Persons Unknown Part 28

"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 s.h.i.+eld 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.siveness, 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 c.o.c.k 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 att.i.tude 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--"

"d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+eld. "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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

CHAPTER XI

KEEPING CHRISTINA OUT OF IT

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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.serted 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 prompt.i.tude Herrick obeyed. As he was shown into the office the first person his eye lighted upon was Christina.

CHAPTER XII

AULD ACQUAINTANCE: WHAT CHRISTINA SAW

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 circ.u.mstance, 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 att.i.tude 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 phosph.o.r.escence 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 simply _for_ him, 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 pa.s.ses. It's a pity we can't pretend to be engaged--it would interest every one so!--How about money, Will?"