Persons Unknown Part 38

"Then, Miss Hope--was not in Ingham's rooms that night?"

There was a dead pause. Denny looked hard in Kane's face. "Yes," he said, "she was. She came there to try and prevent our quarrel." The men who had seen the moving-picture of the shadow breathed again.

"What did she do when you fired?"

"I sent her down to the Deutches to get a doctor. I wanted her out of the way, and I switched off the lights so she need not see how useless any doctor was!"

"How did you yourself escape?"

"Up the back stairs, across the roof, into the next house."

"But she went out of the room before you did?"

The earth swam before Herrick's eyes, and then he heard Denny's "Yes."

"Then since you were the last to leave, explain how you were able to bolt the door behind you?"

"I didn't bolt it behind me. I stayed in the room."

Herrick lifted his head.

"I had dropped my revolver and in feeling for it on the rug I got my hand stained." He spoke lower and lower, but every now and then his voice flickered, licking upward like a flame, and cracked. "I ran into the bathroom and put it under the faucet, and after that it was too late to get away. People were peering and listening from their doors. I got in a blind panic--you've noticed I'm upset by jail!--I knew I was cornered--I bolted the door. But in doing that I saw how close the portieres hung." Herrick drew a long breath. "I thought once I could clear that outside room a little I could make a dash for it. To do that it was necessary to remove the magnet. I dragged Ingham's body into the bedroom. The bed's head was toward the portieres. I went and stood in its shadow, in the portieres' folds. Then they burst in. When Deutch held the portiere aside for the policeman I was so close at his back that he touched me. When he saw me he screened me almost completely.

They had been so obliging as to clear the hall. There was plenty of noise; the men were opening the closet door, a motor whirring, a trolley pa.s.sing the corner; they all had their backs to me, and I made but a couple of steps of it into the hall. A few moments later I had the honor and privilege of addressing Mr. Herrick, and of hearing from him that the murderer was a lady and had not been caught."

"Deutch screened you, you say? Why?"

A queer little color came into Denny's face. "I'm fated to be ridiculous," he said. "I had seen a hooded cloak of Christina's lying on the table; it was Christina's own blue-gray; just the shade of the portieres. The hood covered my head. The shadow back there is very deep.

Well, Deutch knew Christina had been there, you know. He must have left his apartment just before she got to it, for he was simply one funk of anxiety about her." Denny had to struggle up, for the interview had told on him terribly, and he kept one hand on the back of his chair. "I'm of no greatly imposing bulk," he said. "And Christina Hope is la tall woman!"

A cry came from within the portieres. Denny, his self-control utterly shattered, flashed round. Henrietta Deutch greeted him with a radiant face.

"Ah, sirs, thank G.o.d! Oh, oh, it was that he saw! Mr. Deutch saw one he took for her! And Christina it could not have been! He was not two minutes gone when she was with me!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Deutch! I couldn't have trusted even you for the truth of that point if I'd simply asked you! But we must make sure that was what he saw--that and no other proof. Here's the same depth of shadow, then, and the same portieres. Take this couch cover, Denny, for a cloak. Stand back, and screen your face with it.--Wade, bring in Deutch."

Herrick shuddered and antic.i.p.ation choked him. This man had suffered so much for Christina, and now he was to decide her fate! The superintendent stepped into a silent room. All those eyes fed on him.

The place cast its spell of horror. His plump, pale, sagging face quivered with dread; his eyes floundered from Herrick to Kane, and a kind of dumb moan burst from him. Kane pointed to the portieres and his panic was complete.

"Show him, Herrick. Just as he stood, that night."

He stood there, dizzy with bewilderment, and suddenly he screamed.

Gasping, he clutched at the portiere through which some touch, some motion had repeated for him a dreadful moment. Behind it he once more beheld a dim, blue figure. He fell on his knees, strangling, his breath raving and rattling in his mouth, and brought out like a convulsion the one word "Christina!" Sobbing, he caught at a fragment of the cloak and covered it with piteous, protecting kisses. Denny let the cloaking stuff fall from him, and, stepping out, broken as a thing thrown away, stood in full view with hanging head. Every eye was fastened upon Deutch.

He had no need for words. What he had believed himself to have seen, what he had suffered, the mad relief, the almost ludicrous exultation in what he now learned, pa.s.sed one after the other across that tormented visage and broke in one happy blubber as he ducked his head in his wife's skirts.

The relief that shook Herrick touched, too, every one in the room. No man there had really wished to sentence a girl. It was as though, at last, they had all got air to breathe. When into this new air Denny's voice broke with a sick snarl.

"And do you think you've saved her? You miserable, gabbling fools, did you think your Arm of Justice was her friend? Why, she knew no more of it than you do! If they've got the girl there, she's fighting, accusing, threatening them, she's facing her death! And now in G.o.d's name, can you hurry? Hurry!"

CHAPTER V

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LIGHT: WHERE CHRISTINA WAS

At nine o'clock on the morning of Friday, the day when Christina disappeared, there stood at the little interior station of Waybrook, awaiting the train from New York, a touring-car which had very recently been painted black. In the body of this car an observing person might have descried a couple of indentations which, were he of a sensational turn of mind, would have suggested to him the marks of bullets. This touring-car was, at that time of day, the only vehicle in waiting, and when the train rushed on again from its brief pause, only one person had alighted from it.

This was a tall woman, heavily veiled, wearing a long dark ulster, considerably too large for her, and a rather shabby black hat. This woman walked directly up to the touring-car and flung herself into it without a word. When the chauffeur turned and said to her, in surprise, "You all alone?" she responded, "Yes. And in twice the hurry on that account!" The curt command of the words did not conceal the quality of a voice which all the newspapers in New York were that morning praising; and the face from which she then lifted her veil, although furrowed with anger and ravaged with grief, was the unforgettable face of Christina Hope. She sat for the five miles which led to her destination with her eyes closed and her hands wrung tight together in her lap.

The touring-car stopped at the gate of an old yellow house, very carefully kept, its bright windows screened by curtains rather elegantly pretty; and a flagged path leading up to its bra.s.s-knockered door. On either side of the flagged path stretched a garden, a little sobered by its autumn coloring, but still abounding in the country flowers which to Bryce Herrick's admiration had kept Christina's house so sweet.

The door was opened by a small, square, hard-featured, close-mouthed old woman, very neatly dressed, with gray hair and a white ap.r.o.n. In other words, by the occasional cas.h.i.+er at the Italian table d'hote. This woman, as the chauffeur had done, looked over Christina's shoulder in expectation and then said, grudgingly, "Oh, it's you!"

"As you see," said Christina, pressing inside. "But I shan't trouble you long. I should like some coffee, if you please. I've had no breakfast."

The woman stood still, staring at Christina's ill-fitting clothes and sunken eyes, and the girl added, with the same peremptory coldness which had marked her manner from the beginning, "I must ask you to be quick. I have only come to relieve you of our guest."

"You have!" said the old woman. "Who says so?"

"I think you heard me say so," Christina responded, from the foot of the stairs.

The old woman hurried after her. "Yes, I daresay. But by whose orders?"

Christina turned round. "Who owns this place?" she demanded.

"Well, you do."

"Who pays for every mouthful that is eaten here and for everything that is brought into this house? Who makes your living for you?"

"You do, I suppose."

"Well, then, I suppose, by my orders. Where is she?"

"She's in your room, the same as ever."

"Locked in, of course?"

"Of course."

"The key, please."

The old woman hesitated, then she took the key out of her pocket. And at that moment Christina noticed something. There came from the floor above the sound of a voice speaking rapidly, incessantly, and indistinctly like a child talking to itself. An expression of amused and contemptuous malice broke upon the old woman's face and she handed over the key with greater readiness. "Much good may it do you!" said she, turning toward the kitchen.

Christina s.n.a.t.c.hed it and fled upstairs. "Bring the coffee up here, please," she called over her shoulder.

For all her haste she paused at the top of the stair, and, with her hand over her heart, listened to the babbling voice. Then she turned to the right and knocked on a closed door. The voice ran on, heedlessly.

"Nancy!" Christina called. "Nancy! It's I, Chris! Dear Nancy, I've come to take you home."