CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FALSE GODS GO

WELL?” demanded Miss Templeton, at whose apartment Jim Barrison presented himself in record time after leaving headquarters. “And is the case now closed?”

“Not quite,” said Barrison, putting down his hat and stick deliberately and standing facing her.

She was standing, too; and, as she was a tall woman, her eyes were not so very much below his own. She was, he thought, most splendidly beautiful as she stood there gravely looking at him.

“Not quite,” he repeated, in a voice he had never before permitted himself to use in speaking to her. “I want to ask a few more questions, please?”

She nodded, still watching him in that deep, intent fashion.

“First,” pursued Jim, trying to speak steadily and to keep to the unimportant things, even while his heart was throbbing violently, “why did you always suspect Kitty Legaye?”

“Because I had an instinct against her; also because I was sure that she knew that man Wrenn. I could tell by the way that they looked at each other that they were not strangers, though I never knew them to speak to each other. And, you see, I knew that he was connected with Alan Mortimer’s old life. The suspicion seemed to slip in naturally.”

“And at any time—at any time, mind you—did you have it in your mind to kill Mortimer yourself?”

“Never!” she returned at once, and firmly.

He paused a moment, looking full into the clearest eyes that ever a woman had.

“Grace,” he said, calling her so for the first time, “why did you buy that revolver?”

She colored painfully, but her eyes met his as truthfully as before. “Ah, you knew that!” she said. “I had hoped that you did not. However, what can it matter now? I am very much changed since the day I bought that revolver. You know that, I think?”

“I know it,” he acknowledged gently.

“I was terribly hurt, terribly outraged, terribly disappointed. You must always remember that I am a woman of wild emotions. I felt myself flung aside—not only in love, but in my profession. I had lost my part, and I had lost the man who, after all, I had believed I loved.”

“And did you want to kill Sybil Merivale, too?”

She stared at him in astonishment. “Kill Sybil Merivale!” she repeated. “Why on earth should I? I had nothing against the girl, except that I believe I was a little jealous of her youth and freshness just at first. No; I had made up my mind to kill myself.”

“Yourself!”

“Yes. Didn’t you guess? I had an idea that you did, and that that was one reason for your keeping so near me all that evening in the box. I had the insane impulse to kill myself then and there, and spoil Alan’s first night!” She laughed a little, though shakily, at the recollection. “It was ridiculous, melodramatic, anything you like, but women have done such things, and—and I’m afraid I am rather that sort. I meant to do it, anyway.”

“And—why didn’t you? You had the revolver; I felt it in your bag on the back of the chair. Why didn’t you?”

He had not known that a woman’s eyes could hold so much light.

“You know,” she said softly and soberly. “You were there. You had come into my life. The false gods go when the gods arrive!”

There was a long stillness between them, in which neither of them stirred, nor took their eyes away.

“You—love me?” Jim said, in a queer voice.

“Yes.”

When he let her leave his arms, it was only that he might look again into her eyes and touch that wonderful golden hair, now loose and soft about her face.

“It—it isn’t dyed!” she said hastily. “I did make up, but my hair was always that color—truly!”

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” he laughed, though with tears and tenderness behind the laughter. “What do I care whether it is dyed or not? It’s just a part of you.”

A little later a whimsical idea came to him.

“You know,” he said, “the inspector said to me yesterday that in drawing in our nets we sometimes found that we had captured some birds that we had never expected. I didn’t know how right he was, for—we two seem to have caught the Blue Bird of Happiness, after all!”

“And I am sure,” said Grace Templeton solemnly, “that no one ever really caught it before!”

THE END.