all-a paradox that was to cost dear before the finish.
The girl was beautiful enough, in all conscience-more beautiful in the morning sunshine than he had thought her by the lights of night. Her hair was dry now, and had that dull black softness about her face which had caused O'Hara to name her 'Dusk Lady' on first sight. Her smooth skin possessed a pearly, translucent whiteness, almost like alabaster with a faint pink light behind it, and her eyes were pleadingly, deceptively intelligent. Yet just now Rhodes felt that Colin himself was a sufficient problem and the presence of his insane protegee superfluous.
'Did you sleep well, Miss Reed?' he inquired.
And she replied with an admirable simplicity: 'I slept.'
'And why not?' demanded Colin, heavily cheerful. 'You're out of that house, and not even your father shall put you back there, little lady.'
'My-father? Oh! You mean he who names himself Chester Reed? He is not my father.'
'No?' Rhodes tried to look interested. 'Your name not Reed, then?'
The girl drew herself up with a funny little air of hauteur, and replied surprisingly: 'I have no name!'
A pained expression flashed across O'Hara's frank face. Again he was troubled by that double emotion- shame for her pitiful speeches, and, deeper than that, a sympathy which took no count of madness.
She saw the pain in his eyes, the momentary astonishment of the two other faces, and its instant veiling behind that kindly, intolerable tolerance with which well-bred sanity confronts an unsound mind. She saw, for she shrank back in her chair and her dark eyes glimmered.
'You know, dear child,' said Cliona gently, 'because we all have names ourselves, we get in the habit of expecting other people to have them, too. But indeed, if you are wishing it to be so, you need have no name with us.'
Frowning, the girl glanced from one to another, as if trying to determine exactly what they, their surprise and Cliona's too-soothing assurance might really mean. The she said in a very low tone, speaking only to herself, it seemed: 'All the customs are so strange!'
'They are that,' conceded O'Hara with suspicious heartiness. 'But now don't you be troubling your mind for the matter a minute longer. What do we care for names-the four of us here? Faith, 'tis the same to us if there were no names at all in the world-you need none, little lady, nor your mother nor your father — '
'Oh,' cried the girl, brightening unexpectedly, 'but of course my father had a name, and gave one to my mother likewise, but for me, I am not wed. Do
'Generally.' Rhodes sighed. He supposed they must humor the poor girl. 'If you would tell us your father's name we could call you that, you know-that is if you object to 'Miss Reed.''
For the first time she laughed. 'To call me as if I were my father! How strange are your customs!'
Then she looked anxiously about the table.
'I have heard him say that some harm had come to his name-what, I did not understand-so that it would bring him sorrow in this, the land of his birth. But you are my friends-you will not speak it to others. You are friends, are you not?'
Colin, though he groaned in the soul of him, nodded and smiled bravely. Rhodes laughed in a kindly, encouraging way, and Cliona, filled with pity, leaned over and kissed the poor, sick girl on her beautiful forehead.
'We are friends,' she replied softly. Then: 'Oh-what is it, Masters?'
The butler, who had just entered, straightened himself with a resolutely passive face. 'There are two men in the reception hall, and they asked me to tell you, Mr. Rhodes, that they are from headquarters and wish to see Mr. O'Hara at once. One of them says his name is MacClellan, sir.'
Masters had come to Green Gables shortly after O'Hara's departure for 'South America,' and consequently, though MacClellan had previously visited the house several times, he was unknown to the butler. But Masters did know that he disapproved of a household in which red-haired giants appeared at breakfast dressed in worn, water-proofed khaki, and were then called upon by plain-clothes men.
However, Masters' inward disturbance was nothing compared to the consternation roused by his announcement in the bosoms of three of his hearers.
No one said anything, but their eyes, meeting across the table, spoke volumes. Then Rhodes turned to his stately servitor with what calmness he could command at the moment.
'All right, Masters. Go tell them to wait a few minutes-right there in the hall.'
'Very well, sir.'
Masters' restraining presence removed, O'Hara came straight to the point.
'They traced me so soon! Indeed, I've never given that lad MacClellan credit for such intelligence. Well, it's sorry I am, Tony, that they should take me from your house.'
But as Colin was rising from the table, Rhodes stopped him.
'Wait a minute! I don't think they've come for that, and I want you not to see them. I have something to tell you — '
'Let it wait!' Colin shook off his brother-in-law's hand and stood up. His face was darkly flushed but his eyes shone with a grim determination. He dominated the rest of them like a giant at a pigmies tea-party.
'Not see them? Would you have me sneak out the back door, then? Be sure they'll see me if I'm in the house-and I'll not run away. Do you stay here.'
He strode to the door, but his last command was disregarded. When he entered the reception hall Rhodes was behind him, still protesting, while Cliona and the strange girl brought up the rear.
'Ah, Mr. O'Hara!' And MacClellan's rather heavy and stolid, countenance brightened as he beamed upon the advancing Irishman in a manner singularly cordial to be bestowed upon a murder-suspect. 'I thought I might find you here. Quick work, eh? I suppose you've read all about it in the early afternoon editions?'
'No.' Colin favored his prospective captor with a morose stare. 'I'd no notion they'd be having it-so early.'
'Oh, they got it at headquarters. We tried to phone out to Mr. Rhodes here, but they said you didn't answer. Line out of order?'
'Not that I know of.' Rhodes was nervous. He was becoming more and more positive that MacClellan was innocent of any knowledge dangerous to O'Hara, but at the same time there was imminent peril of his acquiring such information within the next few moments. O'Hara must be kept quiet until there was time for further conference.
'More likely something wrong with the operator,' he continued. 'But I read the paper, MacClellan, and was just going to show it to the rest when you arrived.'
'And I was just on my way,' began O'Hara, but Rhodes forestalled him, speaking very loudly and quickly.
'It's the bungalow again, Colin. The bungalow received another visitation last night!'
And pulling the folded newspaper from his pocket, he thrust it into O'Hara's hands, pointing to the column in question and for the moment at least effectually distracting his attention.
Cliona, keyed to a worse calamity, laughed and exclaimed involuntarily: 'Is that all?'
'Ain't it enough?' MacClellan looked a trifle offended. No man likes to bear news of a mountain and hear it called a mole-hill. 'I tell you, Mrs. Rhodes, it was enough to send me and Forester here shooting out to Carpentier within ten minutes after we got word of it. The news was phoned in by a milkman-name of Walker-and he said when he went up there to deliver the milk, there wasn't, in a manner of speaking, any place to deliver it at. Said you'd been living there alone, Mr. O'Hara, and the way he talked we got the idea you was murdered and laid out in the ruins.
'So Forester, here, and me shot out there, and sure enough the place was pretty well smashed up, but not a sign of you or anybody else hurt. So on the train comin' in we got talkin' with the conductor-we central office men pick up lots of valuable clues just talking, here and there-and he says the night man told him how you and a lady went in town somewhere after eleven-thirty last night.
'Well, we was anxious to get in touch with you, just to let you know we're on the job, so I tried to get Mr. Rhodes by phone. While I was trying, Forester, he called up the hotels and drew them blank, so I says the best thing was to come straight out here, and we did and here's Mr. O'Hara, just like I thought.'
MacClellan was so enamored of his own perspicacity in locating Colin that he was quite good-natured again.
