Persons Unknown Part 29

"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 circ.u.mstances 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, G.o.d 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 n.o.body! 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.

"Je suis aussi sans desir Autre 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?"