The Bronze Bell | Page 6

of his name, and during which
they looked one another over, was sufficiently prolonged to excuse the
reference to it which Amber chose to make.
"I'm sure," he said with his slow smile, "that we're satisfied we've never
met before. Aren't we?"
"Quite," assented the girl.
"That only makes it the more mysterious, of course."
"Yes," said she provokingly; "doesn't it?"
"You know, you're hardly fair to me," he asserted. "I'm rapidly
beginning to entertain doubts of my senses. When I left the train at
Nokomis station I met a man I know as well as I know myself--pretty

nearly; and he denied me to my face. Then, a little later, I encounter a
strange, mad Bengali, who apparently takes me for somebody he has
business with. And finally, you call me by name."
"It isn't so very remarkable, when you come to consider it," she
returned soberly. "Mr. David Amber is rather well known, even in his
own country. I might very well have seen your photograph published in
connection with some review of--let me see.... Your latest book was
entitled 'The Peoples of the Hindu Kush,' wasn't it? You see, I haven't
read it."
"That's sensible of you, I'm sure. Why should you?... But your theory
doesn't hold water, because I won't permit my publishers to print my
picture, and, besides, reviews of such stupid books generally appear in
profound monthlies which abhor illustrations."
"Oh!" She received this with a note of disappointment. "Then my
explanation won't do?"
"I'm sorry," he laughed, "but you'll have to be more ingenious--and
practical."
"And you won't show me the present the babu made you?"
He closed his fingers jealously over the bronze box. "Not until...."
"You insist on reciprocity?"
"Absolutely."
"That's very unkind of you."
"How?" he demanded blankly.
"You will have it that I must surrender my only advantage--my
incognito. If I tell you how I happen to know who you are, I must tell
you who I am. Immediately you will lose interest in me, because I'm
really not at all advanced; I doubt if I should understand your book if I
had to read it."

"Which Heaven forfend! But why," he insisted mercilessly, "do you
wish me to be interested in you?"
She flushed becomingly at this and acknowledged the touch with a
rueful, smiling glance. But, "Because I'm interested in you," she
admitted openly.
"And ... why?"
"Are you hardened to such adventures?" She nodded in the direction
the babu had taken. "Are you accustomed to being treated with
extraordinary respect by stray Bengalis and accepting tokens from them?
Is romance commonplace to you?"
"Oh," he said, disappointed, "if it's only the adventure--! Of course,
that's easily enough explained. This half-witted mammoth--don't ask
me how he came to be here--thought he recognised in me some one he
had known in India. Let's have a look at this token-thing."
He disclosed the bronze box and let her take it in her pretty fingers.
"It must have a secret spring," she concluded, after a careful inspection.
"I think so, but...."
She shook it, holding it by her ear. "There's something inside--it rattles
ever so slightly. I wonder!"
"No more than I."
"And what are you going to do with it?" She returned it reluctantly.
"Why, there's nothing to do but keep it till the owner turns up, that I can
see."
"You won't break it open?"
"Not until curiosity overpowers me and I've exhausted every artifice,
trying to find the catch."

"Are you a patient person, Mr. Amber?"
"Not extraordinarily so, Miss Farrell."
"Oh, how did you guess?"
"By remembering not to be stupid. You are Miss Sophia Farrell,
daughter of Colonel Farrell of the British Diplomatic Service in India."
He chuckled cheerfully over this triumph of deductive reasoning. "You
are visiting the Quains for a few days, while en route for India with
some friends whose name I've forgotten--"
"The Rolands," she prompted involuntarily.
"Thank you.... The Rolands, who are stopping in New York. You've
lived several years with your father in India, went back to London to
'come out' and are returning, having been presented at the Court of St.
James. Your mother was an American girl, a schoolmate of Mrs.
Quain's. I'm afraid that's the whole sum of my knowledge of you."
"You've turned the tables fairly, Mr. Amber," she admitted. "And Mr.
Quain wrote you all that?"
"I'm afraid he told me almost as much about you as he told you about
me; we're old friends, you know. And now I come to think of it, Quain
has one of the few photographs of me extant. So my chain of
reasoning's complete. And I think we'd better hurry on to Tanglewood."
"Indeed, yes. Mrs. Quain will be wild with worry if that animal finds
his way back to