"Je suis aussi sans désirAutre que d'en bien finir—"
"Je suis aussi sans désirAutre que d'en bien finir—"
"That's very charming!" said Christina, in the tone of a person always governed by amiability. "Where did you hear that?"
"I don't really know. I'll trace it for you, if that will make my peace."
"Thank you, no.—Then you think," said Christina, sharply to both officials, "that it would do him great good if this woman, whether he's innocent or guilty, should come forward of her own accord, and repeat the story of her trouble as she repeated it to him?"
"Undoubtedly!"
"Well, then, she shall!"
"Christina!"
"Miss Hope!"
Christina was inexpressibly grave; she trembled a little, but her voice was firm. "What must be, must be!" she said.
"But, Miss Hope, in person?"
"In person, yes."
"But how, when, where?"
"Very simply. On Friday. At the office of the District Attorney."
"And you can be certain of this?"
"I can."
"You know who she is then?"
"Most assuredly I do."
"Mr. Herrick's terrible shadow?"
"Oh, she needn't bring her shadow, need she?" Christina said.
Ten Euyck, who was just leaving the building, turned and looked at her; there was always a covert, sullen admiration in his glances at her. "I'm glad to see your spirits are improving. It's now you who are singing!"
"'Auld acquaintance'—a sad enough song! But my Nancy's favorite! Don't begrudge it me, Inspector Ten Euyck; it reminds all who love her of kind hours. 'Shouldauld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?' Good-by, Mr. Ten Euyck." The outside door closed after him, and she said to the Inspector, "There is something you wish me to identify?"
"Here we are!" said the Inspector. "The experts say she wrote it!"
Christina looked at the four words a long time. The tears rose in her eyes again. "Yes. She did." She turned to Herrick. "This was what I came to tell Will last night. My mother had just told me. But now that he's helpless, he mustn't know!"
"Well?" said the Inspector, and he handed Christina the red lock of curly hair.
She took it a little gingerly; studying it, as it lay in the palm of her hand. "Of course, one could be deceived," she said, slowly. "But it's either her hair or it's exactly like it." She lifted the curl and held it to the light. She untied the string which bound it, and thinning it out in her fingers spread it to a soft flame of color. "Oh, surely, it's her hair—oh, poor little girl!" she cried, and crossed by a sudden shiver, she let the hair fall from her hand. Swifter than the men about her she gathered it up again, and again stood studying the tumbled and scattered little mass. And then Herrick saw a terrible change come over her face—an immense amazement, mingled almost at once with passionate incredulity; slowly, the incredulity gave way to conviction and to fear; and then there swept upon Christina's face a blaze of such anger as Herrick had never seen in a woman's eyes.
"What is it?" they all cried to her.
She opened her lips, as if to call it forth; but then she seemed to lose her breath, and, all at once, she slipped down in a dead faint at their feet.
If the police believed Christina when she revived enough to say that it had seemed to her as if the hair were soaked in blood it was more than Herrick did. He only wondered that they let her go and if they were perhaps not spreading a net about her as they had spread one about Denny.
But thereafter she was very composed, allowed herself to be taken quietly home, and took a sedative so as to get some sleep. Herrick came in from an errand at four and found the house subdued to the ordinary atmosphere—high-pressured enough in itself—of the house of an actress before a big first night.
Down in the drawing-room Mrs. Hope said they must not talk about anything exciting or Christina would be sure to feel it. But she herself seemed to feel that the fact of her coming appearance in the Inghams' box was about the only satisfactory piece of calmness in connection with her daughter's future. She congratulated herself anew upon the outcome of an old bout with Christina in which the girl had wished to go to supper afterward with Wheeler rather than with the devoted Inghams, and in which Mrs. Hope had unwontedly conquered. She said now that she wished she had spoken to the Inghams about inviting Herrick; it could have been arranged so easily.
When Christina came in she allowed herself to be fondly questioned as to how she felt and even to be petted and pitied. She was perhaps no more like a person in a dream than she would have been before the same occasion if Ingham had never been shot; when she spoke at all she varied between the angelic and the snappish; and before very long she excused herself and went to her room. She was to have a light supper sent up and Mrs. Hope adjured Herrick not to worry!
He duly sent his roses and his telegram of good wishes, but that she could really interest herself in the play at such a time seemed horrible to him and he arrived at the theater still puzzled and rather resentful of the intrusion of this unreal issue.
But the first thrill of the lighted lobby, glowing and odorous with the stands of Christina's flowers; the whirr of arriving motors; the shining of jeweled and silken women with bare shoulders and softly pluming hair; the expectant crowd; the managerial staff, in sacrificial evening dress, smiling nervously, catching their lips with their teeth; the busy movements of uniformed ushers; the clapping down of seats; the high, light chatter, a little forced, a little false, sparkling against the memory of those darker issues that clung about Christina's skirts; the whole, thrilling, judging, waiting house; all this began to affect Herrick like strong drink on jaded nerves. From his seat in the third row he observed Mrs. Hope and the Inghams take their places; the attention of the audience leaped like lightning on them. Just then one man came into the box opposite and drawing his chair into its very front, sat down. It was Cuyler Ten Euyck.
Herrick forgot him quickly enough. It was a real play, acted by real artists; the production held together by a master hand; and it continued to string up Herrick's nerves even while to himself he scarcely seemed to notice it. He had had no idea that it would be so terrible to live through the moment of Christina's entrance. He sat with his eyes on his program, suffering her nervousness, feeling under what an awful handicap she was waiting there, the other side of that painted canvas, to lose or win. There was the wracking suspense of waiting for her, and then, as in a dream, the sound of her voice. Her dear, familiar voice! She was there! She was there; radiant, unshadowed, exulting in the flood of light, at home, at ease; softly, shyly, proudly bending to the swift welcome and carrying, after that, the hearts of the audience in her hand. She had only to go on, now, from triumph to triumph; her sun swam to the meridian and blazed there with a splendid light. Mrs. Hope with lowered eyes, breathed deep of a success that passed her dreams; Ten Euyck, compressing his lips, his arms folded, never took his eyes from Christina's face. And Bryce Herrick, watching her move, watching her speak, not accepting this, as did the public, for a gift from heaven, but aware to the bone of its being all made ground, of the art that had lifted her as it were from off the wrack into this divine power of breathing and creating loveliness, could have dropped down before her and begged to be forgiven.
Who was he to have judged her?—to-day or last night? to have exacted from her a line of conduct? to have tried to force upon her the motives and the standards of tame, of ordinary women? He remembered having often smiled, however tenderly, at her pretensions; not having taken quite seriously her attitude to her work. And here was a genius of the first order, whose gifts and whose beauty would remain a happy legend in the hearts of men when he was dust; whose name youth would carry on its lips for inspiration when no one would care that he had ever been born! Oh, dear and beautiful Diana who had stooped to a mortal! For this was the secret thrill that ran like wildfire through the homage of his heart—the knowledge that she loved him, and the feel of her lips on his!
Let them worship, poor creatures, poor mob! Unknowing and unguessing that between him and her there was a bond that crossed the footlights—the memory of a dark room and firelight, a girl in his arms.—"Bryce dear, are we engaged? You haven't said?—I've wanted you—Oh, how I've wanted you—all my life!"—At the end of the performance it was impossible not to try to see her; not to get a word with her, to confess and to have absolution.
But at the stage-door there were so many people that he could not have endured to share his minute with them. He knew the Babel that it must be inside, and he decided to wait here; by-and-by the Inghams wouldn't grudge him a moment. They seemed to stay forever; but at last all were gone but two or three, and he decided to send in his card. As he stepped forward the door opened, and Christina, in the oblong of light, stood drawing on her gloves.
She was dressed as if for a coronation and not even upon the stage had the effulgence of her beauty seemed so drawn together for conquest. Her long white gown had threads of silver in it; the white cloak thrown back from her shoulders did not conceal her lovely throat nor the long string of diamonds that to Herrick's amazement were twisted round her neck and fell down along her breast; she carried on one arm a great white sheaf of orchids, and Iphigenia led to the sacrifice was surely not so pale.
Upon her appearance the closed motor which had been waiting across the street swept into place. It was a magnificent car, lined with white; the little curtains at the windows were drawn back and a low electric lamp showed the swinging vases of orchids and white violets. Christina turned her eyes from it till they met Herrick's; for a moment they widened as if galvanized, and then, with a sweet, icy bow, she went right past him. A man who had jumped out of the motor got in after her, and closed the door. It was the man who had sat all alone in the stage box; Cuyler Ten Euyck.
There are violences to nature in which she is reined up so suddenly that after them we are left stupid rather than unhappy. In such a mood of held-in turmoil Herrick walked home and waited for to-morrow. His appointment with Christina was at twelve, noon, and until noon he struggled not to think at all. Anything was better than thought; yet nothing would now answer save security—security past, present and future—a full understanding of her life, of her trouble, of her actions, of what game she was playing and of what part in it she was ready to give him. By-and-by the wound began to throb, but he merely kept it closed with a firm hand. Till noon to-morrow!
With the morning the papers he had ordered, in a time that seemed long ago, came to his door; he found himself opening them, and tracing the dazzling streams of Christina's notices. Their flaming praises left him cold; already they seemed to be written about some one whom he did not know.
Here, at any rate, was a Christina Hope with whom he could imagine parting. The greatness of her destiny was full upon her; she seemed ringed with a cold fire, brilliant as the golden collar of the world and passible, perhaps, by Cuyler Ten Euycks, but hardly by a young literary man from the country. Never again, whether she wished or no, could she be quite the same girl in the gray gown who had sat in a corner of the coroner's office beside her mother. Hermann Deutch's Miss Christina had become one of the great successes of all time. And Herrick shrank a little at the loud clang of her fame.
He was going that morning to the Ingham offices at ten o'clock to sign his contract. The day was oppressively warm, with hot glints of sunshine, and it seemed to Herrick that the bright, feverish streets swarmed with the rumors of Christina's triumph. He wondered if it had got in to that man in jail and acquainted him with the strange difference in their fates. His contract meant nothing to him; he got away as soon as he could. Yet already the atmosphere was changed, the sky was overcast, and as the clocks about Herald Square struck eleven, a warm, dusty wind, even now bearing heavy drops of rain, swept down the street. If Herrick took a car he would reach the Hopes a good half hour too early, and he had no mind, after walking in the wet, to present himself in muddied boots and a wilted collar before Christina. He looked about him. He could choose between hotel bars—where actors might be talking of her glory—dry goods shops and a moving-picture show. Perhaps because Christina had gratefully mentioned moving-pictures, he chose the latter. His longing and dread were so concentrated upon twelve o'clock that he had no consciousness of buying his ticket. Only of wondering—wondering—
The place was not yet full enough to be oppressive, and Herrick sat there in the welcome dark, with the rhythmic pounding of the music stunning his nerves. He closed his eyes; and immediately there sprang up before his consciousness the eternal, monotonous procession of questions—What had she meant last night, by throwing over everything for Ten Euyck? Why had she fainted at the sight of Nancy Cornish's hair and what strange bond linked Nancy with Ingham's murder? Why had Nancy disappeared a few hours before the shot; who had said, in Ingham's room, "Ask Nancy Cornish," and to whom had they said it? Why had her visiting-card broken down Christina's earlier evidence, and was that her scarf which had frightened Christina so, or did it belong to that woman of the shadow? And who was that woman? Why had an uncontrolled and variable man, such as Denny had described himself, suffered six hours of the third degree rather than risk revealing her name? By what authority did Christina promise to produce her, that very afternoon, at the office of the District Attorney? Had she made Christina break with Ingham, as she had made Denny kill him, by that story of his betrayal of her youth? He felt intuitively that in this woman was the key to the entire situation. She had created it; she would be found, more than they now knew, to have controlled it; and she, and perhaps she alone, could solve its manifold involutions. She had arrived before Denny, she had spoken boldly and insolently to Joe of Ingham; she had forced herself in upon him when he did not want her; she had come openly in a white lace dress—he remembered the lace that hung from the shadow's sleeve—and made herself as conspicuous as possible—why? And as Herrick asked himself these questions in the darkness he could almost have believed himself surrounded by the darkness of that night; the brisk strumming of the orchestra was not much like Ingham's piano, but it had the same excited hurry of those last few moments; and Herrick's mind called up again the light, bright surface of the blind and then the shadow of the woman cast upon it, lithe and tense, with uplifted arm, the fingers stiffening in the air. His eyes sprang open, and there before him, on the pictured screen, among the moving figures of the play, was the same shadow, with uplifted arm, the fingers spreading and stiffening in the air. Then in the movement of the scene, the shadow turned clean round and disclosed Christina's face.
Herrick sat without moving while the shadows played out their play. But he saw them no longer. They had begun and ended for him with that certainty which it seemed to him, now, that he had always felt.
When Christina's film came round again he watched it carefully all through from the beginning. The play was of some western episode, and he saw Christina come on, a spare slip of a girl in short skirts and long braids, a little awkward, a little jerky, like a suspicious colt, and he observed quite coolly what she had gained in five years. He saw Denny come on, dressed as a Mexican—cast for the villain even then!—and he saw for himself how greatly Denny had been her superior in those days, and all the method and knowledge which she had absorbed from him as she absorbed everything from everybody; and Herrick smiled there, in the darkness, to think of it. As the action of the play quickened it shook the novice from her self-consciousness; the promise of her great talent began to show; already she did things that were magnificent; and when at last her wedding was interrupted at the church door by the Mexican's attempt to claim her as his sweetheart, her fire and fury became superb. Herrick leaned forward watching. He saw Denny pour out his accusation, he saw the bridegroom hesitate, he saw Christina sweep round denouncing them both, saw the lithe, tense length of her, and her proudly lifted head, saw her suddenly fling one arm up and out in her strange and splendid gesture of her free, her desperate passion; the hand clenched for an instant and then the fingers slowly spreading and stiffening in the air. He waited for the shot, but no shot came. Only once more the shadow turned and revealed the young face of Christina, as she was at seventeen, and shone upon him through the darkness with Christina's eyes. Herrick rose to his feet and pushed out of the theater. The streets were full of wind and rain, but he did not know it, and along the crowded crossings, among multitudes that he did not see, he had the luck of the drunken and the blind.
He walked for hours without knowing where he went. His soaked clothes hung on him like lead and the wind pounded him and made him wrestle with it, but the burning poison of his thoughts could not be put out by wind or rain. Towards nightfall he found himself at the door of the house where he lived, and having nothing else to do, he went in. His sitting-room was dark and cold; he threw himself into a chair and lounged there, sodden with fatigue and wet, and staring at the empty grate. There, when it was all aglow, had she leaned to him and put her face to his and lied. As she had lied to Ingham, waking on his breast! As she had lied to Denny, folded in his arms! Harlot and liar, liar and cheat—oh, liar, liar, liar! For that was the poison in the wound, and the bitterness beyond death—that not for one hour had she been true! That flower-sweetness of her dear touch, of her hand in his, was as corrupt as hell. His dear, wild, brave, demure Diana had never drawn one breath of life—and the adventuress who wore her masque had all along laughed at him in her sleeve! If she had only told him! It was a challenge he could have met and carried; he felt his hand lock on Christina's, strong to draw her from any quicksand of which she struggled to be free. But that she should have fooled him and played with him and led him blindfold, that she should have gone out of her way to snare and laugh at him—what one of the lies with which she had been waiting for him this noon could he now believe? She had betrayed and thrown over Ingham for Denny as she had thrown over Denny for him, and as she had thrown him over for Ten Euyck! She had played them all four against each other—them, and how many others!—as in her insatiable vanity she would yet throw Ten Euyck over for some new fool! She was all vanity and nothing else; foul in her heart and scheming in her tongue, cruel, cheating, worthless! Oh, Christina, oh, sweet, my sweet—liar, liar, liar!—oh, Christina!—you! How could you?
He sprang up; going to his sideboard, he poured out a strong drink of the raw liquor and drained the glass. And as he stood there, with the rank fire coursing through his exhaustion, the chilled stiffness of his body and the heavy reeking damp of his crumpled clothes gave way to a terrible warm sense of life and pain, and to a hunger, such as he had never known, for that pain to be eased. Only one thing on earth could ease it and that was the sight of Christina's face.
He struck a light and looked at his watch. It was eight o'clock. In the mirror opposite he could see his leaden face, stiff with soil and weariness and framed in his moist, rumpled hair. He looked at it with a sense of its being very ugly and unseemly, and that the dull red beginning to creep into it from the whiskey was uglier and unseemlier still. His body weighed upon him horribly, it seemed to creak and prickle in its reluctant joints, and to loom up tangibly before him, as if he saw double. But his spirit was very light and fierce and swift, and throbbed in him, mad to be out of jail. Mechanically he got his hat, and started for Christina's theater.
He did not want to speak to her, to have any sort of dealings with her; but see her he must. It was a need like any other, but stronger than any other; not to be argued with. Now that he knew her, he must see her. That would cure him. Let him see her once more and he could forget her in peace. Something heavy, like his body, told him that this wouldn't do; this was death and damnation, this would destroy him through and through! And he replied that he hated her, and would forget her, and never wished to pass another word with her! But see her this once more, he must. Once more! Through the night and the pouring rain, the lights of her theater began to gleam. They gleamed on arriving motors; on high hats and snowy shirt-fronts, on opera cloaks and jeweled hair. Despite the storm, the city had driven forth to do homage to the new star. The candles at Christina's altar were burning high and clear; the lobby, all brightness and warmth, was filled with delicate rustlings, frou-frous of light feet and chattering voices and soft, merry sounds, idle excitement. There was a little sparkle on all faces; the glimmer reflected from Christina's eyes. In all men's mouths was the sound of her name. Not last night had been more crowded nor more brilliant.
And Herrick was very quiet and knew quite well how to behave. There would not be a seat left at the box-office, nor would he appeal to the management. He pushed to the center of the little crowd around a speculator; then, clutching his ticket, went in. Just as last night, the ushers ran up and down the aisles, and the seats clapped into place; just as last night, he was surrounded by a garden of chiffon and satin and perfume, of gossip and murmur. The audience, a little nervous, was waiting to be thrilled. The overture was in, and the music quivered through Herrick as the drink had done. He sat there very still, muddy and damp, with a wilted collar, a rough head, and no gloves; there was a little fixed smile on his lips and he stared at the curtain. He couldn't see through it. But soon it must go up. He was nothing but one waiting expectancy.
They played a second overture and this did not surprise him. Then he saw Wheeler, dressed for the first act, come before the curtain. And his smile broke. Because the delay was so terrible. Then he realized that Wheeler was making a speech.
"You can imagine, ladies and gentlemen, with what regret I am obliged to inform you that there will be no performance this evening. On account of the sudden illness of Miss Christina Hope the theater will be closed for to-night." There was something about getting back money at the box-office.
Herrick continued to sit there, unable to accept what had happened to him. He wasn't going to see her! It was the snatching back of food from a starving man; he had laid his lips to the spring in the desert and found it dry! The thing wasn't possible. All his nature had been running violently forward, and the shock of its stoppage stupefied him. As for any concern over Christina's illness, it never occurred to him. By-and-by he stood a long while on the corner of the street, not knowing where to go. He was not so lost as to seek Christina in person, and after his recent vigil there his own rooms were insupportable to him. Presently some one jostled him, and he was face to face with Wheeler.
"Great God, man!" Wheeler said. "Where have you been! What are you standing here for! We've been looking for you all afternoon. Called up your rooms a dozen times! Deutch and Mrs. Hope and I, we've scoured the city—been to the Tombs, the District Attorney's, Police Headquarters, everywhere. The Inghams are raving crazy. Ten Euyck's worse. Well, and how about me? After all it's my loss! Everything's been done that can be done. By to-morrow morning the whole city of New York'll be hit by a tornado. This little old town's going to get the shock of its life and go right off its trolley! Say something! Don't stand there like a stuck pig! Speak, can't you? Have you got any idea?"
Herrick heard his own voice saying, "Is she so ill?"
"Ill? Heavens and earth—you didn't swallow that drool, did you? Where have you been? Ill? No, the girl's gone—vanished, kidnapped, run away, whatever you like. She's disappeared!"
Herrick made no outcry at Wheeler's words. He simply stood looking out into the wet and windy spaces of Times Square, where the great splashes of colored lights wavered and shone in manifold reflections on the gleaming pavement. And a tremendous and ultimate change arose like new life in his heart.
There is a common human fallacy, touching and perhaps profounder than we know, by which we instinctively assume any person in danger to be an innocent person. To both men the missing girl was now in danger. It occurred no more to Herrick than to Wheeler that Christina, by any possibility whatever, could have voluntarily deserted a performance. Something had happened. Inevitably, Herrick remembered the once laughed at Arm of Justice. Had it known, all along, what the shadow on the screen had told him to-day? A hundred references of hers, a hundred inconsistencies, were solved at a stroke. Alone with that insensate malignity which he had himself encountered, had she now tried to break some blackmailing game and—lost?—He remembered with a horrid shock that once let her be identified with the shadow on the blind and in the eyes of the law she became the perjured witness of a murder, accessory before and after!—Threatened, thus, on every side, Christina's face seemed to flower for him there, on the night sky; as once, upon a foggy afternoon just as the wind began to rise, it had shone on him in the rainy street—when Christina had first held out her hand to him and said, "Try to believe that perhaps she was in distress, after all!"
In what hectic hot-house had he been stifling?—It was as though, in this wild hour of sweeping rain and blowing air, of lights that flashed and changed in the surrounding darkness, of isolation amid the myriad noises of the theater traffic and the clanging trolleys, he heard, of a sudden, Christina's cry for help; as though, running out into the freedom of the storm, he gained her side of the road and took her hand. It might be the hand of an outlaw, it was empty, forever, of any love or hope for him; but he could feel it, now, in his and he did not care against what world, whether his own or hers, he held it. For their personal relation was no longer the great thing. The great thing could be only that somewhere beyond him in the darkness, desperately needing help,she was. And the next thing was to find her.
"Well," he heard himself say to Wheeler in a commonplace voice, "let's hear about it."
"I want to eat something beside trouble!" Wheeler groaned. "Come in across the way. Stan's to 'phone there at nine."
Instinctively they chose a table by a window, as though in the great street she had loved so much and won so lately, they might see her hurrying by. The restaurant was almost empty, but the news was already there. It peered out of the cigar-smoke of the men to whom Wheeler curtly nodded; it questioned them from the waiter's face. "Where'll I begin?" asked Wheeler. "Well, this afternoon they wouldn't let me see Denny. But I met Stan, and he told me Chris had jumped her appointment with Kane, never brought her witness! Partly, I could have choked the girl—and, partly, I couldn't believe it of her. I called up her house and I've been jumping ever since." And he poured out a story of haste and confusion, of friends interrogated, detectives summoned, of a mother more ignorant than any one and more prostrated.—"God, Herrick, I'm sick! The girl's such a monkey, up to the last minute I hoped she'd show up! About seven Kane got me over the coals. Wonder what he's hit the trail so hard for? He'd had his suspicions of the Park,—the little Cornish girl was last seen, you remember, going that way—but the police have searched every bush for hours. The Inghams are all stewed up with him and Stanley's wished on to him like a burr. The first thing he said to me was, 'At what time did Mrs. Hope inform you of her daughter's absence? Don't hesitate—I can remind you. She never informed you at all!' Was he trying to see if I'd lie to him? What does he think I've done with her? But funny thing—Mrs. Hope and the Deutches had been worrying round looking for that girl all day and yet she'd never consulted me! Look here, it's not possible—No, what cause would she have to harm herself?—Mrs. Hope blames herself because last night when Christina didn't come home—You didn't know that? Well, she didn't. Her mother thought she was at the Deutches, out of temper. You knew she quarreled with her mother about Ten Euyck? They nearly knifed each other!"
"For God's sake," said Herrick, "tell me whatever you know!" Across his shoulder the zest of Broadway seemed to peer and listen. But it was too late to consider that.
"You see, last night's supper has been delicate ground from the beginning. Before I knew what the Inghams had planned I asked Christina to come to supper with me—to bring her mother and any one she liked. She seemed to be down on Denny since he and that Cornish girl disagreed and, as a particular bait, I mentioned you. I knew she was interested in you. And when she isn't interested, the Lord help her host! Well, she preferred my scheme to the Inghams'—she seems to have shown all along the most ungodly resistance to their help or countenance in any way! But I could see, as well as her mother, which was best for my leading-woman, and she finally gave in. It's remarkable how entirely one thinks of Christina as the head of the house, and yet how often she does give in—what an influence her mother has over her when she has any at all!" He drained his long glass with a sigh. "But last night, right after the performance, Mrs. Hope comes running into my dressing-room, well—as I may say, at death's door. Christina was going off to supper with Ten Euyck. You can understand that I didn't listen to her then as I should now. She wanted me, as the only person Christina would be likely to take a word from, to reason with her. I said, 'Yes, yes. By-and-by.' I only wanted to shut her up, you understand. For just then, in the first flush of Christina's triumph, I didn't any more think of interfering with her than with the sun in heaven! I won't say I'd been rehearsing an angel unawares, but the girl had grown, in that one night, way out of my sphere. I thought probably Ten Euyck had just prostrated himself and she'd gone a little off her head, and no wonder! It didn't seem necessarily so terrible to me. But the old lady is a great stickler for the proprieties—yes, and for all her talk, Christina has her own eye on social splendor! It's one thing not to receive people and it's quite another not to have them call!—When I'd got rid of my friends and had given Christina time to get rid of hers, I went round to thank her and congratulate her and at the same time to ask her if she didn't think she was doing the Inghams a pretty dirty trick. There stood my young lady dressed out—I was going to say 'to kill'—why, to make Solomon in all his glory turn pale and fade away! Great Scott!—She looked like the kingdoms of the earth and the wonders thereof! Christina is always bewailing the money she owes but you may have noticed that, for a poor working-girl, she does herself rather well in frocks. Mrs. Hope was sitting quiet in a corner, quashed, and Christina was humming—'Auld acquaintance,' if you please!—to herself in front of the glass. 'Auld acquaintance,' indeed! I thought of Denny, and how he'd stood by this radiant image through thick and thin—in a way, you might say, made her! And though you'll forgive a good deal to a first night like that, I began to agree with the people who say she hasn't any heart. And then I saw—"
"Yes—"
"I saw she had a long string of diamonds twisted round her neck. 'Great God, girl!' I said, 'where did those come from?'"
"And she answered?"
Wheeler had been speaking slower and slower and now, for a long time, it seemed as if he were not going to speak at all. Then "She answered, 'They have come from Cuyler Ten Euyck. But don't breathe it. It has just killed dear mamma.'"
"Well, go on."
"Her mother got up at that and started to go. But Christina stopped her at the door and took hold of her arm. 'Mother,' she said, 'what does it matter? Oh, my poor mother, can't you see that whatever happens we have done with respectability? It's inevitable, it must be done. And to-night or to-morrow, what does it matter? Twenty-four hours, one way or the other, and then—mud to the right of us, mud to the left of us, and unto dust we shall return!' I thought they were the strangest words that ever came out of a girl's mouth on the night of what you might call her coronation!"
"And Mrs. Hope?"
"Mrs. Hope just took her daughter's hand off her arm and walked out of the door and out of the theater.—Well," said Wheeler, with a deep sigh, "it wasn't for me to do that. I'm a pretty long way from a Puritan! All the same, this thing made me sick. 'Chris,' said I, 'don't go with him! Take off those damned diamonds and tell him to go to hell! You can soon make diamonds for yourself, old girl!' She looked up, singing, in my face. And that's the last I saw of her."
"Go on!"
"My boy, you need a drink!"
"And Ten Euyck says—?"
"Oh, poor Ten Euyck—his dignity can't bend, so it's all cracked. He took her to supper at the Palisades and she left early." The Palisades was a new roadhouse up the river and the rage of that summer. "The zealous creature has even run to Kane and disgorged the names of his guests. So it leaks out that, once the poor soul had unbent so far as to be seen with an actress, he couldn't be devilish by halves. It seems miss was annoyed at the character of said guests, as well as at finding supper served in a private room. So with the offended majesty of an injured queen, she withdrew to no less public a spot than the entrance porch. There she sat, swathed in her cloak and with her skirts drawn about her, till the arrival of the cab she had insisted upon." Wheeler broke into a laugh. "That girl," he said, "is the devil himself!"
"And that—was that the very—last—?"
"Exactly. There she is, togged out in a white, silky crepe-y, trail-y dress, embroidered in silver, and a white lace opera cloak. In these useful and inconspicuous garments, she vanishes." His grim grin soured. "You know what they'll all say! Kane tells the Inghams she couldn't catch Ten Euyck so surely as with an irritant. She took, of all ways, the way to hold him. Why, she left him in public—him, the invulnerable corrector of women! He'll never rest until she is seen, in public, hanging on his arm! And then the man values his diamonds at forty thousand dollars!"
"She drove off alone, at midnight, in a taxicab, with forty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds round her neck—"
"Yes, and the cabman was discharged this morning for drunkenness! Stan's to 'phone if they've found him. Oh, but look here—take it slow! She 'phoned Ten Euyck's house at eight this morning and left a message, openly, with her name! The servant who took the message describes exactly that trailing voice of hers—'tell him he may come for his necklace to-night!'"
"Come! Come where?"
"Search me! Or Ten Euyck, either, from the foam on his mouth!—Well, doesn't that put it up that wherever she 'phoned from they got on to the diamond necklace. So, where was she? You and I, we know old Chris—we know, after all, that she just went somewhere for the night on account of her quarrel with her mother. But, oh, lord, Herrick, who else is going to believe it? The whole braying pack of this intelligent world—all it can think of's dirt—the devilish gay sensation of the whole business! Christina Hope! D'you think there's a bank clerk or a submissive wife that won't recognize her proper atmosphere at a glance? You and I and little Stan—a poor author, a profane actor and a brat! In a few hours that's what her kingdom's crumbled to—'that was so wondrous sweet and fair!' Police and all, there's the spirit in which they're going to look for her, and that's going to be one of the worst things in our way. Well, I'm not a rich man and our precious kid's just about ruined me this night! But I've done for her what may bust me sky-high and worth it—I've offered ten thousand for her—safe, you understand! It ought to be in to-night's late editions, so by now, in one spirit or the other, this town's out after her like a hound!—Eh? All right! It's Stan, now!"
Herrick sat there staring into the street. A newsboy ran past with the last extra of the evening. Two of the interested smokers had just left the restaurant and now stopped in the rain to buy a paper, opening and scanning the flapping sheets against the wind. Ah, yes, of course! He, too, sent for a paper. Yes, there, on the first page—scare headings, but in itself the meagerest fact. Scarcely even insinuations yet—"friends fear some serious accident," "friends deny suicide," "suspicious circumstance—Ten Euyck necklace"—Wheeler's reward, and news three hours old. When he looked up the square seemed full of newsboys; several people as they came into the restaurant had papers in their hands. She was just news, now; disreputable news! "The town's out after her like a hound!"—Wheeler's hand was on his shoulder. "No cabman yet. But they want you, Herrick, on the 'phone."
Stanley's voice told him only to hold the wire. Then a crisper tone asked pleasantly, "Mr. Herrick? This is Henry Kane. I just wanted to ask you—you had an appointment with Miss Hope for noon to-day. If you didn't know she was not at home, why didn't you keep it?"
How sharply the trap bit!
"You've had no communication with her since last evening? Nothing happened to arouse your anxiety? Nor distrust? No, nothing? And yet, just as it began to rain, you started for a walk in a light suit—or" (the telephone itself seemed to give forth a dry smile) "what I am told was once a light suit, and walked about all day in an equinoctial storm! Taking yourself to the theater at night without changing, without shaving, without dining, but still carrying on your person a good deal of the surface of the earth and of the waters under the earth! Well, sorry to have disturbed you. Only my dear sir, don't trouble yourself to conceal too much. Don't fancy yourself the only man in New York who has been to a moving-picture show." Kane hung up the receiver.
That stunned, sick, silent curse of the man on the wrong side of the law! This attorney fellow was like a hound after her, too! He, then, since he was so clever, in God's name let him find her and find her—soon! It was all he asked!—As Herrick stepped out of the booth into the corridor of mirrors that ran through the building to the next street a page boy came briskly up the gilded lane, pattering out a phrase that washed across Herrick's mind in a wave of sound dimly familiar; he saw the boy turn into the orangerie and through the glass-screen he vaguely watched him wend his way between the little green tables with their golden lamps, lifting his flatted tones into the orange-scented air so that its mechanical legend was caught by trailing vines and mingled with the plashing of a little fountain. His mind aimlessly followled the boy's cry till it was lost in the music of a mezzanine orchestra hidden in the foliage of a tame tropical jungle! This was what they called civilization—this trash which had achieved no mechanism to find her, to protect her! But which could know that she had been struck out of its midst and yet sit there in its futile nonsense, stuffing—A voice rose from the velvet lounge beside him in the toneless delivery of one who reads aloud. It was reading the extra's account of a gesture in a moving picture show. "The police say that boys began reporting it before noon, and, the attention of the theater having been called to the film, its patrons are now offered a thrill of realism by the piano in the orchestra accompanying the gesture with the march from Faust. This time, it will be remembered..."
Oh, no doubt it would be remembered! Its exultant shout sounded like the hunter's cry after her now, winged by Wheeler's offer of ten thousand dollars! Doubtless the film would be repeated on the morrow, that all the world might steel its heart as it watched with its own eyes Christina Hope moving with that motion to that time!
Oh, for something to do! Some untried search, some shrewder question! Something to do, to suffer, to dare—some clue—some suggestion—Denny! Had they tried Denny? He who knew so much at the least would set them right, would know and would tell them that she had never deserted his cause of her own free will, that he who knew her believed in her—Wheeler came out into the lobby and took him by the arm. He, too, had bought a paper and now he held it under Herrick's eyes. "This is why I couldn't see him, then!" In the Tombs that afternoon, Denny had again attempted suicide.
So that was how he proclaimed his confidence! He had somehow got hold of a knife, but the blow aimed at his heart had been averted by a watchful guard and he had received only fleshwounds—one in the left shoulder, one in the left forearm. A little ludicrous, a little sickening that a man so expert in killing another should always bungle about killing himself! But he had been prompt enough and successful enough in setting upon the girl who had failed him the brand of his despair! Who would credit, now, that he did not believe in her flight? Herrick felt a thickness in his throat; with a longing for fresh, dark spaces he pushed open a door of the lobby and was confronted by the city, glittering in wet gold. There, up Long Acre, lay the heart of her world.
And from down where the bronze workmen struck the hours in Herald Square up past where the gathering streets parted again under a new electric girl, high in the sky, who winked a knowing colossal eye over a rainbow cocktail, what faith did it keep with her? Her flight, her shadow on the screen, they burned in a newer sky-sign, they flashed a fearful but a more stirring legend! This swept up the thoroughfare that never colors itself more like Harlequin than in its mirrors of wet asphalt and sped down every side street starred with theaters where, between the acts, men gathered and returned with news, and it became clear to thrilling audiences that so long as there had been nothing against this Christina Hope she had meant to tell some tale to Kane in Denny's behalf—it would have been a pretty piece of acting—but the mute witness of the shadow had broken her down. She had fled from that writing on the screen—even in the dressing-rooms they would say that! And later, in all these hot, bright jardins de danse that yesterday were cabarets, these cabarets that were restaurants yesterday, among the pellucid proprieties of slit skirts, tango turns, and trotting music it would be said that all along Denny had kept at least the half of his silence for Christina's sake. Oh, street of a thousand feverish tongues, how she loved you! And why did she leave you? Where is she, and where is she? How near, how far? "Where is she? And how doth she?" There lay her theater; what stroke could be so heavy as to drive her from that? "The Victors!" Leave "The Victors!" There were great blurs of light before the billboards. But the wind tore through them at the boards, struggling to wrench the signs away. Fierce as it was it was still rising and it ran like a crazy newsboy whooping through the world, senseless as the cry of the page that came nearer and nearer. So that Wheeler said, "Good lord, man, don't you know your own name?"
Yes, that was what the boy had been saying all along—"Herr—ick! Herr—ick! Mr. Bry—us Herrick!"
"No card, sir. Forty-fifth Street entrance. In a taxi, sir. A lady wants to speak to you."
The monstrous hope died almost in the pang that gave it birth. The lady who leaned out to him from the cab, putting aside her heavy veil, showed him the troubled countenance of Henrietta Deutch.
It came to him even then that he had arrived at the turning of a corner. So that he was surprised when she said to him, "Oh, sir, where have you been? Sir, sir, have you any news?"
She had none, then!
"Hours have I waited and waited at your rooms! There the young Ingham sends me word that you are here. We have hoped always you might be with her! Oh, dear heaven! You know nothing, young sir? Nothing at all?"
"Nothing."
She drew back. "Tell me only this. Are you—for her, Mr. Herrick? Orridof her?"
Herrick replied, "Well, what do you think?"
She, whom grief somehow became and illumined like her native and revealing element, peered into his haggard face, worn and soiled and sharpened and grim. "Then, young gentleman, I am asked by Mrs. Hope if of her daughter you have any word or trace, do not give it to the police."
What? Herrick felt something cold breaking about the roots of his hair. Then this clinging, this devoted mother did not want her daughter found!—"She said nothing more than this?"
"Nothing more."
He digested it in silence and it was with a heavy gathering dread that when she asked him to drive home with her he put himself in her hands. Then, in what seemed a single convulsion of the storm, the taxi rocked to a standstill before the Deutch apartment.
As Mrs. Deutch sprung on the light their eyes vainly quested for some envelope beneath the door; she went out again to the mail-box, to the elevator, inquiring for a message. Then the woman and the young man, not knowing where to turn next, sat down amid the emptiness of those walls which had so often held Christina. Here, more than ever, everything said, "She must be just round the corner! Where is she? Where can she be?" And still Herrick knew that Mrs. Hope's message was but a part of what he had to hear and that his hostess still groped for terms in which to tell the rest.
The pause lay heavy between them. Then, "Young gentleman," said Mrs. Deutch, "you love my Christina, is it not so?"
"Don't make me laugh!" Herrick desolately replied.
She rose. "Then I will say to you what I have long had on my heart." She opened the door. The halls were empty. She turned the key in the lock, and glanced at the closed windows; sitting close to him again she laid a kind hand on his. "Mr. Herrick, there is something wrong with Hermann Deutch. There is something in his mind to make him crazy. And in the last days—say it is two or three—it makes him crazier all the while. Yes, this is so. It is fear. And something that he will not tell. He knows something, and it makes him afraid. It has been so since he went up to the room of Mr. Ingham onthatnight."
Herrick looked down at her hand and then he put his other hand atop of both and gave hers a little pressure. "Mrs. Deutch, what is it that you know about that night? Don't be afraid of me. Don't be afraid for me. What is it?"
"Oh, my young sir, I am ready to tell you. Yesterday, no. But to-day, when all the world has seen the shadow-picture, yes—why not? On that night till very late I was away. For I had a friend with a sick baby, and nurses one can not always pay. When I came to the basement gate there was in our flat no lights. But when I went in there was my husband, with his coat over his shirt, standing, listening, in the dark. And he said, 'Christina is upstairs!'—very cross and ugly. I said, 'At Ingham's? Why, what for?—Why,' I said, before he could tell it to me, 'are you out of your mind that you should let her go up there with that man at midnight?' He said, 'Tell me the one thing. How would you have prevented her from going up?'"
They smiled at one another, ruefully, as at an evocation of Christina.
"'Oh, my God!' he cries out. 'There is going to be trouble! Mr. Denny, he has found out why she quarreled with that Ingham, yesterday. She says he will kill him. She wants that Ingham should go away.'"
"Do you know why they did quarrel?"
"No, neither of us. Never at all.—But then, I started to go up to her, by the freight elevator as he had taken her. Down that back hall we did not hear the shot. But the telephone made us halt. Joe told us."
The clasp of Herrick's hand lent her its reassurance and she went on.
"My husband was all at once like a man in a fit. He seemed to have no head. He is not to say fearful, but he is the way men are. 'Go!' I said, 'Hasten! It may be that it is he who himself shot!' And this gave him heart to go upstairs. Then comes to me Christina, slipping along from the back. I saw her white dress in the dark. And then she came into a little patch of light and put her finger to her lips. I ran and pulled her in and shut the door. And I took her in my arms to warm her, for she was made all of ice. 'Is he dead?' I asked her. And she shivered out, 'Oh, a doctor! Get a doctor! Go up to him, Tante Deutch! And hurry!' she would say, 'Hurry!' But, indeed, I thought there was enough with him. I asked her the one thing: 'Who did it?' She looked at me with her lips all wide apart. But not a name would she breathe out. Neither then nor to this day. And by that I knew it was Mr. Denny. For no man but him would she be so still. Or not then, when you she did not yet know."
The color rushed into Herrick's face. But he could not speak and Mrs. Deutch went on. "I asked her not one thing more. I held her and tried to give her comfort, and at first she clung to me. She did not cry, but by and by she would sit alone, waiting, listening, and her nostrils made themselves large. But at last it was only my husband who came, and Christina flew up and looked at him. And her eyes were big and wild with questions, but still speak she would not. But my husband's face, Mr. Herrick, it was the face of him who has been struck, who has been stabbed. Not then nor now do I know why that look he has. But it is not gone, it grows worse. He said only to Christina, looking straight at her, 'You left your scarf!' and his voice had in it a sound that was hard. She looked at him a long time, and she said, 'Very well, then. I shall know what to do!' At that moment, see you, she said to herself, 'Me they will suspect, and not him!' And oh, my brave heart, her mind she made up: 'So be it!' We kept her there till just before dawn. And then, because of her white lace dress, we put upon her my old black coat and hat, and both of us went home with her that she might be the less looked at. She let herself in, and all the rest you know. Only—"
"Only that Deutch knows something more!"
"And in all our life the one with the other, it is to me the one thing he has not told. He is not a secret man. Mr. Herrick, here is what makes my heart heavy. This thing—it is something not good for our little girl or he would have told it long ago! But to-day when she vanishes like that other girl who was her friend, he tells it to the mother of Christina!"
So, that was why! Herrick rose. No hour seemed too late, no scene too strange. "Mrs. Hope will have to tell me!" he said.
Henrietta Deutch rose, too, and put her hands on his two shoulders, as if at once to comfort and control. She said, "She is not here!"
"Not where?"
"Not in New York. She is gone. She has fled away that she need not tell at all. A train to some other city where there are boats for Europe—he says it is best I know no more. He has gone West somewhere. You see, he must have thought Christina, too, has fled. And what he told her mother, it has made them not dare to stay. My poor boy!" said Mrs. Deutch, tightening her hold of Herrick, "my poor boy!"
"It's all right!" Herrick said, "It's all right! They're wrong, that's all! They're wrong!"
He moved up and down the room with long, excited strides. False lights of misery—horrible corpse candles, leading their lying way toward that which was bitterer than a new-made grave!—"Why, Denny did it! We all know that! You've just said so, yourself!"
"Ah, yes, truly. Surely! But—yet—"
"What could Deutch have seen that we didn't see? We were all there—he only went in with us. He may guess something—he can't know. What are we all afraid of?"
"And yet," said Mrs. Deutch, "we are all afraid!"
There was a brisk knock on the door. The newcomer smiled grimly at them from under a dripping hat brim. "I hope I'm welcome," he said. It was the District Attorney.
He seemed to take his own appearance quite naturally and perhaps he was not averse to their being stunned by it. Standing with his back against the door he removed his hat and rubbed his hand over the wet mark across his forehead. "Mrs. Deutch? As soon as my assistants get here I want to try an experiment in the Ingham apartment. You're rather an exceptional—janitress, madam! I think I'm going to ask you at once if there isn't some story connected with your marriage to Hermann Deutch. It looks as though there must have been scandal of some sort to account for it."
The wife's glow of indignation maintained in silence an unruffled dignity. After awhile she said very slowly, "It is true. There was a scandal. It did make our marriage."
Herrick's defensive frown faltered over a sense of something coming true. He knew, now, that he had always felt in that rich simplicity of Henrietta Deutch a superiority somehow mysterious. Yes, he had always seen that figure of domestic tranquillity as not wholly detached from a dense background, somehow somber and mysterious.
"Before you commit yourself on that point, just tell me who or what enforces obedience with a triangular knife?—Let her alone!"
For Mrs. Deutch had uttered a dreadful cry. It was low, but full of incredible pain.
Kane grinned triumphantly at Herrick. "Great heaven!" Herrick begged. "What is it? What do you know?"
"Here! Let's sit down and get at this! Mrs. Deutch, this is nearer than you think to our young lady. Best help me!"
"Wait! A moment! No, what I know it is far from Christina. It happened before she was born. But I will tell it. You shall judge."
A long painful breath labored from her bosom. Then she spoke.
"The scandal was this. My father died in prison. He was imprisoned for his life. He was accused that he had killed a child."
"Yes. Well, go on."
"It begins long before, with my home in Germany. My father was a merchant of wines there, and he had in business relations with a Neapolitan family named Gabrielli. Their son, Emile, was my brother's friend.——Emile Gabrielli, Herrick's Italian lawyer, who had suggested his novel!"
"I had but the one brother; for my mother was never strong and of her children only two grew up. We were very old fashioned; we lived in comfort but we had neither the new thoughts nor the new manners. Only my brother was very advanced. He was so modern that when he looked upon us, even, it gave him exasperation. His friend was not of his faith. But that was so old-fashioned a thought it could not be at all mentioned before him. Well, then, I—too—for one thing perhaps we are all enough advanced! I came to love Emile. He loved me, too. And no one was pleased—not even my brother! But, after a long time, when they began to think I, too, was falling ill like all the rest who died, we were betrothed. And my father sold his business out and bought a vineyard in Sicily, near to the estate of Emile's father, taking there my mother, whose health failed." Yes, with the bewildered indifference of his own emotion, Herrick remembered the miniature of which the parents of that sentimental gentleman had not been able to deprive him and recognized the changed original in Henrietta Deutch.
"And one morning, walking far before breakfast, my father came upon a dead little boy under a bush among some rocks. He brought it to our home in his arms; it was the baby of a poor farmer. It had been stabbed between the little shoulders. And there was a strange, three-cornered wound."
She stopped and her hands stirred in her lap. But she clasped them and went on. "My father was accused. Witnesses appeared against him with strange tales. How could we make ourselves believed. I have told you how he fared.
"Do you think my brother could rest? He left his law in Germany; he came to Sicily to fight, to hunt, to turn every stone. He was found like the child. There was the same three-cornered mark."
Kane gave a low whistle.
"My mother and I, we were all alone." She smoothed out a little fold in her dress. "We had but the one message from the family of my betrothed—that they withdrew the word of their son."
Kane looked up quickly. "Yes?" he urged. "And then?"
"Then came to us Hermann Deutch, who in the old days sold our wine. He gave us escort to Naples, for my mother could go no farther, and returned to attend our property. It was all in a ruin. The house had burned. The cattle were gone. The laborers, too, nor would any return. The land none would buy. It was a place accursed. Our money was soon all gone." She paused, struggling with a sudden sob. "Hermann Deutch, to stay on he had lost his position, and he took one that was poor but in Naples, to be near me. He was all that came near us, who had word or dealing with us, while my mother grew too weak to live. When she, too, died, I married him. There was the scandal, sir, to account for my marriage."
She looked with deep, mild scorn at Kane. He remained imperturbable, while Herrick blushed for him.
"There was one thing more. Mr. Deutch had spent much for us and before he could take me from Naples he must save something from what work he had. One month came upon another in that terrible city and we had not gone. So the time came when I, like other women, thought to have a child. One night there were fire-works at the seashore and, to liven my mind, he made me go. As we came home there was a lonely bit of beach, though toward the cars. Out of the dark a voice called some words at us and something fell—it rang on a stone at our feet. They had thrown a kind of dagger. Sirs," said Mrs. Deutch, "it was a triangular knife."
Kane gave a cry with a strange note of satisfaction.
But the tears were running down Mrs. Deutch's face. "The shock and the fear, they were too much for me. I never bore my child. God has never given me a child to love except Christina. Tell me what all this can be to her?"
"Do you know what aphasia is, Mrs. Deutch? And doesn't Mr. Deutch suffer, occasionally, from a confusion of words?"
"Not so much that it could be called by a name. Except that one time. Mr. Deutch has been all his life an excited man. And when that knife fell at my feet he was like one crazed. Then he forgot language, sir, and could not speak well for days. English and German he ran together, and what of French he knows with what Italian. Though he knew well what he wished to say. And there is yet a smear in his brain where the words may sometimes a little mix together. But—Christina?"
"Mrs. Deutch, what did all this suggest to you? Of what did you think you were the victims?"
"Imagine yourselves that it was in a time of one of those outcries against Jewish people which come like stupid fever as though nations, ignorantly, have eaten too much in strong sun. They needed to blame some one and, just then, in blaming us they could blame as they would."
"H'm!—Do either of you know what happened at the Tombs this afternoon?"
"The papers say that Mr. Denny has tried to kill himself."
"Well, and very obliging of them. But, for a desperate man, he gave himself rather queer wounds—scratches in the shoulder and arm. The guard ran for the doctor and seems to be running yet. But where was our suicide really cut to the bone? On the insides of his hands!"
He had produced his sensation.
"The guard was one of the new Italian contingent. And the blow aimed by an Italian, then, at the prisoner's heart and caught by his arm, was given with a triangular knife!"
They were all three on their feet.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Deutch, for my opening gallery play with you. I didn't know the tragedy I was running into. And our friend Herrick, here, and the excellent Wheeler both tried to hoodwink me to-night when I asked them straight questions. You're going to tell me the truth, I know, for now I'm telling it to you. We got hold of your husband at the Pennsylvania Station. Our intelligent police tried to frighten him with the stab of Denny's triangular prick and they succeeded in putting him clean out of the game with aphasia—sensory aphasia. Word blindness—speech or writing—heavens, what a gag! But don't be alarmed; fortunately it goes with a perfectly clear mind and it's only temporary. Only—time's everything! Well, it gave me the cue to come up here and dig for some three-cornered mystery, blackmailing if procurable, in Deutch's life. Every District-Attorney his own detective! Yes—when it's this District-Attorney and this crime—Amen! Amen!—What is it?"
"Oh, sir, the Italian!"
"Yes?"
"All morning one hung about the house of Mrs. Hope. Not coming near, but watching, watching. A little, slim, soft, pretty man, in gentleman's clothes. And it made her afraid."
"Ah!"
"Look here, the fellow in the park—the one with the message—he was an Italian! They all were!"
"Exactly! Now—Mrs. Deutch, what was that old secret in the life of the Hopes which turned the daughter into a cynic and a hater of social conventions? Ah, come, please!"
"Oh, sir, that was not a great thing!"
"What was it?"
"The sister of Mr. Hope found letters from him—old letters when Christina was fourteen—written to her who was afterwards his wife. The marriage had been so long forbidden, they were driven to see each other so seldom, secretly, alone, and in strange places. Sir, they were in love and they were very young."
"This was not known till Christina was fourteen?"
"No, sir."
"Then her birth was, of course, legitimate."
"Oh, of a surety!"
"And this was all?"
"All!"
Herrick found himself listening with a strange excitement. He could not have told why he had a sudden sense of having touched a spring. That brief revelation of rash love—what was there in that? Such a thing might loom large in a society novel; in the vast, mixed, multitudinous life of men and women it was small enough. How could it arrest his attention at a time like this? As though some small, mysterious, irrelevant key had been slipped into his hand! By the fleeing figure of Mrs. Hope? That amiable, vacant, and correct lady, how could any young and long-dead folly of hers, reaching across a generation, strike down Ingham and shatter a little world? "The little pitted speck"—What was that? What was he remembering now? "The wages of sin are more sinning!" Why, that was the motto he had taken for his novel? Sin? Nonsense! "The little pitted speck in garnered fruit that, rotting inward,—"
He woke himself roughly to hear Mrs. Deutch adding, "But they lived with that hard woman, she and her mother, in poverty. And to have it nagged at and flaunted at the mother, it made her a morbid child. No more. But now, sir, the Italians?"
"The Italians, indeed! Mrs. Deutch, as you owe them such a grief, as you believe in justice and the protection of the weak, as you have had enough of government by the triangular knife, give me the name of your Christina's Italian host!"