Peter Creighton, the detective, was weakened in favor of a man who thus appreciated his own Miss Ocky. An artist in simple gestures, he testified to his new approbation by refilling the winegla.s.s beside Creighton's plate.

"Now, tell me what you are doing here. I can't believe it is really you sitting opposite me, there! If any one had asked me ten minutes ago where I supposed you might be, I would have answered that you were probably hunting hippopotamusses in the Himalayas or--or--"

"Tigers in Africa!" suggested Miss Ocky. "No, here I really am."

Creighton had already noticed that she was usually divided between two moods, an amused, faintly mocking one, and another that had somehow an undercurrent of sadness. This last seemed to hold her as she added, "Here to stay, I think. My wanderings are done and now I must--settle down."

"Another great light has just burst on me," exclaimed Creighton.

"Janet Mackay! She must be the companion you refer to so often in your travel books. By golly, was it she who dove beneath an ice-pack and brought you back to the air-hole through which you had fallen?"

"That was indeed Janet! I repaid the favor later by valiantly dashing into a burning hotel and releasing her from a beam that had dropped across her--well, she'd call 'em limbs! Regular movie stuff. Yes, Janet and I are now fearfully responsible for each other."

"There was no mention of the fire in any of your books."

"Mmph. I'd be apt to bust into print with that, wouldn't I? But I don't mind informing you--just between us girls, as your friend Mr.

Krech would say--that you're in the presence of an honest-to-goodness heroine!"

"I knew that," said Peter Creighton simply.

There followed for him a somewhat curious evening. No detective worth his salt will permit extraneous matters to thrust themselves between his mind and the immediate problem with which it should be occupied, and Creighton really had a very high sense of duty. When they had taken themselves out of the house and settled down in the cozy corner of the big veranda, he punctiliously strove to concentrate on a dagger and a notebook and a murder, but ever and anon, as he tried to post himself on the manifold ramifications of the affair to date, the conversation would persist in taking unexpected trips to the Orient.

His interest in this topic was so keen that he blamed these divagations on himself, and since a clever woman is cleverer than the cleverest man, it never once occurred to him that the guiding-reins of their talk lay in a pair of slender, capable, sun-browned hands. Miss Ocky preferred almost any subject that evening to the one of paramount importance.

He sat a while after she bade him good-night and left him, his thoughts a medley of vague impressions, confused, half-formed, inchoate. He tried to fix his mind on Simon Varr and ended by surrendering it to the vivid, vital personality of Miss Ocky.

When he went upstairs to his room the first object that caught his attention was a slender volume, beautifully bound, that lay on his dressing-table. "The Mystery of Lhasa." He had not heard of that one.

A glance at the t.i.tle-page accounted for that. Privately printed. On the flyleaf, inscribed in a bold, dashing hand, were the words, "For Peter Creighton--a master of mysteries--from October Copley."

"That's mighty nice of her," he told himself, putting it down. "Golly, what a woman! She has packed more life into each of her years than most men get in their three-score-and-ten."

The hour was early for his metropolitan standards. He thought of the balcony outside his window, and forthwith carried a comfortable chair to that cool retreat. He had lighted a cigar and established himself contentedly before a low voice challenged him from the darkness to the right.

"So you have found your little veranda!"

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Copley! You got one too?"

"Yes. I come out here nearly every evening for an hour before going to bed. I love to watch the stars."

"No dearth of them in these skies."

"If we could look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe.

I think we could--I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! What do you think?"

"I know there is. If you sat here long enough, Miss Copley, I believe your doubts would be set at rest."

"What do you mean? What is behind the stars?"

"The dawn," he told her seriously. "These windows must face due East."

He mused briefly. "They also command a partial view of that kitchen garden, come to think of it! You didn't happen to see or hear any--last evening--"

"What a one-track mind!" lamented Miss Ocky. "_No!_"

They talked until very late.

_XVII: An Arrest is Made_

At eleven o'clock the next morning, the ground-floor of the big house was again invaded by a heterogeneous collection of people drawn thither by the coroner's inquest into the death of Simon Varr. Some were there as witnesses or because they had a personal interest in the proceedings, some because they were part of the legal machinery, and many because they were driven by morbid curiosity. The Coroner, an alert, bewhiskered old gentleman named Merton, took possession of the big living-room and had one end of it fenced off with chairs the better to mark the dignified exclusiveness of his court.

As on the previous day, the end of the veranda around the corner from the front of the house escaped the notice of the invading horde.

Creighton spent the early part of the morning there, after a solitary breakfast, reading the morning paper attentively. Barlow, the editor, had covered the story of the murder with a competent pencil. The account was graphic, lucid and comprehensive, a credit to himself and his paper. When Creighton had finished its careful perusal he was posted on many details of the case that sheer lack of time had prevented him from learning the day before. With a considerable degree of satisfaction, however, he noted that he had unearthed a fair amount of information that the industrious scribe had missed.

Only second in interest to the big story itself was the half-column on an inner page devoted to the jail-breaking exploit of Mr. Charles Maxon--which would certainly have been largely featured at any other time. Some lesser scribe on Barlow's staff had been a.s.signed to this minor item of news. He had gotten hold of the unfortunate Moody, and under the caption, "Der Jail Is Oudt" he had written a racy, humorous account of a Lady-Fair with Knockout Drops, a Resourceful Romeo and a hoodwinked Jailer. It ended with the statement that Romeo and the Lady were still missing, and that a ticket agent on night duty at the railroad station had seen two m.u.f.fled figures unostentatiously board the last car of the midnight train without the formality of buying tickets.

"That means they'll have had to pay on the train," mused Creighton, "and of course the conductor will remember to what point they bought transportation when the police get around to asking him. Um. Would a murderer leave a trail as clear as that? I think not!"