"Well, for one thing," Kane said, "no mortal creature ever looked at that girl and thought her a quitter." He was standing at Ingham's table, wrinkling his eyebrows at the storied blind. "I've come within the fascinations of that young person myself, but I don't think it's infatuation which makes me say that she didn't drop down in a dead faint yesterday afternoon, just to pass the time. When those clear eyes of hers looked at that lock of hair she learned something that astonished and horrified her. From that moment she made up her mind to go somewhere and, at the appointed hour, go she did. Devil take her for not confiding in Mrs. Deutch! She meant, I daresay, to return. But she must have been greeted with the news of the moving picture advertisement and thought herself very well off where she was. Eventually, she'll pull some string from there."
He began putting out all lights but the table-lamp.
"I fancied, at first, the mother had followed, for she lied about going to Europe. We've had every steamship and railway line watched since long before she left, so she's not beyond the scope of trolleys. But she'd only be a nuisance to the girl, nor is she one to pursue risks—more likely, she just skipped out early to avoid the rush. All sorts of intimidating things have happened lately; then, last night, Christina threatened her with some exposure, this morning she was frightened by an Italian, and the climax has been capped by whatever it was Deutch told her—Don't jump! No, I'm no mind-reader. But I had, of course, the Deutch apartment, as well as yours, wired for a dictograph. Useful thing a dictograph—especially when there are ladies about!"
With a happy indifference to the effect of this statement upon Herrick he cast about the room, appearing to sniff up its suggestions and to compare them with a vision in his mind's eye. Absorbed, elate, on edge, tingling with some suspended energy, as he raised the blind and peered out he radiated a good humor somehow inhuman.
"That wasn't a taxi? I'm expecting a couple of my boys and," he grinned, "poor Ten Euyck!" He disappeared, bent on examining the bedroom.
Herrick still stood, dumb and raging, with his back against the door. In his impotent rebellion against Kane's inferences he had been almost indifferent to the fateful setting of the new scene in that night's hurrying kinetoscope. But slowly this had begun to assume its natural imaginative sway. There were the dim blue walls framed in their outline of smooth, black wood. There before him was the long white blind; to his left the piano where Ingham had sat playing; by stretching out his right hand he could touch the portières of the room in which they had found Ingham's body. It was all in order now. The cushions of the couch had been smoothed and set up. The chair that had lain overturned beside the table had been stood in its proper place, at the edge of the portières, near the door. The newspapers and ashes, the siphon and half-empty glass had been cleared away. The little puddle by the piano stool, too, was gone. All was in order; Ingham's hand might have been about to draw those portières, he might have stepped between them to tell—what? What, the poor fellow persisted, was there to tell? He knew the secret of the shadow on the blind, the secret of the shot in Ingham's breast. Only the one thing was unknown—Who had contrived to bolt the door? That he had always felt the puzzle's essence and its answer; there stole through him again that sense of a skeleton still locked within those walls to be discovered with some recognizing shock; once more his fancy began to search through those hollow rooms in desperate hope, driven by that superstition, by the obstinate unreason with which a starving hand continues to fumble in an empty pocket. Futilest of occupations! The sense of shamed stupidity, of failure in Christina's cause, warned him with a squelching sneer that he was the merest pawn in Kane's hand and that the room would yield its secret, if it had one, to Kane and not to him. At any rate, how could that secret find Christina? And, if he were not looking for Christina, what was he doing there?
As he turned to go it was Kane who came back through the portières and said, "Sit down, for heaven's sake! Don't stand there glaring at me as if I were Ingham's corpse!"
The sharpness of his entrance suggested something.
Herrick answered with his hand on the knob, "I'm virtually a prisoner, I suppose?"
"Oh, don't you care to sit out the show?"
"If I left here should I be arrested?"
"Arrested's an exaggeration."
"I should be shadowed, then?"
"Well, my dear fellow, there've been so many disappearances! And you're so near the storm-center—you make such a sensitive barometer!"
Herrick dropped on to the couch as a mouse might give itself up to a cat and leaned forward, frowning, motionless.
"It's a great game, this, of 'Vanishing Lady'! But I don't mind telling you that it's the Italian background to the vanishings that interests us. An obscure young girl—but a great friend of Christina Hope's—is the first to vanish. She sends an appeal for aid to Christina Hope, through the Arm of Justice.
"A publisher—betrothed to Christina Hope—receives blackmailing letters from the Arm of Justice, and is murdered.
"A young author—also betrothed to Christina Hope—is attacked. But, as a victim, proves a failure.
"An actor—also—well, also an old friend of Christina Hope, and said to have been recently in love with the vanished Nancy Cornish is arrested for Ingham's murder. And what happens? S-s-z-boum! A cluster of respectable and comfortable persons scatter for the ends of the earth. While, ahead of them all, pop goes the beauty! In a white and silver dress. So she didn't go farther than the embrace held wide open to receive her."
"You mean, of course, the Arm of Justice?"
"Of course."
"What are you trying to do with me?" Herrick snarled.
Kane answered with great deliberation, "I'm trying to save you, you young fool!"
"Spare yourself wasted time. What does all this matter to me? What does a lot of gab matter? I've heard enough of it to-night, God knows! But does it tell me anything? You're all full of suggestions, but where is she? Do something if you know how—find her, find her! She's in danger, that's all that matters! Where is she? Where is she?"
"You talk about danger! And you wantmeto find her?"
"Has Denny retained you, then?"
"Oh, you poor kid!—Now, Herrick, I know your place in life. I studied, one term, under your father. I breathe familiarly the air of Brainerd, Connecticut. Corey and old Ingham are friends of mine. This muss of—Paah! Come out of it, Herrick, it isn't good enough! She in her rotten world and you—Oh, all right!"
Kane rose and went again to the window. "Rain's held up." He looked at his watch. Strolling back to his chair he fixed his eyes on Herrick, across his interwoven knuckles.
"But you've listened so willingly to Wheeler and to Mrs. Deutch, why not listen to me? I've something of a confession to make, myself. Do you know what it is to be possessed by a mania?"
A man with a mania!
"I heard Ten Euyck call you that, the first time I ever saw you."
"Good! A man with a mania, a prosecutor with a pet criminal! But he didn't mention the criminal? Allow me—the Arm of Justice!"
Herrick's pulse gave a mad leap and he slowly raised his head.
"You've taken that business, all along, as just a mask for some desperate amateur. Then, too, you were all thrown off the track—and small wonder!—by those literate, unbusinesslike letters in idiomatic English. A lady's letters, in fact!—My dear fellow, a very real and definite 'Arm of Justice,' a low-lived little gang that sunny Italy knew how to get rid of, has made its living at blackmailing certain gutters of ours for a generation. What nobody but your humble servant has believed is that this more stylish business, using our language and dwelling very evidently in our midst, has any connection with the original A. of J. beyond borrowing its title from the police reports. Not for the first time! See here! The Arm of Justice started life as the humblest little blackguard gang, extorting money from low-class Italians. It was like all its class, strictly minding its own business in its own nationality and considered worth nobody's while to catch. But to my mind about four years ago this violet by a mossy stone burst out like a sunflower. To my mind, it was this very same Arm of Justice which abandoned every precedent by entering, with one bound, into American life."
His look seemed to ring with triumph, but his voice kept a cold edge.
"No Italian gang, real or bogie, big or little, had ever thrown its shadow there. But the Arm of Justice flew high, carried the new territory at a rush, and struck at the very proudest families in New York, the most powerful individuals!"
"But how? How?"
"Ah, if I knew! What's its source of information? How does it get hold of those unhappy secrets that its owners guard like Koh-i-noors? Well, men will tell a good deal to a woman—and those were a woman's letters, Herrick! Once it gets its secret it starts a correspondence. How often it has succeeded, grabbed its hush-money and retreated, of course I don't know. But when its advances are rejected it abandons its typewriter and calmly prints a scant edition of a dirty little rag calling itselfThe Voice of Justiceand telling the blackmailing story. It then mails marked copies through various New York post offices to the family, friends and enemies of its victims—the three before Ingham were all of Knickerbocker standing. What a revenge! What a prestige for next time such a threat gave it! The desire of my life is to smash that printing-press!"
"But it followed up the Ingham business with letters alone?"
"There you are—the whole Ingham business is a departure! Observe that until Ingham's death the English-speaking branch of the business never committed itself to violence; it caused four tragedies in four years, but it simply pressed the button of exposure and its vengeance came off automatically. The first time a young girl went crazy. The second there was a divorce and the wife shot herself. And the third time a bad stumble, lived down for twenty years by a fine old friend of mine, a judge of the highest standing who had made himself an honorable character, was exposed to such relentless political foes that this office had to prosecute. Well, Mrs. Deutch's father isn't the only gentle soul who's died in jail!"
Kane's voice had risen in hot anger. "Perhaps you think I ought to be grateful—thank them for doing my work! Am I to do theirs, then? Execute their orders, their sentences? Make my office the tool of cowards and criminals worse than those I convict? Ah, my boy, that did turn me into a monomaniac! Is there anything I wouldn't give to break that particular bone in the Arm of Justice?—to lay hands on the real villain of that little evening party in these rooms that night—not the one who fired the shot but who prompted it! Believe me, the death of Ingham was a slip, an accident, bitterly repented. Some last new element got in this time and got in wrong. The Arm was using a new tool and pushed it farther than it dreamed the tool would go. The English-speaking branch, always so careful not to commit murder—I could almost be thankful for this time—it's put a definite, popular crime into my hand! And now the poor fools've lost their heads! They that were so cautious, they're following one sensation with another. They've tried anything, everything, to get clear! They've only floundered further and further in! And now they're wild as rats in a trap!"
"Like rats in a trap!" There it was again! "The wages of sin is more sinning!" Good heavens, what was his novel to him, now?
"Still people don't believe me. They can't credit that a single criminal gang has its feet in the slums, its hand in the pocket of Fifth Avenue, and its head—well, for instance, on Broadway. Naturally, it wants a connecting thread. I was so keen after that, even before I came into office, that they used to call me The Blackhander and say I ought to write a comic opera. Well, Italy's an operatic nation! And this great brat of a city, that thinks there's nothing doing in the world but Anglo-Saxon temperaments, embezzling and baseball games, doesn't know what it may get up against! I'm sure if I can nab either end of the skein it will carry conviction. But unfortunately even the Eastsiders never gave us a map of their whereabouts. There are about seven hundred Italians in New York who might be called professional gangsters and very likely a cozy, private little affair like the A. of J. but murmurs, 'We are seven.' So I've never been able to put the slightest Italian accent on those illustrious letters till I saw the body of your gunman from Central Park. Encouraging though not overwhelming evidence! But the knife that stuck in Denny's arm is a bigger business."
He might well congratulate himself, Herrick inwardly groaned, over the color and the emphasis liberally supplied him in the story of Mrs. Deutch.
"Of course, you understood what had happened? The farmer had refused toll to the brigands who governed the south so capably in those days. They killed his child, leaving their mark on it as a warning that toll must be paid. The poor wine-merchant attempted to set the authorities on that sign. The authorities were too weak to take up the gage, and, of course, a stranger and a Jew made an easy scape-goat. But the brother didn't take warning from the father's fate. Then the mark on him warned the countryside that the family was taboo. They became simply lepers. Not, this time, because the people were religious bigots nor social asses but because they were scared stiff. Every one connected with the tabooed strangers must have dreaded some brigand dictum. Every Gabrielli may have squirmed under that thumb for many a year. Whatever she romantically believes, her fiancé's family simply dared not, for their lives, receive Henrietta. Nobody dared, except, apparently, our little friend, Hermann Deutch. Hats off—I salute Hermann! Really, for an excited man—! But how's that for the nationality of the three-cornered knife? The nation's pitched it out, over there; and now, to-day, in the city of New York, in the city's jail, in broad daylight, some descendant of this agreeable Sicilian clan uses the same weapon to silence a wiry gentleman who turns out a bit too much for him—being a little on the Sicilian order himself! But isn't that a sign of something doing between the slums and Broadway? For what were they afraid Denny would tell? Why did they wish to silence him except for what he could tell of a certain lady?"
Herrick rose, lighted a cigar and flicked out the match with steady fingers. "And you picture Miss Hope as The Queen of the Black Hand?"
This pleasantry was delivered with such a raucous and guttural attempt at quiet satire that Kane returned to earth and smiled.
"Put in that way it's comic opera, indeed. But it's the tune that makes the song. I know how crass the thing seems. Good heavens, says common sense, in what century are we living? And who believes in comic opera? What's the clue? What's the connecting thread that can reach from the lowest dives of the East Side, out of another country and another race, and mix with the grandeurs of so extremely well-known and high-flying a young lady, on the very day that she becomes a world-celebrity? What's the answer?"
The extreme nonchalance of Herrick's voice shook a little as he remarked, "That's up to you, isn't it?"
"It's bound to lie in some dangerous indiscretion of her youth. She's had hard struggling years, in which her temper was still luxurious—a youth that's ambitious is never too scrupulous—if she had a friend unscrupulous by profession—And yet I was so sure they had got hold of her by some secret of her mother's! The Hope honeymoon took place in Italy—but, in that day, so did everybody's! After all, perhaps they had a closer clutch. What do we inevitably find in the pasts of all very young, very beautiful and very successful actresses? We find a dark and early husband. Italians whose humbler connections still sojourn in tenements are often highly ornamental and blackmailers aren't branded, you know, to keep them out of matrimony. Well, whatever the start, whether she was coaxed in or threatened or married, forced by poverty or blackmail, she's made them a wonderful—Do you know the thieves' slang of Naples? And the term 'basista'?"
"A basista's a sort of fence, isn't he? A confederate on the outside?"
"A good deal more. A basista, without being a member of the gang, is the invaluable unsuspected spy in the camp of the victims, who loots profitable news and sends it in. He or she is sometimes the brilliant amateur director, the educated person with an outlook, the Adviser Plenipotentiary. A dramatic-minded young lady with extravagant tastes and some kind of righteous grudge against society might hardly realize at first what she was doing—and oh, how she has struggled to be rid of it, since! Naturally, she's become worth double to them. And she's recently furnished them with such a hold that, so far from getting clear, I fancy she was pushed to furnish them with another victim; that if it hadn't been for the moving-picture another person would soon have received an Arm of Justice letter, and that person Cuyler Ten Euyck. What do you think of my thread?"
"Pretty thin, isn't it?"
"Wait, encouraging youth! You'll be grateful some day! Come, I'll show you my hand! Ever since the inquest it has been perfectly clear to the unprejudiced mind that Christina Hope was in that room when Ingham was shot. It was perfectly evident that she was shielding somebody. We say, now, that she was shielding Denny. When we began to suspect Denny we had to run down his friend, Christina Hope, who left behind her a scarf bordered with the color in which, through his craze for her, Ingham's apartment was decorated—a color which up to the time of the murder she wore so constantly that it was like a part of her personal effect, and which she has never worn since."
The color was all about them—blue-gray. What could that have to do with the shimmer of a dummy pistol, scratched upon whose golden surface Herrick once more confronted the initial "C"? But he did not put this question to the District-Attorney. And it was Kane who continued. "Shall I treat you to a bit of ancient history; shall I reconstruct for you the movements of Miss Hope on the night of the fourth of August?"
"As you please."
"She testified to have dined at home. So she did; but with so poor an appetite that the maids said to each other that she had really dined early somewhere else. She testified to being ill and out of sorts; so she was. But she was incited by this being out of sorts to something very different from the languor to which she testified. Far from having bade Ingham farewell forever she called him up at the Van Dam on an average of every half hour, as well as at his club, and at two restaurants which he frequented. Failing to find him, at eleven o'clock she did, indeed, go to the post-box and mail a letter; but at twenty minutes past eleven she was waiting in a taxi outside the theater where Denny was rehearsing and sent in a message, without any concealment of her name, that she wished to speak to him. He sent out word that he was engaged. An hour later she was there again, and not believing the back doorman who told her that he had left, she stopped Wheeler, who had been inside, and besought him to get Denny to speak to her. He replied that Denny was gone, whereupon she called out to her chauffeur, with every adjuration to hurry, the name of the Van Dam apartment house—where, say at a quarter after one, you, Herrick, saw her shadow on the blind. According to Joe Patrick she was the first on the spot.—Was she the last there, too?"
Herrick paused in a long stride; with his bones slowly freezing in him he turned and faced the District-Attorney.
"If Denny loved her and went there on her account did he shoot down Ingham before her eyes? Or did she run out, as she suggested at the inquest, and Denny shoot Ingham as he turned to follow her? There's your chance, Herrick, prove that! Mr. Bird tells us when our prisoner came in. But, before all and everything, when did he come out?"
He had a way for which Herrick could have slain him, of driving points home with a smile.
"But suppose, now, she did most of the loving on her own account. Ingham, to a certainty, had found out her connection with the Arm of Justice, when it tried to blackmail him through her. From the row you heard between them he's likely to have been threatening her with exposure. Suppose Denny's story is straight and when he found her there with Ingham he just turned and walked off. Was Ingham a man to refrain from threatening to send his revelations, first of all, to a man who had treated him so cavalierly? Is she a girl to stop short of the desperate in preventing him? Isn't she one to avenge herself in advance? It may not have been wholly in revenge. Ingham was himself a wild revengeful fellow who sometimes had too much to drink. He may have provoked her even to bodily fear. If he guessed such a thing do you think Denny would not keep silence? I see it strikes you."
It seemed to him as if it struck the life out of his heart over which he folded his arms. "Try somebody else," he said, in defiance of the little clasps of proof which he could hear snapping into each other, "next time you accuse her."
"Yes, I'll try Deutch. I gave her every doubt till I heard of his secret. Is it possible you don't know what he found? And is it possible that you don't see a preparation for emergency in her taking such pains to establish—well, not an alibi, but a substitute?—A mysterious unknown lady with the most conspicuous physical attributes, in whose person this admirable actress appears before Joe Patrick as the red-headed murderess of the drama on the front stairs, before, on the back stairs, with which she appears to be so familiar, she resumes herself and turns to see what can be done with Ingham! That's the worst point in the story of a distracted girl, pushed to the wall, driven past her last stand, maddened by a suddenly enlightened and too cruel Ingham, hounded by her friends, the Arm of Justice, to their work; herself no more—as I was once no more!—than a trigger pulled by their hand! No wonder they've had a firmer hold on her than ever since that night, and shield her, now, with all their care because in doing so they shield themselves!"
"That's what you think, is it?"
"It's what I fear—and it's what you fear! Or—what's a District-Attorney to a lover?—you'd have knocked me down long ago!—There's not a man of you, knowing the girl, in whose mind, in whose pulse, it hasn't been from the first hour! Yet there's not one of you who hasn't sacrificed Denny to her without a scruple. One man in the end won't do it. I mean Denny himself. He, too, is prepared to go extraordinary lengths not to betray her. He will deny, of course, that it was she who was there that night. But I rely on one thing. He knows that in the State of New York he can not plead guilty to murder in the first degree. And he won't send himself up for anything less. He's not afraid of death, but he's mortally afraid of prison—it gets on every one of his nerves. And he seems to have a great many of them. If they are ground on the idea of jail so that they break they may break quite contrary to poor Deutch's—they may set him talking! Ah, if he and Deutch could happen to meet; those two temperamental persons!—Here, in this room, in the night, now when neither of them are quite themselves, what a start they might get! What mightn't it shake out of them?—There's one final thing the person who shot Ingham, the person who was last with him in this room, alone, can tell me—How came that door bolted? Whatever Denny guesses, you'll find he won't guess me that!—Come in!"
He conferred with some one on the threshold. "Ask Inspector Ten Euyck to come up." Turning back to take his place at the library table he motioned Herrick to a seat. "Pity the sorrows of a poor policeman whose legal sense is too strong to let him ask a single question of an accused man, yet who was born to be the head of the Inquisition and looks at the prisoner with a deep desire quite simply to tear him open! The prisoner is well held together with surgeon's plaster, but the poor Inspector's pride in his profession is suffering horribly from the inadequate conduct of his city's jail to-day and of our detectives' search.—Here we are!"
A group of young men appeared in the doorway, with Ten Euyck looming like a damaged monument in their wake. Civility and self-control forced themselves on Herrick. He and Ten Euyck sniffed each other, wary as strange dogs, their spines beginning to rise. "Inspector," said Kane, "cheer up!" And indeed the funereal quality in that gentleman's appearance had greatly increased. He sat down, as directed, but when he looked at Herrick he had to turn his growl into a cough and when he looked at Kane he winced. It was evidently not alone the errors of the Tombs and the police department which had bowed his head. It was the knowledge of last night. His magnificent storm coat could not hide his riddled dignity. Only by the sight of Christina in his grasp could he get his dignity back again.
"Ten Euyck, I sent for you because this is so largely your affair, but you are not going to be asked to do anything immoral. I am about to examine a witness, but with no illegal questions nor shall I force him to testify against himself. He is only going to be asked about another, a missing witness. Your legal mind doesn't quarrel with his being hard pushed in that direction? I thought not!"
Ten Euyck exclaimed, eagerly, "But Deutch can't talk yet!"
"Deutch? Did you think I meant Deutch? There is some one dearer to Christina Hope than her dear Deutches and still nearer to the habits of her life. I mean a gentleman who can talk but won't. Ah, brighten up Ten Euyck—he shall be got to! He may be ignorant of certain amiable Italians as criminal characters, it's inconceivable he can be ignorant of them as Christina Hope's familiar friends. He mayn't be able to tell me the secret of their lives. But he can give me their address. And he will."
They were all grouped about the long table: Kane at its center, facing the window; Ten Euyck and Herrick bearing with each other at one end; Holt, an assistant of Kane's, between him and Ten Euyck; to his right, a stenographer with a short-hand pad. The end of the table was still vacant. Kane's own doorman stood on the threshold.
"Wade, have you got Mrs. Deutch? Please step into the bedroom, Mrs. Deutch. Sit down comfortably, keep silent and listen to everything.—I want to remind you all that, wise as our witness is, there are some things he doesn't know. So far as we know he has never connected the Cornish girl's disappearance with the blackmailers. He's not supposed to know there are any blackmailers. And, for certain, he's seen no papers nor been allowed to talk with any one. He doesn't know that Christina Hope has disappeared! He doesn't know that New York has seen a moving-picture!" Turning to the man at the door Kane said, "Bring in William Denny."
Herrick felt the strong light of the one lamp like something hypnotic; it reminded him of the glare in some Sardou or Belasco torture chamber. It seemed to him that the scene wasn't real; it was like a council of wolves and he powerless and quiet with them there, as they hungered to run, baying, on Christina. It was only a nightmare and yet it was more real and keen than life, and only God knew what would come of it! Then he saw the slight, dark figure pass the door; every eye, but with what different desires, turned, ravenous as his, for the secret that it carried in its breast.
The doorman brought Denny up to the end of the table and withdrew. The prisoner was very carefully dressed, his black hair brushed as smooth as satin, and against his dark blue coat the black silk handkerchief that supported his arm was scarcely noticeable. He looked a model of rigid decorum until you observed the heavy straps of plaster across his hands. Only his skin, always dark and pale, seemed really to be drained of blood. He nodded gravely to Kane, and with a sort of still surprise to Herrick. Ten Euyck he passed over. He remained standing until Kane told him to sit down. If he then dropped rather wearily into a chair he contrived to sit upright, with a good show of formal manners. As his dark eyes met the keen light ones of the lawyer a faint, derisive smile appeared, and was instantly suppressed, upon both their faces.
"You seem very sure of yourself!" Ten Euyck exploded.
Denny appeared to become slowly conscious of him. "Even the persuasive manners of your department," he said, "couldn't make me tell what I didn't know!"
Ten Euyck said quickly, "You don't know who killed Ingham?"
"If I said anything more incriminating, it's possible it might be used against me."
"We're not here," Kane interposed, "to discuss Ingham's death. Mr. Denny, within the last few days there have been some very grave occurrences, about which it's possible you can enlighten us. If you can, we shan't be ungrateful. Did you ever hear of an organization called the Arm of Justice?"
"Is this a joke?"
"You never heard of it?"
"No."
"Well, then, you can have no objection to repeating the name and address of Miss Hope's Italian friends?"
"Not the least in the world. Has she any?"
"You mean to tell me you don't know she has?"
"Not if it annoys you. I thought you asked."
Ten Euyck, with a gesture as of uncontrollable impatience, rose and went to the window.
"Since you're in a jocular mood, I will ask you something you may think extremely amusing. Do you know if Miss Christina Hope owns a red wig?"
He didn't think it amusing. He seemed to think little enough about it. "I suppose so."
"But you never saw one about her house?"
"She wouldn't keep it about her house, like a pet. She'd keep it in a trunk. She's not an amateur."
"You never saw her wear one in private life?"
"Not even on the first of April."
"You couldn't even swear she had one, perhaps."
"I certainly could not."
"Nor that she had not?"
"No."
"So that you wouldn't recognize hers if you saw it?"
"No."
The light was very strong upon his face, which remained relaxed and tranquil. But he was very weak and a faint moisture broke out upon it.
"Was there any love affair between you and Miss Hope which angered Nancy Cornish?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me!"
Denny drew in his breath a little. But he did not speak.
"What was your trouble with Nancy Cornish?"
Silence.
"Didn't she quarrel with you because of some woman?"
Silence.
"You know she did. You can't deny it. Do you know what many of your friends are saying? That you kept that appointment with her and got rid of her. They think you were tired of her and preferred Christina Hope!"
"Do they?"
It had missed fire utterly. Yet, since the mention of that other girl, a kind of hunger had been growing in his face, and suddenly Kane wholly veered on that new track.
"But I don't!" said Kane, leaning toward him, and trying to catch and hold his eye. "I think you really care for Nancy Cornish, whether she's alive or dead!" He paused. "I think you'll end by telling me what you know of the woman whom you'll find parted you."
The same dead silence; only Denny had closed his eyes.
"Come, give me your attention. Look at me, please. Look at me, and you'll see that I'm sincere. Did you hear me say if you can help me I shan't be ungrateful? But you can do better for yourself than that. You can simply tell the truth! Tell the truth and you won't need my favor. You'll be free. And you'll have set me in the way to find Nancy Cornish! It isn't possible you prefer to keep this ridiculous silence, to die like a criminal for nothing; or spend fifteen to twenty years in the penitentiary—spend life there,—ah, I thought so!" The District-Attorney laughed with triumph at the little straightening of Denny's nostrils. "There's your weak point, my friend! I have never seen a man to whom the idea of jail was so entirely uncongenial! Get rid of it, then! Admit the truth about Christina Hope! What do you owe her? She never even came to me with the witness that she promised."
"I rather thought she'd have trouble doing that!"
"Because you knew there was no such woman. Or rather that that woman was Christina Hope; that she tried to get up courage to incriminate herself in your place and failed!"
"You're a bad guesser, Kane!" Denny said. He had sunk a little forward with his arms upon his knees, and Kane rose and stood over him.
"Admit that your whole attitude is dictated simply by loyalty to her. You need be loyal no longer. Has she been near you since you've been in the Tombs?"
"No, you've kept her out. And a fine time you must have had doing it!"
Ten Euyck turned round and said, "She's sofondof you, I suppose!"
Denny flushed. "Yes," he said, "she's fond of me. She was born to be a good comrade-in-arms, to carry the flag of a forlorn hope and stand by you in the last ditch. If you gentlemen can't understand that, I'm sorry for you. I can't change her."
"Exactly," Kane said. "I knew that was your ground. Well, this comrade-in-arms has deserted you altogether. The day she should have brought me that witness, she threw down her engagement and left New York!"
"Oh, guess again!" said Denny. "Not while she lived, she didn't!"
"And she took with her," Ten Euyck cried, "forty thousand dollars' worth of my diamonds! Perhaps she was in hopes you'd get away and join her!"
"Well," said Denny, turning his eyes toward Herrick, without raising his head, "you!—you're not a criminal!—are you going to stand for that?"
"Doesn't his standing for it speak for itself!" said Ten Euyck. "If you want to defend a woman, why don't you come out like a man and confess that you did it yourself."
They all looked at him in astonishment and, flushing at himself, he subsided.
"Ah, thanks, Ten Euyck, that's what I've been suspecting! You think you can trap me into one of your damned confessions with these tricks! Get rid of that idea. I'll not confess. It's up to you to prove it; prove it! Why should I help you!" He turned again to Herrick, as if in justification. "Yes, I am afraid of jail! I'm a coward about prison, I confess that! and to give myself up to a lifetime of it—no!—Herrick, there's no chance of their being serious in this talk about Christina."
Kane took him by the unwounded shoulder and forced him from his leaning posture, till his face came full into the light. "Upon my word of honor, Denny," he said, "Christina Hope has disappeared."
The shock struck Denny like a sort of paralysis. He did not stir, but he seemed to stiffen. His eyes dilated with a horrified amazement. "What do you mean?" he said.
Kane handed him that evening's paper, folded to the headlines that dealt with the missing girl. He read them with greed, but it was plain that he found their information stupefying. "Chris, now! First, Nancy!" he said, "and then, Christina! What is this thing? What can it be? You," to Kane, "you that are so clever, have you any explanation at all? Have you the least clue? Have you?" he insisted, and from the dark meaning of their faces he seemed to kindle, and half rose, leaning on the table. "My God, then," he cried, "what is it? What is it?"
"Well, then," said Kane, "as you yourself suggest, she is very probably in the same place with Nancy Cornish." Denny continued to lean on the table, looking at him with ravenous eyes. "You know that Joe Patrick was knocked down by an automobile on his way to the inquest, that the same so-called accident happened two or three days later to Herrick, here; you know that subsequently four armed men attacked him in the park; to-day you had an experience of your own. Well, all these things hang together and were committed by a band of blackmailers. Your own shoulder gives you a taste of their quality. You can judge for yourself what they'll stop at. Brace yourself. We know, now, for a certainty that Nancy Cornish is in their hands."
Denny continued to lean there, without stirring. "It's a trick! It's one of your little tricks! Is it?" he said to Herrick with a sudden shrillness, "Is it?"
"One of them brought us a message from her. It said, 'Help me, dear Chris!'"
"No, no, no!" said Denny, as if to himself. "It's a lie. It's all a lie. I won't be frightened. I know it's a lie."
"Is that her writing?"
He cried out, a dreadful, formless sound, and covered his face with his hands. Kane's glance said to the others, "Let him alone! It's working!"
He asked them then, quite gravely and clearly, "When—do you expect—to catch—this—gang?"
"I don't know that we can catch them at all. We don't know how to get at them. We've no idea where they are."
His hands dropped from his face; it throbbed now and blazed; all the nerves had come to life in a quivering network. "Oh, for God's sake," he said, "don't tell me that!—Go on, then, go on! Tell me!" He looked beseechingly and then in a fury of impatience from face to face. "Don't stand gaping! You must know something! Look here, you don't understand! You don't know all I've been through all these weeks—wondering!—If she was in that lake where we used to row! If she'd only gone away, hating me! My mind's in pieces trying to think—think—following every sign! Hundreds of times I've seen her dead! And now you tell me she's alive! and calling—calling for help! Do you? Do you?"
"Yes," said Kane.
He swayed forward so suddenly that he had to catch at the table. "It's horrible! It's a nightmare!" With a strange monotonous inflection his voice rose higher and higher on the one strained note. "It's the thing I've dreamed of night and day, week out and in! That she was frightened and in danger! With brutes! With the faces of beasts round her! Oh, God—!"
"Don't!" Herrick cried.
"Yes, but look here!" With an eagerness sudden as a child's, he said to Herrick, "But it's hope! Hope, isn't it? She's alive! And she didn't just leave me!—I've got to get out of here! Yesterday—why, yesterday—this morning—but now! 'Help me!' she says! I've got to get out! I—" He stopped. The dusky choking red that had surged up horribly over his face and forehead receded sharply, and left only his eyes burning black in the white incredulous horror of his face. He cried, "There's no way out!"
"There may be," said the District-Attorney, "if you will look very carefully at this lock of hair."
Denny took the soft red curl in a hand that he vainly strove to steady; they could read recognition, but no further enlightenment in his tormented face.
"Sit down!" Kane said. "Untie the string. Shake the hair loose here on the table under the lamp. Now, does anything strike you? No?"
Once more Herrick had that singular impression of Denny's going, for an instant's flash, perfectly blind. Then he said, quite quietly, "Go! The station you want is Waybrook. Drive five miles inland, on the road to Benning's Point; about three miles south of the Hoover estate. The left-hand side of the road; an old house newly fixed up and painted yellow. Pascoe's the name. And, for God's sake, go quickly."
The District-Attorney sat back and wiped his forehead. It had been a hard day's work. "Don't you, Herrick, want to take a look at the curiosity without which I might as well have asked a clam for a Fourth of July oration?"
The hair was spread out and thinned under the lamp. And now Herrick could see distinctly that it was of two shades. The outer curl was the dark red of Nancy Cornish; hidden within it was a smaller lock of a singularly fine light shade, like the red of golden fire. This it was which had wrung the address from Denny and stricken down Christina in a faint.
"Nancy Cornish hid it there in the message she was allowed to send," guessed Herrick. "She was certain Miss Hope would know the head it came from."
"Then I needn't point out to a gentleman of your discernment that it was the head which astonished Joe Patrick on the night of Ingham's murder. Directly afterward, I think Miss Hope stored that head, inconspicuously, with her friends in the Arm of Justice."
Denny, rabid with impatience, seemed eating them alive with his savage eyes. "Start!" he bit out. "Go, can't you? Go! What are you waiting for?"
Kane looked up at him with a smile of triumphant ice. "We're waiting for your account of midnight in these rooms between the fourth and fifth of August. And no one stirs to Nancy Cornish till we get it."
Denny's jaw dropped and he hung against the edge of the table as if he were struck too sick to stand.
Ten Euyck, too, cried out and Kane silenced him. "Why not—since he says he's innocent?"
"You dog!" Denny groaned. "You won't save her?"
"Youwon't save her—you know how!"
"Lose time and you lose everything!"
"What do you know?"
"Know! Know! Of course I know! But do you think you can make me tell? Try that game! Try it! Try! You know damned well you can't! So what'll you give for what I know?"
"You mean—?"
"Come back to me when you've found Nancy Cornish and you shall have your murderer fast enough! Every detail, every fact, every clue! Till then I don't trust you! Bring her here, bring her!" He leaned forward, beside himself; shaken and exhausted, burning with fever, weak with loss of blood, he reached toward Kane and beat the table with his wounded hands. "That's my bargain! That's my price! I'm not going to give up for nothing! You don't get my life unless you give me hers—"
"What?"
The great gasp broke into a buzz. Denny came slowly to himself and read what he had uttered in their looks. His face went dead, a cold sweat stood out upon it. "O!" he breathed. And once more he covered his face with his hands.
It didn't take many questions to get his story from him after that.
"Yes, I killed him. Yes, I'm confessing. I've got to. All right,—take it down. I killed James Ingham. I went to his apartment after my dress-rehearsal on the night of the fourth of August. I had been told that he had injured Nancy Cornish. I shot him dead. I've regretted it every moment of my life since then. That's all. What are you waiting for now?"
"Then, Miss Hope—was not in Ingham's rooms that night?"
There was a dead pause. Denny looked hard in Kane's face. "Yes," he said, "she was. She came there to try and prevent our quarrel." The men who had seen the moving-picture of the shadow breathed again.
"What did she do when you fired?"
"I sent her down to the Deutches to get a doctor. I wanted her out of the way, and I switched off the lights so she need not see how useless any doctor was!"
"How did you yourself escape?"
"Up the back stairs, across the roof, into the next house."
"But she went out of the room before you did?"
The earth swam before Herrick's eyes, and then he heard Denny's "Yes."
"Then since you were the last to leave, explain how you were able to bolt the door behind you?"
"I didn't bolt it behind me. I stayed in the room."
Herrick lifted his head.
"I had dropped my revolver and in feeling for it on the rug I got my hand stained." He spoke lower and lower, but every now and then his voice flickered, licking upward like a flame, and cracked. "I ran into the bathroom and put it under the faucet, and after that it was too late to get away. People were peering and listening from their doors. I got in a blind panic—you've noticed I'm upset by jail!—I knew I was cornered—I bolted the door. But in doing that I saw how close the portières hung." Herrick drew a long breath. "I thought once I could clear that outside room a little I could make a dash for it. To do that it was necessary to remove the magnet. I dragged Ingham's body into the bedroom. The bed's head was toward the portières. I went and stood in its shadow, in the portières' folds. Then they burst in. When Deutch held the portière aside for the policeman I was so close at his back that he touched me. When he saw me he screened me almost completely. They had been so obliging as to clear the hall. There was plenty of noise; the men were opening the closet door, a motor whirring, a trolley passing the corner; they all had their backs to me, and I made but a couple of steps of it into the hall. A few moments later I had the honor and privilege of addressing Mr. Herrick, and of hearing from him that the murderer was a lady and had not been caught."
"Deutch screened you, you say? Why?"
A queer little color came into Denny's face. "I'm fated to be ridiculous," he said. "I had seen a hooded cloak of Christina's lying on the table; it was Christina's own blue-gray; just the shade of the portières. The hood covered my head. The shadow back there is very deep. Well, Deutch knew Christina had been there, you know. He must have left his apartment just before she got to it, for he was simply one funk of anxiety about her." Denny had to struggle up, for the interview had told on him terribly, and he kept one hand on the back of his chair. "I'm of no greatly imposing bulk," he said. "And Christina Hope is la tall woman!"
A cry came from within the portières. Denny, his self-control utterly shattered, flashed round. Henrietta Deutch greeted him with a radiant face.
"Ah, sirs, thank God! Oh, oh, it was that he saw! Mr. Deutch saw one he took for her! And Christina it could not have been! He was not two minutes gone when she was with me!"
"Thanks, Mrs. Deutch! I couldn't have trusted even you for the truth of that point if I'd simply asked you! But we must make sure that was what he saw—that and no other proof. Here's the same depth of shadow, then, and the same portières. Take this couch cover, Denny, for a cloak. Stand back, and screen your face with it.—Wade, bring in Deutch."
Herrick shuddered and anticipation choked him. This man had suffered so much for Christina, and now he was to decide her fate! The superintendent stepped into a silent room. All those eyes fed on him. The place cast its spell of horror. His plump, pale, sagging face quivered with dread; his eyes floundered from Herrick to Kane, and a kind of dumb moan burst from him. Kane pointed to the portières and his panic was complete.
"Show him, Herrick. Just as he stood, that night."
He stood there, dizzy with bewilderment, and suddenly he screamed. Gasping, he clutched at the portière through which some touch, some motion had repeated for him a dreadful moment. Behind it he once more beheld a dim, blue figure. He fell on his knees, strangling, his breath raving and rattling in his mouth, and brought out like a convulsion the one word "Christina!" Sobbing, he caught at a fragment of the cloak and covered it with piteous, protecting kisses. Denny let the cloaking stuff fall from him, and, stepping out, broken as a thing thrown away, stood in full view with hanging head. Every eye was fastened upon Deutch.
He had no need for words. What he had believed himself to have seen, what he had suffered, the mad relief, the almost ludicrous exultation in what he now learned, passed one after the other across that tormented visage and broke in one happy blubber as he ducked his head in his wife's skirts.
The relief that shook Herrick touched, too, every one in the room. No man there had really wished to sentence a girl. It was as though, at last, they had all got air to breathe. When into this new air Denny's voice broke with a sick snarl.
"And do you think you've saved her? You miserable, gabbling fools, did you think your Arm of Justice was her friend? Why, she knew no more of it than you do! If they've got the girl there, she's fighting, accusing, threatening them, she's facing her death! And now in God's name, can you hurry? Hurry!"
At nine o'clock on the morning of Friday, the day when Christina disappeared, there stood at the little interior station of Waybrook, awaiting the train from New York, a touring-car which had very recently been painted black. In the body of this car an observing person might have descried a couple of indentations which, were he of a sensational turn of mind, would have suggested to him the marks of bullets. This touring-car was, at that time of day, the only vehicle in waiting, and when the train rushed on again from its brief pause, only one person had alighted from it.
This was a tall woman, heavily veiled, wearing a long dark ulster, considerably too large for her, and a rather shabby black hat. This woman walked directly up to the touring-car and flung herself into it without a word. When the chauffeur turned and said to her, in surprise, "You all alone?" she responded, "Yes. And in twice the hurry on that account!" The curt command of the words did not conceal the quality of a voice which all the newspapers in New York were that morning praising; and the face from which she then lifted her veil, although furrowed with anger and ravaged with grief, was the unforgettable face of Christina Hope. She sat for the five miles which led to her destination with her eyes closed and her hands wrung tight together in her lap.
The touring-car stopped at the gate of an old yellow house, very carefully kept, its bright windows screened by curtains rather elegantly pretty; and a flagged path leading up to its brass-knockered door. On either side of the flagged path stretched a garden, a little sobered by its autumn coloring, but still abounding in the country flowers which to Bryce Herrick's admiration had kept Christina's house so sweet.
The door was opened by a small, square, hard-featured, close-mouthed old woman, very neatly dressed, with gray hair and a white apron. In other words, by the occasional cashier at the Italian table d'hôte. This woman, as the chauffeur had done, looked over Christina's shoulder in expectation and then said, grudgingly, "Oh, it's you!"
"As you see," said Christina, pressing inside. "But I shan't trouble you long. I should like some coffee, if you please. I've had no breakfast." The woman stood still, staring at Christina's ill-fitting clothes and sunken eyes, and the girl added, with the same peremptory coldness which had marked her manner from the beginning, "I must ask you to be quick. I have only come to relieve you of our guest."
"You have!" said the old woman. "Who says so?"
"I think you heard me say so," Christina responded, from the foot of the stairs.
The old woman hurried after her. "Yes, I daresay. But by whose orders?"
Christina turned round. "Who owns this place?" she demanded.
"Well, you do."
"Who pays for every mouthful that is eaten here and for everything that is brought into this house? Who makes your living for you?"
"You do, I suppose."
"Well, then, I suppose, by my orders. Where is she?"
"She's in your room, the same as ever."
"Locked in, of course?"
"Of course."
"The key, please."
The old woman hesitated, then she took the key out of her pocket. And at that moment Christina noticed something. There came from the floor above the sound of a voice speaking rapidly, incessantly, and indistinctly like a child talking to itself. An expression of amused and contemptuous malice broke upon the old woman's face and she handed over the key with greater readiness. "Much good may it do you!" said she, turning toward the kitchen.
Christina snatched it and fled upstairs. "Bring the coffee up here, please," she called over her shoulder.
For all her haste she paused at the top of the stair, and, with her hand over her heart, listened to the babbling voice. Then she turned to the right and knocked on a closed door. The voice ran on, heedlessly. "Nancy!" Christina called. "Nancy! It's I, Chris! Dear Nancy, I've come to take you home."
She was answered only by the endless repetition of some phrase, and unlocking the door, she went in.
She stepped into a charming, simple, sunny room, comfortably appointed, the windows open toward the road and their thin, flowery curtains stirring in the low, sultry wind. But on the inside of these curtains the windows were completely screened with poultry wire, and, over the door, the transom was wired, too. In the bed a young, slight girl half lay, half sat; her dark red curls had been gathered into a heavy braid and her blue eyes were blank with fever; she rocked her head from side to side upon the pillow with an indescribable weariness, and without breath, without change, with a monotonous and yet agitated inflection, she repeated over and over again the same phrases: "No, no, no, no! I don't believe it! Oh, Will, Will, Will, I don't believe it! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! Ask Nancy Cornish!" And then, always with a little listening pause, "I'll promise anything!"
Christina shrank back against the door-jamb as if she were going to fall.
"Whatever does this mean? How came she like this? Oh, God!" she breathed, "what shall I do? What can I do?"
"Oh, Will, Will, Will!" said the other voice. "No, no, no, I don't believe it!"
"Ah, me!" Christina breathed. "Nor I! If only I hadn't been there, and seen!"
"You did it yourself! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! Ask Nancy Cornish!"
Christina sank on her knees beside the bed, in an agony of terror and tenderness, and for the first time since she had seen the lock of hair, her tears poured forth. But she took the girl's hand and held it; and she tried to master those feverish eyes with the eyes of her own despair. "Nancy!" she said, "Nancy! It's Christina. Nancy dear, it's Chris. Oh, try to know me. Look at me. Listen to me. You must know me. You shall. Nancy, stop it! Stop it and look at me!—Oh, God!" Christina prayed. "Help me! Help me!" She caught the sick girl in her arms and covered the young little face with tears and kisses.
And as she held Nancy on her breast she became aware of a thin ribbon round the girl's neck, with a key to it. She picked up this strange ornament, and immediately Nancy's fingers came creeping in search of it and she cried out. Christina dropped it and rose to her feet. "Why!" she said aloud. "It's the key to my desk!" The desk stood against the wall and she tried it. It was locked. Nancy lay almost quiet clutching the key. Christina stood there, puzzled.
In a drawer of the dressing-table there was a key much the same in shape and size. Christina took it out, drew the ribbon from Nancy's neck, and, steeling her heart, plucked open Nancy's hand. The girl set up a shrill cry but was instantly quieted by the substitute key; the old woman could be heard rattling with a tray at the foot of the stairs.
Christina sprang to the desk and opened it; it was in order and almost empty, containing no object that Christina did not know. She pulled open one after the other of the three little drawers. And thus she came, with an amazed start, upon a bulky envelope bearing an address which was the last she could have expected. The envelope was addressed to the District-Attorney of New York.
Christina appropriated it without pause or scruple, slipped it into her little handbag and restored Nancy's property almost with one swift movement. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in an attitude of listless dejection when the housekeeper entered with the tray.
"Well," said the old woman, "why don't you take her? Mebbe everything ain't just as you expected. What'd she yell out like that for?"
"I touched that ribbon round her neck. What has she got clutched in her hand?"
"Oh, just some old trash! Better leave it be. She yells blue murder if you try to take it away from her."
These two truthful ladies looked down together on the turning head and chattering lips and the eyes burning with fever. "Ain't it a sight?" said the old woman. "It's wonderful what frettin' 'll do. She ain't been like this but since Wednesday. She kep' up surprisin' until then. Guess her not hearin' anything from you set her off. She counted on that. I'd know why she sh'd be so terrible set on gettin' away from here. She's been well treated. When there's been anybody here fit to keep an eye on her, she ain't even been locked up. Nicola fastened down the window in the closet where you had the sink put in—y' know, under the stairs?—in case she sh'd take to carryin' on. But mercy me, we found out soon enough that wa'n't the idea. She's had the best in the house.—Well, you 'bout scalded yerself."
"I'm in a hurry," said Christina, setting down the empty coffee-cup. "Where are some loose clothes for her?"
"Land sakes!" said the old woman. "You want to kill her!"
Christina went to a closet and found some skirts and a cloak.
"Please go down," she said, "and tell Nicola to put the hood up and let down the rain curtains."
The old woman's suspicion and resentment had never been allayed, but she kept them choked under. "Well," said she, "I s'pose it's all right. I guess she's goin' t' die anyhow. An' I guess it's 'bout the best thing she can do. I dunno what on earth we're goin' t' do with her if she don't. I ain't goin' to stand for any o' them Dago actions. But I dunno as I can always put a veto on 'em!—Well, I don't see as you got any call to make such a face as that—seems to me that Denny fellow got a long way ahead o' anything any o' our boys done, if they are Dagoes!"
"Take my message to Nicola, please," Christina said, "and don't stand there talking. Hurry!"
The old woman got as far as the door. "I s'pose you know's well as anybody why she's here!" she said, intently studying Christina's face. She went out and downstairs muttering. "But I'd jus' like to know why you're takin' a hand in it! The idea! I guess that Denny feller—" The front door closed after her; Christina looked out of the window and saw her speaking with Nicola.
She had Nancy partly dressed, and now wrapped her in the cloak. "What am I to ask you, my poor Nancy? Do you know what he never would tell me—how that door came to be bolted?" The girl's babble kept on undiminished. "God forgive me!" Christina cried, "if I do wrong!" With a strong effort, she lifted the girl in her arms.
And then she was struck still by a sudden sound. It was the sound of the automobile racing down the road.
She laid Nancy down and ran to the window; she flew downstairs and opened the front door. The rear of the car in which she had arrived, speeding in an opposite direction, was still visible in its own dust. Had Nicola gone to borrow rain curtains or some tool? Puzzled, Christina called to the old woman. "Mrs. Pascoe!" Getting no answer she went into the dining-room and from thence to the kitchen; they were empty. Her glance scoured the weedy homeliness of the backyard. She went to the shed, to the barn; they were deserted. A strange silence had fallen upon the place. In the hot lowering sunshine the girl stood still, and for the first time the cold fingers of suspicion began to creep along her pulse.
She had been very sure of her position, and she felt, as yet, nothing that could be called fear. But the defiance of her authority was amply evident. She knew now that she had been a fool to come here alone, to depend entirely on her personal force. But her mouth set itself in a smile like light on steel. Did they know what they were doing when they pushed her to the wall like this? Perhaps, in some way, they counted on the time it would take her to leave Nancy behind her and go for help—the nearest house was half a mile away. Leave Nancy behind her! For reply Christina sped into the hall, and caught up the New York telephone book. She ran her finger down a column until, having come to the number 3100 Spring, she picked up the receiver. Something said, in her little steely smile, that with the utterance of that number she would throw a world away. The number was that of Police Headquarters.
The exchange was a long time answering. Christina shook the receiver hook vigorously. Still silence. As she gave an impatient movement something brushed, swinging, against her wrist. It was a loose end of dark green cord from the receiver in her hand. The wire had been cut.
Christina remained there quite quiet, while that cold hand of the suspicion that was now certainty seemed to stop her heart. She remembered that, in the world of help she was cut off from, not a living human being knew where she was. Well, she was a strong girl. She said to herself, "It is better Nancy should die on the road in my arms than that I should leave her here!" She ran up to Nancy's room. When she had first descended to the road, some one must have mounted the back stairs. Nancy's door was locked.
With a firm step Christina entered the kitchen and opened the table-drawer. They had thought of that, too. Everything with which a lock might be pried open had been swept up and away. Christina lifted a dining-room chair and carried it upstairs.
She brought it down with all the force she had upon the lock. Failing in this, she held the chair in front of her and charged the door with it. But whereas in anything requiring swiftness, elasticity, endurance even, Christina was as strong as wire, she had absolutely no weight. After half a dozen of these batteries every one of which seemed to strike through her own heart on Nancy's fever, she decided that whether or no she might shatter the door in time, time was the last thing she had to waste. And she could run half a mile like an arrow. She had all along retained her hold on the little bag which held her purse and she thanked heaven for the money in it. She had her hand on the front door when she was arrested by the sound of voices and approaching footsteps; Mrs. Pascoe's, Nicola's and the heavier step of an older man.
From her earlier confidence Christina had now jumped to an extreme of accusation in which any violence seemed probable. Mad to get away for help, it seemed better to delay for a moment or two than to be caught. She slipped back across the hall and hid herself in the little closet under the stairs. She was scarcely secure there when the front door opened, and Christina hardly dared to breathe lest the click of her own door closing should have betrayed her presence. To her highly wrought nerves the utter darkness, the airless pressure of her sanctuary were terrible, and she found and held the knob that at the first stillness she might slip out. She could hear calling and running about; she could hear them talking in Nancy's room. After a while, the men went out and then she heard Mrs. Pascoe come downstairs and the dining-room door close after her. The time had come. Christina, all her life subject to fainting-fits, felt that she scarcely could have borne, for a moment longer, that black airlessness. With infinite softness, she turned the knob. And then, indeed, her heart stood still. Mrs. Pascoe had omitted to mention one improvement with which, in preparation for Nancy's occupancy, the outside of the closet-door had been fortified. This improvement was a Yale lock.