Persons Unknown Part 31

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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 G.o.d, 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!"

BOOK THIRD

WILL O' THE WISP

CHAPTER I

GLEAMS IN THE RAIN: WHEELER'S STORY

Herrick made no outcry at Wheeler's words. He simply stood looking out into the wet and windy s.p.a.ces 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 a.s.sume 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.--"G.o.d, 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. .h.i.t 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 G.o.d'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 unG.o.dly 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. '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 G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.ned diamonds and tell him to go to h.e.l.l! 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 circ.u.mstance--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!