Persons Unknown Part 11

"Well, it's a pretty theory, my dear young lady, and I'm sure you mean to work it out for us all you can. So give us a hint where this bullet, coming through an open window, was fired from."

"It could have been fired from the apartment opposite. Across the entrance-court. You remember, the policeman who went in there found that the windows exactly--do you call it 'tallied'?"

"Very good, Miss Hope. If it were an unoccupied apartment. But it is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Willing, and Mrs. Willing was in the apartment the entire evening."

"Yes," said Christina, turning and looking pleasantly at the lady mentioned, "alone." Then she was silent.

After a staggered instant, the coroner asked, "And what became of this lady who ran out into the hall?"

"Well, of course," said Christina, sweetly, "if it was Mrs. Willing--"

The Willings leaped to their feet. "This is ridiculous! This is an outrage! Why!" cried the husband, "his blind opposite our sitting-room was down all the time. There isn't even a hole through it where a shot would have pa.s.sed!"

"Oh, isn't there?" asked Christina. "You see, it wasn't I who knew that!"

"What do you mean, you wicked girl! How dare you! Why, you heard the policeman say that it was only when he looked through our bedroom that he could see into Mr. Ingham's apartment--"

"And wasn't it in the bedroom that the body was found?"

"Miss Hope!" said the coroner, sternly, "I must ask you not to perpetrate jokes. You know perfectly well that your implied charge against Mrs. Willing is perfectly ridiculous--"

"Is it?" Christina interrupted, "she implied it about me!"

And for the first time she lifted to his a glance alight with the faintest mockery of malice; a wintry gleam, within the white exhaustion of her face. Then,--if all the time she had been playing a part--then, if ever, she was off her guard.

And she could not see what Herrick, from his angle, could see very well; that the coroner had been quietly slipping something from his desk into his hand, and was now dangling it behind his back.

This something was the scarf found on Ingham's table--that white scarf with its silky border, cloudy, watery, of blue glimmering into gray. How the tender, misty coloring recalled that room of Ingham's!

"Don't you know very well, Miss Hope," the coroner went on, "that Mrs.

Willing had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Ingham's death?"

"How can I? You see, I wasn't there!"

"So that, by no possibility," said the coroner, "could this be yours?"

He launched the scarf, like a soft, white serpent, almost in her face.

And the girl shrank from it, with a low cry. She might as well have knotted it about her neck.

And in the horrible stillness that followed her cry, the coroner said, "Your nerves seem quite shattered, Miss Hope. I was only going to ask you if you didn't think that ornament, in case it was not yours, might have been left on Mr. Ingham's table by the young lady who called on him that afternoon."

With a brave attempt at her former mild innocence, Christina responded, "I don't know."

"Neither can you tell us, I suppose,--it would straighten matters out greatly--who that caller was?"

"No, I can't. I'm sorry."

"Think again, Miss Hope. Are there so many smartly dressed and pretty young ladies of your acquaintance, with curly red hair and, as Mr. Dodd informs us, with cute little feet?"

Christina was silent.

"What? And yet she knows you well enough to say to your fiance--'I don't wish to get Christina into trouble'!" Whose was the smile of malice, now! "Come, come, Miss Hope, you're trifling with us! Tell us the address of this lady, and you'll make us your debtors!"

The girl opened her pale lips to breathe forth, "I can't tell you! I don't know!"

"Let us a.s.sist your memory, Miss Hope, by recalling to you the lady's name. Her name is Ann Cornish."

Herrick's nerves leaped like a frightened horse. And then he saw Christina start from her chair, and, casting round her a wild glance that seemed to cry for help, drop back again and put her hands over her face. A dozen people sprang to their feet.

Mrs. Hope ran to her daughter's side, closely followed by Mrs. Deutch.

The two women, crying forth indignation and comfort, and exclaiming that the girl was worn out and ought to be in bed, rubbed Christina's head, and began to chafe her hands. She was half fainting; but when a gla.s.s of whiskey had appeared from somewhere and Mrs. Deutch had forced a few drops between her lips, Christina, unlike the heroine of romance whose faints always refuse stimulants, lifted her head and drank a mouthful greedily. She sat there then, breathing through open lips, with a trace of color mounting in her face.

Then the coroner, once more commanding attention, held up a slip of pasteboard. "This visiting-card," he said, "is engraved with Miss Cornish's name, but with no address. It was found leaning against a candlestick on Mr. Ingham's piano, as though he wished to keep it certainly in mind. As a still further reminder, Mr. Ingham himself had written on it in pencil--'At four.'"

Christina, with the gentlest authority, put back her friends. She rose, slowly and weakly, to her feet. "Mr. Coroner," she said, "I wish to correct a false impression; may I?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mr. Coroner," she said, "I wish to correct a false impression; may I?"]

"That's what we're here for, my dear young lady," the coroner scornfully replied.

"I have said nothing," she went on, "that is not true, but I have allowed something to be inferred which is not true." She pressed her hands together and drew a long breath. "It is true that I was engaged to Mr. Ingham. And when you asked me if our understanding was unimpaired at the time of his death, I said yes; for, believe me, our understanding then was better than it had ever been before. But that was not what you meant. I will answer what you meant, now. At the time of his death, I was not engaged to marry Mr. Ingham."

"You were not! Why not?"

"We had quarreled."

"When?"

"The day before he died."

An intense excitement began to prevail. Herrick longed to stand up and shout, to warn her, to muzzle her. Good G.o.d! was it possible she didn't see what she was doing? The coroner, weary man, sat back with a long sigh of satisfaction. His whole att.i.tude said, "Now we're coming to it."

"And may one ask an awkward question, Miss Hope? Who broke the engagement?"

"I did."

"Oh, of course, _naturally_. And may one ask why?"

"Because I began to think that life with Mr. Ingham would not be possible to me."

"But on what grounds?"

"He was grossly and insanely jealous," said Christina, flus.h.i.+ng. "Some women enjoy that sort of thing; I don't."

"Jealous of anyone in particular, Miss Hope?"

"Only," said Christina, "of everyone in particular."