Herrick excused himself to Mrs. Hope and followed Joe Patrick out of the box. "But are you sure, Joe?" he asked. "Could you swear to it?"
"Sure I could! Why couldn't I?"
"And you couldn't tell the coroner that that man was as slim as a whip and as dark as an Indian, about middle height and over thirty, and of a very nervous, wiry, high-strung build."
"Well, now I look at him close again I can see all that. But he didn't strike me anyways particular."
Herrick had an exasperated moment of wondering, if Joe considered Denny commonplace, what was his idea of the salient and the vivid. Was the whole of Joe's testimony as valueless as this? He stood now and watched their man with wonder. Had Denny recognized him? Had he seen Joe Patrick rooted upright there, behind his chair, with staring eyes? If so, after that first flicker of blindness, not an eyelash betrayed him. He was triumphantly at his ease; his part became a thing of swiftness and wit, with the grace of flashing rapiers and of ruffling lace, so that from the moment of his entrance the act quickened and began to glow; the man seemed to take the limp, stuffed play up in his hand, to breathe life in it, to set it afire, to give it wings. And all this so quietly, with merely a light, firm motion, an eloquent tone, a live glance! He had, as Herrick only too well remembered, a singularly winning voice, an utterance of extraordinary distinction, with a kind of fastidious edge to his words that seemed to cut them clear from all duller sounds. But Herrick recalled how, after the first pleasure of hearing him speak, he had disliked a mocking lightness which seemed to blend, now, with the something slightly satanic of the wicked marquis whom Denny played. He remembered Shaw's advice, "Look like a nonentity or you will get cast for villains!" Truly, they didn't cast men like that for heroes! And in the light of that sinister flash, Herrick was aware of vengeance rising in him. He rejoiced to be hot on the trail, and when he and Joe parted it was with the understanding that he was to allay suspicion by returning to the box and Joe was to telephone the police. Rather to his surprise the performance continued without interruption and he somehow missed Joe as he came out.
Now at the ungodly hour of one-thirty in the morning, Christina was expected home. She was to take the midnight train from some Connecticut town, and the thought of her approach began gradually to overcome, in Herrick's mind, the thought of justice. As he walked to meet her through the beautiful warm, windless dark, he told himself, indeed, that he had a great piece of news for her and took counsel of her how he should carry it to Kane.
But when, under the night lights of the station, he saw how she was ready to drop with fatigue, he simply changed his mind. He had sufficiently imbibed the tone of her colleagues to feel that nothing was so necessary as that she shouldn't be upset. It was bad enough that to-morrow she must be told of Nancy's message and add her identification of that curly hair; let her sleep to-night.
In the cab she drooped against him with a simplicity of exhaustion that was full, too, of content. "I was afraid I should never get you back!" she said, and again, "I thought, all the evening, how you had been—hurt; and how all that theaterful of women could see that you were safe—and I couldn't! Do you know how I comforted myself?" And she began to murmur into his shoulder a little scrap of song—
"Careless and proud,That is their part of him—But the deep heart of himHid from the crowd!"
"Careless and proud,That is their part of him—But the deep heart of himHid from the crowd!"
"You know where my heart was!" he said. He had forgotten how large a part of it had been excited by the apparition of Denny.
Still humming, she drew back a little and let her look shine up to his.
"Simple and frank,Traitors be wise of him!Are not the eyes of himPledge of his rank?"
"Simple and frank,Traitors be wise of him!Are not the eyes of himPledge of his rank?"
"Christina!" he said, humbly. "Don't!"
"You don't like it!" she softly jeered. And though when he put her into her mother's arms her little smile was so pitiful that it frightened him, and he would have given anything that to-morrow night were past, yet she turned on the stairway and cast him down, with a teasing fondness, a final verse.
"Vigor and tan!Look at the strength of him!Oh, the good length of him!There is my man!"
"Vigor and tan!Look at the strength of him!Oh, the good length of him!There is my man!"
"Christina!" cried Mrs. Hope, scandalized. And Christina, with a hysterical and weary laugh, dragged herself upstairs.
Herrick went forth into the street bathed in the sense of her love and with a soul that trembled at her sweetness. He was himself very restless, and, sniffing the fresh dark, he dismissed the cab. He had begun to be really in dread lest Christina should break down; after he had crossed the street he turned, with anxious lingering, to look up at her window, and he saw the light spring forth behind it as he looked. It was so hard to leave the sense of her nearness that Herrick, like a boy, stood still and there rose in his breast a tenderness that seemed to turn his heart to water. He had no desire, ever again, on any blind, to see a woman's shadow. Yet he hoped that she might come to the window to pull this blind down; in case some one else did so for her, he stepped backward into a little area-way in the shadow of a tall stoop. But she did not come. The hall light went out, and then hers. He gave up, and just then the front door opened and Christina, not having so much as removed her hat, appeared upon the threshold. He remained quite still with astonishment; and the girl, after glancing cautiously up and down the street, descended the steps and set off eastward at a brisk pace.
When she turned the corner into Central Park West, the explanation was clear to him. In some way or another, she had got into communication with the blackmailers and made a rendezvous which she was determined this time to keep alone. For the first time, Herrick felt angry with her. He had a sense of having been trifled with and he was really frightened; now, indeed, he cursed himself for continuing to go unarmed. He knew that it would be worse than useless to reason with her, and the instant she was out of sight, he merely followed. Gaining the avenue, he looked up the long line of the Park without seeing her. Ah! This time she was going south. He went as far as he dared on the other side of the street but he knew her ears were quick and, reaching the Park side he vaulted the wall, and gained the shelter of the trees.
He had scarcely done so when Christina turned sharply round; and she continued to take this precaution every little while, but he could see that it was a mere formality. She no longer thought herself followed and never glanced among the trees; his steps were inaudible on the soft turf. At the Seventy-sixth Street entrance she turned into the park; pausing, wearily, she took off her hat and pushed up her hair with the backs of her hands. She looked as if she were likely to drop; but then she set off rapidly again, and Herrick prayed they would meet a policeman. But no member of the law put in an appearance, and presently Herrick smelled water, and knew that they were near the border of the big lake. Under the white electric light Christina stopped and looked at her watch; she frowned as if her heart would break; and then, in a few steps, she paused on the threshold of a little summer-house that stood with the lake lapping its outer edge. The doorway was faintly lighted from an electric light outside, and Christina glanced expectantly within. But there was no one there. She uttered a little moan of disappointment and entering dropped onto the bench beside the lake; she rested her elbow on the latticework and Herrick could see her dear, outrageous, uncovered head mistily outlined against the water.
Never in his life had he so little known what to do. A wrong step now might precipitate untold disaster. His instinct was merely to remain there, like a watchdog, and never take his eyes off her till the time came for him to spring. But reason insisted that on the drive, less than a block away, there must be policemen, and that the quicker he sought one the better. He had not even yesterday's stick, his right arm was now useless, and in a struggle by the water the odds against him were doubled. Moreover, he had no reason to think that the blackmailers intended Christina any violence. They had come to her yesterday in order to deliver a message. This failing, they had allowed her to depart unmolested and, on her side, her only thought was to do as they asked. He perceived that the meeting would at least open with a parley; if he could return with reinforcements in time to prevent foul play or to effect a capture! But he simply could not bear to try it! And then the nearness of the roadlights and the sense of his own extreme helplessness overbore his instinct, and kicking off his shoes, he sped noiselessly over grassy slopes. It seemed to him his feet were leaden; his heart tugged at him to be back; his senses strained backward for a sound and when he burst out on the drive he could have cursed the officer he saw for being fifty feet away. It did not occur to him until afterwards that if his likeness had not been in every paper in New York he might himself have been immediately arrested. But the policeman listened with interest to his story and then ambled out with the circumstance that the summer-house was not on his beat, but that Herrick would find another officer near such and such a place! With the blackness of death in his heart, Herrick sped back as he had come, and then, hearing nothing, slackened speed. There, still, thank God, was that dim outline of an uncovered head against the lake! But so motionless that Herrick was stabbed by one of those quick, insensate pangs of nightmare. Suppose they had killed her and set her there, like that! He controlled himself; but he was determined, now, at all hazards to get her away and stepping into the path before the door, "Christina!" he said.
The figure rose, and as it did so, he saw that it was not Christina at all, but a man. A slight man, not over tall, who, as he stepped forward toward the light, turned upon Herrick the pale, dark, restless face of the actor, Will Denny.
The men were equally startled; a very slight quiver passed over Denny's face, but he said nothing. "Good God!" Herrick cried, "what are you doing here?"
"The same to you," Denny replied.
"But Christina! Where's Miss Hope?"
"Christina! Has she been here?"
Herrick pushed roughly past him. There was no sign of the girl, and in a cold apprehension, Herrick stared out over the lake. Denny's voice at his elbow said, "She doesn't seem to float! Why not see if I've thrown her under the bench?"
"Why not?" Herrick savagely replied.
The other smiled faintly. "Christina? It wouldn't be such an easy job!"
She wasn't under the bench and Herrick hurried back into the path.
"Go and look for her, if you like. I'll wait here." He called in a sibilant whisper after Herrick, "You'll have to hurry. Don't yell."
No hurry availed, but as Herrick burst out of the Park he caught a glimpse of her back as she passed into a moving trolley car bound for home. Only love's baser humors and blacker claims were left in him. He knew that his dignity lay anywhere but in that little arbor, yet he deliberately retraced his steps. Again he found Denny sitting there, and this time the actor did not rise. But he must have been walking about in Herrick's absence for he made a slight motion to a dark blot on the bench near him. He said, "Are those your shoes?"
Herrick sat down angrily and put them on, more and more exasperated even by the dim shape of a cigar in Denny's fingers; although he was a seething volcano of accusation he could not think of anything to say and besides, what with emotion and with haste, he was rather breathless. So that at last it was Denny who broke the silence with, "Well, now that you are here, have you got a match?—Thank you!" But he did not light it. He seemed to forget all about it as he sat there silent again in the darkness waiting for Herrick to speak.
When Herrick struggled with himself and would not, Denny at length began. "I won't pretend to deny that she came here to find me. I only deny that she did find me. I missed her, poor child. Doesn't that content you?"
And Herrick asked him in the strangling voice of hate, "Do you usually have ladies meet you here? At this hour?"
"No. That's what disturbs me. It must have been something very urgent. She couldn't trust the telephone and she couldn't wait till morning. She knows that now I almost never sleep, and that I can't bear to be awake with walls around me; if I'm not careful I shall have walls around me close enough. I come here, as Chris remembered, because—I must be somewhere. So she chanced it. She didn't find me. I came just too late."
Herrick rose. He felt as if he were stifling. "Do you pretend to tell me, then, that you don't know why she came?"
"No, I'd better not pretend that. I suppose I know why she came." He added, very low, in his clear voice, "I suppose she came to warn me."
"Warn you? Of what?"
"Come, do I need to tell you that? Her mother must have told her that you recognized me to-night and that the elevator boy recognized me, too, and told you."
"You saw all that?"
"I saw all that."
"And did nothing?"
"What could I do?"
"You've had time, since the performance, to get away!"
"Where to?" asked Denny.
If it was the simplicity of despair it affected the distraught and baffled Herrick like the simplicity of some subtle and fiendish triumph. Not for nothing had he observed the calm of the French marquis. Taking a violent hold on himself, "Do you realize—" he demanded, "what you're admitting?"
"The mark of Cain?" said the other, with his faint smile. "Oh, yes!"
Herrick incredulously demanded, "You don't deny it?"
"Deny it? Why, yes, I deny it. I'm not looking for trouble and I deny it absolutely. But what then? Will anybody believe me? Between friends, do you believe me? Well—what's the use?"
"You've no proofs? No defense?"
"None whatever!—And I've been playing villains here for four years! My dear fellow, don't blush! I'm complimented to find that you, too, are hit by that impression. And I shan't tell Christina!"
"If I could see by what damned theatrical trick you go about admitting all this!"
Denny seemed to take no offense. "I'm indifferent to who knows it. I'm tired out."
Herrick flounced impatiently and, "But season your solicitude awhile," the other added. "Remember that even to you I don't admit my—what's the phrase? My guilt! And legally I shall never admit it."
"You merely 'among friends' allow its inference?"
"If you like."
"You don't seem very clear in your own mind!"
"Clear?" The brilliance of his eyes searched Herrick's face with a singular, quick, sidelong glance for which he did not turn his head. Then the glance drooped heavily to earth and Herrick could just hear him add, in a voice that fell like a stone, "No—pit-murk!" He sat there with his elbows on his knees and seemed to stare at the loose droop of his clasped hands. He said, "I shall never play Hamlet. But at least I am like him in one thing; I do not hold my life at a pin's fee."
"Good God!" Herrick burst forth. "Do you think it's you I care about?"
The other man replied softly into the darkness, "You mean, I've implicated Christina?"
"You've admitted that she knows—and shields you!"
"So she does, poor girl! But don't think I shall put either Chris or me to the horrors of a trial. I seem to have given some proof that I carry a revolver. And I haven't the least fear of being taken alive."
"I care nothing about you!" Herrick repeated. "What I want to understand is why Miss Hope should shield you—if she is shielding you. Why she should come here, in the middle of the night, to warn you? Whoever shot Ingham was mixed up with everything that's rotten—with blackmail—with the disappearance of that girl—"
"O!" Denny had perceptibly winced. But then he said, "I don't confess to all the crimes in the decalogue! For instance, Mr. Herrick, I am perfectly guiltless of those rude—ah—ornamentations on your own brow." He laughed outright. "How could I face Chris?" he said.
Herrick jumped at him with an oath and bore him, by pure force of weight, back against the lattice. His hand was on Denny's throat and it was a moment before Denny could tear it away. When he had done so, he said nothing; he continued to sit there as if nothing had happened; and Herrick, a little ashamed, sulked at him, "Don't speak of her like that, then!" He walked to the door of the arbor and back, facing Denny and controlling himself, with his hands in his pocket. "There's been enough of this," he said, through his teeth. "I've got to know now—what's she to do with you? What's it to her, if you're caught? How, in the first place, did she ever come to know such a secret? Why should you confide it toher?"
He was aware of Denny lifting his eyes and looking at him steadily through the half-dark. "I'll tell you why, if you'll sit down. I've done a hard night's work and, at any rate, I don't care to shout."
Herrick dropped down beside him and Denny struck his match. "Smoke?" he queried. Herrick shook his head and again, by the light of the little flame, Denny stared gravely into his set and haggard face. "Is it so much as that to you?" he said. "Well, then, I never told Christina. Nothing—whether I was innocent or guilty. I didn't need to. There was a—friend of hers in the room when it was done. But here's my connection with the thing. You don't know, I suppose, that two months ago, I expected to marry Nancy Cornish?"
"I might have known it!" Herrick said.
"I don't see why! Unless you've observed that the sweetest women are born with a natural kindness for cads. I was perfectly sure that she loved me. I used to meet her here"—Herrick started—"and take her out in a boat and all that, as if I were a boy,—she wassoyoung! Well, then I displeased her and she sent me to the right about. It was hard. I don't know if you're too happy and too virtuous to see that when another woman was good to me, then, I fell in what it pleases us to call love with her. It came and passed, like fever. No matter. She belonged legally, at that time, to another man, but she swore to me she would get free and marry me—yes, I believed she loved me, too, if you can swallow that! You see, there were no limits to my complacency! There were certain things I couldn't help but know, and she accounted for them all, to me, by a dreadful tale of ill-usage when she was just growing up—a man of the world, older than she, her first love, promise of marriage, desertion, the horrors after it; how she had been forced to accept the first chance of respectability—but now—for love of me—All the old story! She never would tell me that man's name. She pretended to hate him and fear him, and I lashed myself into such a rage against him, and the insults with which she said he was following her again, that I hardly saw the streets I walked through. The afternoon before the shooting Nancy called me up; she said she had something to tell me, and asked me to meet her at the old place in the Park at five o'clock. It was cruel hard, because now I'd doubly lost her. I was sick of myself and the whole world. It was touch and go with me. I sat here, waiting, waiting—if she'd brought her goodness, her freshness, her gentleness even within hailing distance of me, then, they might have shed a little sanity on me as she passed."
"And Christina?" Herrick persisted.
"Well—this other woman was Christina's friend. That day that Nancy didn't come I had a dress rehearsal, and Christina and this other woman dined with me, just before that. She said, then, for the first time that Ingham was the man she had told me of. She said she told me now because it was he who had sent Nancy away; that Nancy was afraid of me because he and she—I went straight for him after rehearsal. They didn't expect me. And up there, in that room with Ingham, I found that other woman. Would anybody believe in my innocence after that? Ought I to be innocent? 'Deny it?' No, on the whole, I'd better not deny it!' That's all!"
They were both silent. Then through his groping thoughts Herrick could hear Denny half-humming a catch of song whose words were instantly familiar.
"Je suis aussi sans désirAutre que d'en bien finir—Sans regret, sans repentir,Sans espoir ni crainte—"
"Je suis aussi sans désirAutre que d'en bien finir—Sans regret, sans repentir,Sans espoir ni crainte—"
"Without regret, without repentance—Repentance? Surely! But—without regret? He asked a good deal, that lad! You ought to like my little song—it was taught me by the erudite Christina."
"Where's that woman, now?"
"Ah!" said Denny, "that's her secret."
"And Christina?" said Herrick, again.
"Christina and I are very old chums; aside from the Deutches I am the oldest friend she has. It was I got Wheeler to go West and see her. I was in the first company she ever joined, when she was just a tall, slim kid—sixteen, I think—and I was twenty-six. We've worked together, and won together and—gone without together. I had been at it for eight years when she first went on; and I taught her all I knew; when I got into the moving pictures for a summer I worked her in—"
Herrick started. "The best friend Christina ever had!" he exclaimed.
"Oh!" said the other. "Thank you!" Herrick was aware of his quaint smile. "Yes, I suppose I might be called that!"
"I was told—I was led to believe you were an older man."
"Ah, that's one of Christina's sweetest traits—she colors things so prettily! She can't help it! But you see, now, don't you, that she'd never give me away? Chris would shield her friends as long as she had breath for a lie. She's pretended a quarrel with me all these weeks, because, thinking the police were following her, she didn't want them to find me. She's kept you from knowing people who might speak of me. She's had but the one thought since the beginning; and that was to save my life. But she's in love with you, and she can't lie to you any longer—you'll see. Besides, she thinks she can make you our accomplice; that because you're a friend of hers, you're a friend of mine. She has still her innocences, you see, and, in the drama, so many lovers behave so handsomely." The ring had died out of his voice; but he went on, with a kind of rueful amusement, spurring himself to be persuasive, "Come, now, stop thinking of what would influence you, and try to think of what would influence Chris! Do you think she'd like to see Wheeler hanged?"
"Wheeler!"
"Well, allow me to put forward that Chris thinks me quite as good an actor as Wheeler, with the double endearment of not being so well appreciated by outsiders!" He leaned forward with an intent flash. "If you think she wouldn't stand by me, you don't know her!"
"And is that the reason," asked Herrick, "why you left her in the lurch?" He was aware of behaving like a quarrelsome old woman, now that he had a probable murderer on his hands and didn't quite know what to do with him. The man must feel singularly safe. There was something at once annoying and disarming in his passiveness, and Herrick drove home this question with a voice as hard as a blow. "Was it because you could play on the loyalty and courage of a romantic girl, that, when you were likely to be suspected, you ran away and left her to bear the public accusation?"
Denny answered, with that gentleness which Herrick found offensive, "I didn't run far."
"You've been filling her, too, I suppose, with this cock and bull melodrama of suicide if you're arrested?"
He had touched a live nerve. "Would it be less melodramatic to crave that other exit—have my head shaved so that the apparatus could be fitted on—let them take half an hour strapping me into an electric chair! Do you think that would be soothing to her? No, thank you! Or do you want me to hide and run, to twist and duck and turn and be caught in the end?—I can't help your calling me a coward," Denny said, "and I dare say I am a coward. A jump over the edge I could manage well enough. But 'to sit in solemn silence, in a dark, dank dock, awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock—'" He seemed to rein in his voice in the darkness. "If I were even sure of that! But to be shut up for life, for twenty years, death every minute of them! To be starved and degraded, pawed over and mishandled by bullies—" He shuddered with a violence that seemed to snap his breath; even his eyebrows gave a convulsive twitch, as if he felt something crawling over his face. And, rising, he went across to the entrance of the arbor and stood leaning in the doorway, looking out.
Herrick did not want him to get away and at the same time he did not want to bring about any crisis until he had seen Christina. He thought Denny's explanation of her attitude only too probable. "I've known the dearest fellows in the world—the cleverest, the gamest, the most charming. But they were all like poor Christina—fidgety things, nervous and on edge." Was she thinking of Denny then? "Oblige me by staying where you are!" he said to Denny's back. Denny turned the grim delicacy of his pale face to smile at him and the smile maddened Herrick. He went on, "You must see yourself I can't let you go! Will you come to my rooms for to-night, and in the morning Miss Hope can tell me if this story's true!"
Denny walked slowly out and stood smoking in the center of the pathway, under the tall electric light. He was far from a happy-looking man, and yet he looked as if he were going to laugh. "And what then?" he asked.
"Then I shall know if this isn't all a bid for sympathy. Whether there's really any other woman beside this Nancy Cornish—"
Denny wheeled suddenly round on him.
"Or whether you don't know more of her—"
"Damn you!" Denny said. "You fool,—" He had come close to Herrick and then remembering the limp hang of Herrick's arm, he paused. And as he paused a man stepped out from among the trees and touched him on the shoulder.
He wheeled round; there were two men behind him. They were in plain clothes but the man who had touched Denny showed a shield. "Come along! You're wanted at headquarters."
Denny stood quiet, breathing a little rapidly. "Let me see your warrant," he said, and he took two steps backward to get it under the light. So that before any one could stop him, he had whipped out a revolver, put the end of the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
There was a little click before the man could jump on him and then another; and then Herrick heard the steel cuffs snap over his wrists. The man with the shield drew back, and grinning, shook into his palm what were not even blank cartridges but only careful imitations. "The next time you rely on a gun," he said, "you want to look out for that valet of yours!"
Denny was standing with his heavy hair shaken by the struggle about his eyes; one of the men obligingly pushed it back with the edge of Denny's straw hat which he picked up and put on Denny's head. "Come! Get a gait on us," said the man with the star.
Denny said, aloud, "You overheard those last remarks for which this gentleman raised his voice?"
"Rather!" the three grinned.
"Ah, well, then there is certainly no more to be said." He nodded agreeably to Herrick, and then between his captors, walked lightly and quickly off, into the darkness.
Daylight was in the streets when Herrick got to bed, sure he should not close his eyes; then he was wakened only by the cries of the newsboys underneath his windows, calling, as if it had been an extra—"Ingham Murderer Arrested! Murderer Arrested! Popular Actor Arrested in the Ingham Murder!"
Herrick tumbled into his clothes and bought a paper on his way to a very late breakfast at the Pilgrims', where he had a card. In the account of the arrest he himself figured as something between a police decoy and an accomplice in crime, but Christina's midnight sally remained unknown and he breathed freer. Now that she was to be kept out of it, he could but admire the quiet good sense with which the police had gone about their business. While those more closely concerned had dashed and bewildered themselves against their own points of view like blind, flying beetles, the police had simply made haste to ascertain if Nancy Cornish had a lover. She had been engaged to Denny; a recent coolness between them had been common gossip; and, since Nancy's disappearance, their common friend, Christina Hope, had kept aloof from Denny, as though embracing her friend's quarrel or suspecting her friend's sweetheart. It now transpired for the first time that the police had dug further into that evidence of Mrs. Willing's which Ten Euyck's eagerness to turn it against Christina had left undeveloped. Mrs. Willing had heard a man's voice which she did not think to be Ingham's, call out loudly and very clearly, "Ask—" somebody or something the name of which was unfamiliar to her, and which she had forgotten until later events had violently recalled it—"Ask Nancy Cornish."
Herrick did not read any further till he was seated and had given his order to a friendly waiter. There were some men at a table near him; it seemed to him that everybody in the room was talking of the arrest and as a matter of fact most of them were talking of it. He had an uneasy desire to know how Christina appeared in her own world's version. But she remained there the friend of Denny, and of the girl over whom Ingham and Denny must have quarreled. When he looked at the paper again, he read that on the night in question by no less a person than Theodore Bird, Denny had been seen to enter Ingham's apartment!
Yes, the tremulous Theodore, despite his wife's particular instructions that he should keep out of it, had called at headquarters and delivered up the fact that at one o'clock or thereabouts, when he was just on the point of retiring, he had heard what sounded like a ring at his door-bell. But he had opened the door only a crack because the wires between his apartment and Ingham's were apt to get crossed, and, indeed, this was what had happened in the present case. He had seen a man standing there, at Ingham's door; and Theodore, safe behind his crack, his constitution being not entirely devoid of rubber, had taken a good look; had seen Ingham fling wide his door, and the stranger enter. On being asked if he could identify this stranger, he said he was certain of it. Confronted with photographs of a dozen men he had unhesitatingly selected Denny's.
The police had delayed Denny's arrest in the hope of finding him in correspondence with Nancy Cornish. Sure of their man, they had given him rope to hang himself. But Joe Patrick's recognition, which, at any moment, he might reveal to the suspected man, had forced their hand. They did not add that until yesterday they had never connected Denny or Nancy with the blackmailing letters, but Herrick now added it for them; and he saw how Nancy's message, with its suggestion of the girl's peril, had forced it, too.
He deduced that, by the summer-house, they had not been able to overhear anything until Denny had gone to the doorway and Herrick had raised his voice. He read, finally, how, while Denny was changing for the street, after the performance, his dresser had managed to unload and reload the revolver. The number of the cartridge used in it was the same as that of the bullet taken from Ingham's body.
Up to the last line of the article Herrick kept a hope that Denny had given some clue of Nancy's whereabouts but the police were obliged to admit that the young man had proved a mighty tough customer. "He has undergone six hours of as stiff an examination as Inspector Corrigan has ever put a prisoner through and nothing whatever save the barest denial has been got out of him. However, the Inspector is confident that in the near future—" There was something in this last statement which made Herrick slightly sick. He hoped Christina had not seen it.
He understood well enough the weakness and blankness of Denny's account of himself. The young man denied the murder much more definitely than he had troubled himself to deny it to Herrick, but with the same listless lack of hope and even of conviction. He made no secret of his having gone to Ingham's room with the intention of shooting him, though he asserted that Ingham had proved false the story which had occasioned their quarrel and he had gone away again—that was all. Expect to be believed? Of course he didn't expect to be believed! On the reason of their quarrel he remained mute. To all further questions, such as what other visitors Ingham had that night, he opposed the blankest, smoothest ignorance. And Herrick, filling out the blanks, was still impatient of the reticence which left it possible for any woman of the men's mutual acquaintance to be taken for the woman of the shadow. No effort for the good name of another woman justified to him the suspicion and the suffering that Christina had already been allowed to endure. Denny's guilt he did not and he could not doubt, but he might have respected a guilt which, after so strong a provocation, had instantly given itself up. Such an avowal might have kept further silence with the highest dignity and Herrick wondered why an actor, of all people, could not see that that would have been even the popular course. Then he heard another actor, a much handsomer and more stalwart person, remark, "I always said, poor chap, that he hadn't the physique for a hero!"
"Well," agreed a manager, solemnly, after every possible version of the affair had been discussed, "what I've always said is—Strung on wires! He's the best in his own line, I don't deny it! You could have your star and your juvenile man tearing each other to pieces in the middle of the stage and he'd be down in a corner, with an eye on a crack, and everybody'd be looking at him! But I've always said, and I say it again—Strung on wires!" The manager seemed to think that this remark met the occasion fully at every point.
And as the men became more and more excited in their talk, Herrick discovered that the very heart of their excitement was their sympathy for Denny's own manager who would have to replace him by to-morrow night. Heaped all around lay this morning's papers, every one of them extolling Denny's performance of the night before, and little guessing what the next editions would bring forth; these fine notices made the management's position all the more difficult and the talkers all seemed to feel that it was very hard, after so expensive a production, that Denny should get himself arrested for murder at such a moment.
So that between this extremely business-like sympathy which suited Herrick to perfection and his own desire that Christina should be kept out of it, he perceived that about the last person for whom any one was excited was Denny himself. He was congratulating himself that Mrs. Hope was a person to keep distressing newspapers out of sight as long as possible and that her daughter was sure to rise late on the morning of the night of nights when a boy brought him a 'phone message. "You're please to go and ask to see Mr. Denny at Inspector Corrigan's office!"
With somewhat restive promptitude Herrick obeyed. As he was shown into the office the first person his eye lighted upon was Christina.
The only professional appearance which Wheeler had hitherto permitted Christina to make in New York had been when she recited at a benefit early in the preceding spring. The benefit was for the families of some policemen who had perished valiantly in the public service and when Christina had enlisted the Ingham influence in the cause Wheeler had made the whole affair appear of her contriving. To procure herself an interview with Denny in the Inspector's office before the formalities of the Tombs should close about him she had not scrupled to make use of this circumstance, and whether because it combined with her having business there, in the identification of Nancy's message, or because the Inspector believed she could really influence Denny to talk, as she said she could, or because he wanted to watch them together, or, after all, because she was one of those who get what she desired, there she was.
Herrick was no longer at a loss to account for a sort of tickled admiration which admitted him as one at least near the rose. She had evidently been treated with the consideration due the chief mourner, whatever one may think of the corpse; the Inspector, over by the window, had made himself inconspicuous and for a moment Herrick saw only Christina—a Christina wholly baffled and at a loss! She had, indeed, that air of having spent her life in the office which was her distinguishing characteristic in any atmosphere. Her hat was, as usual, anywhere but on her head; she had stripped off her gloves and tossed them into it. But she now sat in an attitude of despairing quiet which she broke on Herrick's entrance only to catch his arm with one hand; turning her face in upon his sleeve, "Bryce," she moaned, "I brought him to this!"
Then he saw that Denny was standing looking through the barred window with his back to them. When he turned Herrick had to struggle against a touch of sympathy for the change in his appearance. Although he had never seen Denny in the daylight before, there was no denying that he was only the worn ghost of what he had been last night. His slenderness had the broken droop of physical and emotional exhaustion; beneath the intense black of his hair, his face was the color of ashes and his quick, brilliant eyes looked lifeless and burned out. Nevertheless, Herrick preferred the daytime version. The sort of evil phosphorescence of the French marquis which had continued to dazzle his eyes in the darkness and the sharp electric light, had wholly vanished; Denny was not playing a villain now—and in the blue serge suit of ordinary life, there was something almost boyish in him.
"He won't help me, Bryce," Christina said. "He won't tell me anything, he won't say anything. He won't even tell me what lawyer he wants."
Denny stood with his eyes fixed on his visitors but in an abstraction which seemed to take no note of them; and Christina went on to Herrick, as to a more sympathetic audience. "I tell him he shall have the best lawyers in the world! He shan't be tormented any longer; he shall have the law to look out for him! He'll be all right, won't he, Bryce, won't he? If he'll only help himself! If he'll only say something!" Her voice rose desperately and broke. "Tell him you're simplyforhim, as I am—that's what I brought you here for! Tell him we're with him, both of us, all the world to nothing, and that we urge him to anything he can say or do to help himself! And that it will never make any difference to—either of us!" When Herrick had made out to say that Christina's friends were his friends, she went up to Denny and took him by the shoulders. "Don't you understand? I want to speak not only for myself, but for all those dear to me!"
Denny broke into a nervous laugh, but he said nothing.
Herrick guessed that his denial of his guilt had taken Christina wholly by surprise; that she had relied greatly on the story of his provocation and that now she did not know what to do. That it is not seemly for young ladies to display such extreme emotion over gentlemen to whom they are not related and who have had the misfortune to be imprisoned for murder did not cross her mind. She was now reduced to a sort of hysterical practicality in which, for lack of the treacherous valet, she enlisted Herrick to discuss with a surprised Inspector what clothes and furnishings of Denny's she would be allowed to have packed up and sent to the Tombs—"What ought I to do to make them like me there? Oh, yes, Bryce, it makes a difference everywhere! I mustn't wear a veil; and I must get them plenty of passes. It's a pity we can't pretend to be engaged—it would interest every one so!—How about money, Will?"
"I've plenty, thanks."
"Most ladies don't think beyond flowers!" contrasted the Inspector, in amused admiration.
Exasperated beyond endurance, Herrick heard himself launch the sickly pleasantry, "Any use for flowers, Mr. Denny?"
"Not before the funeral," Denny said.
She shook him a little in her eagerness. "Books. And tobacco. And things to drink. And the best food. And magazines. And all the newspapers." Christina clung to the items like a child trying to comfort itself. "Or—perhaps—not the newspapers—"
Denny flung restlessly out of her hands. "Oh, yes," he said, "the newspapers, please! Let me at least know how I am admired." He went back to staring out of the window; he seemed so little interested in his visitors that it was as though he had left them alone.
Christina stood looking at him with an infinite pity. She was not crying but her magnificent eyes swam in a sort of luminous ether and Herrick had never seen her so girlishly helpless.—"Knowing me brought him to this!"
"Don't talk like a fool, Christina!" Denny interrupted over his shoulder in his dead-and-alive voice.
"It's true. If you'd never known me, or if I'd never engaged myself to Jim—"
"Or if I'd never been born. It's just as true and just about as relevant." His absent voice died in his throat. Then, of a sudden, he turned on her with a kind of restive suspicion. "What did you say, awhile ago, about Kane's office?"
"He's sent for me to come there to-morrow at two."
"Well, whatever you begin telling him, remember there's one thing I can't put up with. And that's—Well, anything less than—the full dose." He came up to the girl and took her hand in his cold fingers. "And I implore you, Christina, whatever you do, not to set such a motion on foot, not to work up any sympathies nor bring forward any circumstances which might lead to what they call a merciful sentence. I couldn't stand it, Chris. It's the one thing I can't bear.—Oh, don't cry, don't cry! Come, my dear! Why, you surely don't want me to live—like this! With nothing to think of except—about Nancy! Well, then!" But Christina was visibly gasping for breath and, in a nature easily drawn together against a world harsh or indifferent, all the defenses against feeling began to give way. Some comfort must be found for those that insist upon caring! But what comfort?—"Ah now, Chris, dear old girl, such a brave girl—it's all right. It's bound to be. Why, it's what I want, really. Really it is. You know that. You know I've been pretty well through, all these weeks, isn't that so?—Oh, take her away, won't you?" he cried to Herrick.
But Christina had by this time begun to cry, indeed, and now she threw her arms round Denny's neck, pulled down his face and kissed him. "To leave you here!" she wept.
For a moment he stood stiff in her embrace and then he gently returned her kiss; suddenly, with a sobbing breath, he caught her by the shoulders as a man clings to something tried and dear, which he knows he may not often see again. "Poor Chris!" he said. "All right, Chris!"
The Inspector signed to the doorman who stepped up, pleasantly enough, to Denny, and at his touch Denny took the girl by her elbows and held her off.
"Come," he said, "you've got a performance to-night!"
"Oh, God help me!" Christina cried. "How am I to go through with it!"
"Why," said Denny, quickly, "do it for me! Don't let me wreck everything I touch!" He looked at Herrick as though to say, "Be good to her—she's only a girl! You needn't fear she can help me!" And aloud he continued, "Look here, Christina, you mustn't fail. You're my friend, to pull me through and make friends for me, isn't that so? Well, then, you mustn't be a nobody! If you're going to get me out of here, you've got to be a celebrity, and move worlds. Well, you've got nothing but to-night to do it with. People like us, my dear, we've nothing but ourselves to fight with, just ourselves! Come, get yourself together and pull it off to-night! For me!" Over her head his miserable eyes besought Herrick to take her away while she could believe this. But the girl, straightening up, held out her hand. Denny took it and "All right," she said, "I will!" As they stood thus, a door from within the building opened and there was admitted no less a person than Cuyler Ten Euyck.
Christina was standing between him and Denny. The eyes of the two men met and slashed like whips. Herrick never needed to be told whose was the hand that long ago, for Christina's sake, had struck Ten Euyck. Now Denny said in a quick undertone, "Don't fret, old girl!" And the guard took him away.
The newcomer looked rather more frozen than usual; he was surprised and he did not take kindly to surprises. "It seems to be my fate to interrupt! Mr. Herrick, don't you feel de trop?"
He indulged himself in this discomforting question while his byplay of glances was really saying to Inspector Corrigan, "What are all these people doing here?" and Corrigan's was replying, "None of your business!" There was evidently no love lost between the types, particularly when the first glance persisted, "You got nothing out of him?" And the second was obliged to admit, "Nothing!"—"But I implore your toleration," Ten Euyck continued to Christina, "I can perhaps do you some service for the prisoner with Inspector Corrigan."
"The prisoner thanks you, as I do. But we have played in melodrama and we are acquainted with the practice of poisoned bouquets. Inspector Corrigan and I are doing very well as we are!"
"You are unkind and, believe me, you are unwise. I really wish to please you—do you find that so unnatural?—and to justify myself in your regard. I want to begin by advising you not to let your friend's melodramatic silence suggest to the public that he is going to hide behind some story of a woman—"
"He is very foolishly trying to keep a woman's name out of his story," Christina clearly and boldly declared.
"Nonsense! There is no such person!"
"Why not?"
"Because if there were he would be only too anxious to get her to come forward and tell the jury what she told him. It might get him off."
"How do you know what she told him?"
"My dear lady, they all tell the same thing. It seems to those who are interested—"
"It seems nothing whatever but a chance to divert yourself with what you consider his disgrace, because the idea of disgrace comes natural to you—and, indeed, to you, in his presence, it should do so! But I rely on Inspector Corrigan to limit your diversions. His favors are the favors of a practical man; neither he nor I are fortune's darlings; we both work for our living and we both understand one another.—I ought to say that I am sorry to be rude. But I am not sorry, I rejoice. While there was a suspicion for you to nose out I was afraid of you. But now I am free of you. If I were your poor mother," cried Christina, catching up her hat, "I should pray you were ever in a disgrace that did you so much honor!"
This outburst produced a silence: Inspector Corrigan amused and gratified, Inspector Ten Euyck struggling to appear amused and tolerant. In fact, as Christina, still breathing fire, drew on her gloves, he became so very easy and happy as to hum a little tune. The words instantly fitted themselves to it in Herrick's mind.