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Show Hidden Wavs K L.2h. . . .By FREDERIC F. VAN DE WATE-R " n.'S IV?" 1 CHAPTER Xn Continued 13 Our neighbors were coming back. I rose to let them pass before she answered me and when we were seated again, she briefly and quickly quick-ly patted my hand. When the curtain fell and the house awoke, I must have shown my thought for Allegra looked at me sharply as I took up her cloak, and she said: "You are a good egg, you know. I think you've suffered a lot tonight." to-night." I did not tell her how much or why. I only answered: "Not at all." She wrinkled her straight little nose at me and jeered: "Spoken like a gentleman of the old school. Mr. Wagner got you down and you know it. He helped me, though, if that's any comfort." "It's more than that," I told her, and she glanced at me again as though she expected to find some- thing in my eyes that was not there. We moved with the crowd into the lobby and to the street beyond where the starters' whistles stabbed I through the racket of cars and. at not. I was not likely ever to forget the thick foreign cadences. I managed to smile at my astonished aston-ished companion and slid out from my place. "Will you excuse me just for an instant?" I muttered and without waiting for reply stepped around the high back of my settle to the next booth. CHAPTER XIII I hit my foot against the wine bucket and I said: "Excuse me." Instinct supplied the words. Thereafter, There-after, I had no others. In the booth, where I had heard the dire voice raised, sat lone and Lyon Ferriter. I had rushed for an avenue to the end of mystery and had slammed up against a blank wall. If my face were stupid with amazement, the Ferriters' were calm. lone smiled, though I thought her eyes widened. There was no flaw in Lyon's greeting. "My dear chap," he said and real pleasure sounded in his easy voice, "this is splendid. Sit down." He half rose and held out his hand. I took it. Instinct still controlled "Nothing in the world," I lied, and sitting down, hid my treacherous face in the beer seidel. When I lowered the emptied glass, I added: "Lyon and lone Ferriter are in the next booth." She dropped her voice to match mine. Her earnest eyes probed and pried at the mask I wore. "What happened?" I jeered to hide my own confusion. confu-sion. "You seem, my child, to have the wrong sort of hunches. Unless your brother is under the table, he had no date with her tonight They have been here since seven-thirty." She was only half satisfied, and mocked in turn: "And I suppose your stampede to their booth was just a social call, eh?" She was the one person in the world to whom I wanted to tell everything ev-erything and I knew I would gain merit in her eyes by confiding in her. She was watching me with a fairer version of her aunt's derisive grin. I only said: "Curiosity rather. I thought I recognized rec-ognized his voice." Perhaps, for that, the recording angel pasted a gold star on my report. "You are," she told me, "the most chronic liar I ever met." "You're just beginning to appreciate appre-ciate my virtues," I answered. After a moment, she shivered a little and drew her coat up about her shoulders. "Can the rest of them be displayed dis-played in a taxicab?" she asked. "I think we'd better go." I knew she was worrying afresh over her no-account brother. "There could be no better showcase," show-case," I boasted, as we rose. The band blared its climax; the dancing girls skipped back to their dressing room in a rattle of applause. ap-plause. Beer rested uneasily in my stomach as I got my coat and hat from the check girl. I found myself my-self shivering. Not even the smile Allegra gave me as I helped her into the taxicab dispelled my misery. mis-ery. She was of the flotsam, the dark whirlpool into which we all were caught and whirled about ever more rapidly. We sat speechless while the taxi rolled uptown until silence grew uncomfortable. un-comfortable. I said at last, to keep thoueht at bav: last, found a taxi-cab. I helped her in and gave the driver her address. "Must we?" she asked as I sat down beside her. I was a little stupefied by too much music on an empty stomach. I said: I "You ask the blindest questions." "And you," she answered, "don't seem to have any human feelings at all. Aren't you ever hungry or any-I any-I thing?" "Anything! I'm practically everything. every-thing. So what?" "All right," she snapped, "if you insist on being led, instead of leading lead-ing me, astray! I'd like to go to Mino's." "Mino's?" Somewhere I had heard that name. She misunderstood misunder-stood my hesitation and tried so tactfully to reassure ,a poor employee em-ployee of her aunt that I smiled. "One of the things I want most in the world at present is a chicken sandwich and a seidel of beer." "My child," I told her, "your ambition am-bition touches me. It does indeed. Give me the address." The cab swung east at my new order. I asked: "Why should Mino's mean anything any-thing to a boy from the country and what?" "It shouldn't," she answered. "Maybe, you've heard Grove or me speak of it. He likes it and he used to take me there a lot. Perhaps," she added, and I thought her voice grew tighter, "he'll be there tonight." to-night." "That'll be swell," I said as heartily heart-ily as I could but she marked the hollow sound. "Why don't you play fair?" me. My mind was crawling from the wreck of another collapsed hope. Perhaps I was beginning to have delusions. Maybe, I had only imagined imag-ined the guttural voice that I had heard once before as the herald of murder. I managed to smile and released Lyon's cordial hand. "Thanks," I said inanely, "I just wanted to say hello." "But sit down," Lyon urged, making mak-ing room. "Do," lone begged. "A glass of wine," her brother went on and signaled a waiter. "You're a godsend. The fact is that we're killing time rather than" his lean face wrinkled in a faint grimace "go home. We're also waiting for Everett who was to meet us here. We find Mino's rather more soothing than what the papers call 'the murder flat.' Louis, another glass." "Thanks," I said again and shook my head. I did not dare inspect now the fresh horde of doubts that cried for attention. The most I could do was to cover up and I tried to keep my voice and my face quiet as I went on: "I'm in the next booth, with Miss Paget. I thought I recognized your voice." I hoped that by some sound or sign he might show alarm. The thick voice must have come from this booth. I was as sure of this as I could be of anything, but Lyon was drawling on in his faintly English accent: "Then I'll not ask you both to join us, though you'd be most welcome. wel-come. I think I'm beginning to bore my sister a bit." The fondness, that ever showed when he spoke of her, softened his face now. "We've been here," said Lyon, "for when did we come in, Louis?" "Seven-thirty, sir," the lingering waiter rpnlipd. "You don't like Grove. And it's my fault." "No," I answered, "it's probably mine." "We'll go somewhere else if you'd rather," she said meekly. "I don't know why I said Mino's. If Grove burned up with delight at seeing either ei-ther of us but I don't know I just have a hunch." "Always play them," I advised her. "Right," she said and her head came up again, "we'll do just that." Mino, himself, sleek as a black cat, ushered us into a wide, low-ceiled low-ceiled chamber where a band presided pre-sided over a square of dance floor. About the polished rectangle that dancers were quitting, tables were packed and beyond them along the walls were high-backed stalls. "Dance?" Allegra whispered to me. I shook my head. The smell of food was hard for a starving man to stand. "We'll sit over by the wall then, Mino." she told her guide. "Has has Mr. Paget been in tonight?" Mino seemed desolated that Mr. Paget had not. I did not share his grief. I gave our order to the waiter wait-er and prayed inwardly that he would be quick. From the center of the dance floor, a master of ceremonies cere-monies spoke amid gusts of laughter laugh-ter and retired as two lines of girls pranced out on either side of the band platform. "I'll remember this evening. It's one thing more I owe you and your aunt. I hope the pay-off will come some day." I knew the words were stilted while I spoke, but only half my mind had followed them. Lyon had been the murderer. Why? Lyon had spoken over the telephone, again in the restaurant, in a voice not his own. Or were those blunted cadences really his, and the faintly English speech he employed, part of a disguise he wore? Beside me, Allegra chuckled. "Must you," she asked, "behave like Electro, the mechanical- man?" "Meaning what?" I heard something some-thing more than jest behind her question. She said, with an impatient gesture: ges-ture: "Meaning many things. Among them, your pretense of dumbness. You aren't dumb." "Thanks." "Or not," she pushed her attack, "as dumb as that. Why don't you play fair?" There was earnestness in her speech. There was appeal on the face turned to mine. The world at the minute was filled with many things I was unfitted to handle. Her warm voice was blowing away everything ev-erything but thought of how much I wanted her. I tried to get out of danger. "I'm at least," I told her, "that dumb. How haven't I played fair?" She did not answer for a minute. Then she said in a quiet voice: "I've told you more than I've ever told anyone else except Grove. I I trust you a lot. Why don't you trust me?" "I'd trust you with anything that's mine," I said. I meant it too. She laughed, but not as if she were amused. "So you say," she answered. "You fall over a wine bucket, you're in such a hurry to see who is in the next booth." She gave me the sort of look that always robbed me of my wind. Then she made it worse by slipping her strong little hand in mine. Her bright head was against my shoulder. shoul-der. "You're pretty swell at that," she said. I think the angel must have run out of gold stars before he laid aside my record that night. If I forgot all but my need of her, it was because her eyes and her soft mouth dared me; if, for an instant, I let go of everything I'd sworn to hold fast and kissed her, at least I caught myself on the way down." It wasn't the sort of kiss I, or she wanted, yet it left us both breathless. breath-less. There was ringing in my ears and I thought the cab had a flat till I found it wa's the pounding of my heart. The pressure of the diamond dia-mond and platinum coronet against my forehead helped me to let her go. After a little, when I did not speak she asked in a shaky voicp- "Well?" I said none of the things I wanted to. I just patted the hand I still held and dropped it. (TO BE COiVTINUED) "For almost five hours, then. Which only goes to show how much misery loves any company, eh, Mallory? I wish you'd have a glass with us." The band brayed on. My mind gyrated with the dancing chorus. "I must go back," I told Lyon. "We were on our way home. I've had a rather strenuous day." "Good God," he said with a little lit-tle shudder. "Who should know that better than I?" He frowned at the welt on his hand. lone said in her husky voice: "I think you're pretty generous to speak to him at all, Mr. Mallory." "Accidents," I answered flatly, "will happen." "Which," Lyon supplied with a crooked grin, "is scarcely news to our family, eh? Good luck, old chap." he added, as I mumbled farewell and backed away. "Nice of you to hail us." As I returned to my table, I craned my neck into the booth beyond. It was unoccupied. That voice could not have come from there. It had issued from where lone and Lyon sat. That meant then that Lyon I managed to smile at Allegra but my pretense was poor. She asked: "What is the matter?" "The midnight show," Allegra said, lifting her voice above the din. "Do you mind?" "I can take it or leave it, I think." "Doesn't," she mocked, "any sort of music please you? Have you no savagery in your breast, at all, Mister?" Mis-ter?" If I had not matched her own deliberation de-liberation when food arrived, she would have had her answer. Allegra lifted her seidel and grinned at me across it. "Here's luck," she called through the racket. Suddenly the music paused, the dancers held a complicated formation forma-tion and before applause rattled, I heard a voice in the booth next to ours. The band reviving, blotted it out. The dancers stamped and whirled. I sat with my seidel still half-way to my lips. Reason told me I was mistaken. My ears defied it. "It's not poison," AUegra said. I could not answer her. I was back at the switchboard at the Mo-rello Mo-rello and the wheel had just come off Miss Agatha's chair and I had left a voice that identical voice to get its own number while I rushed to the old lady's aid. But the owner of that voice was dead. I must be mistaken. And yet I knew I was |