Persons Unknown Part 4

CHAPTER VII

HERRICK HAS A BUSIEST DAY

There was a time coming when Herrick was to salute as prophetic what he now noted with a grim amus.e.m.e.nt; that from the moment the shadow sprang upon the blind the current of his life was changed. Peopled, busy, adventurous, it had pa.s.sed, as one might say, into active circulation.

He was suddenly in the center of the stage.

This was brought home to him rather sharply when Deutch had been not five minutes gone. On the exit of that gentleman Herrick's first thought had been for Miss Hope's photograph. Although an actress seems less a woman than a type, yet, since, to any stray gossip, she was recognizable as a real person, she mustn't, at this critical time, be left hanging on his wall to excite comment. He had scarcely laid the photograph on his desk to compare it with a cut in one of the newspapers when information that he was "wanted on the 'phone" made him drop the paper atop of his dethroned Heroine and hurry into the hall. And the place to which the telephone invited him was the Ingham publis.h.i.+ng house.

The message was from old Gideon Corey, the prop and counselor of the House of Ingham, father and son. It told Herrick that Ingham senior had just arrived in New York and had not yet gone to an hotel; he had turned instinctively to his office, where he besought Herrick, whose name he had recognized, to come to him and tell him what there was to tell. It was only the piteous human longing to be brought nearer, by some detail, by some vision later than our own, to those to whom we shall never be near again. Herrick flinched from the task, but there could be no question of his obedience; and he came out from that interview humbly, softened by the gentleness of such a grief. It seemed to him that he had never seen so tender a dignity of reserve; that beautiful old gentleman who had wished to question him had also wished to spare him; wished, too,--and taken the loyalest precautions--to spare some one else.

"I don't know if you are aware, Mr. Herrick," Ingham's father had said to him, "that my son was engaged to be married?"

"I had just heard--"

"Then you will understand how especially painful it is that there should be any mention of a--another lady--Miss Hope is a sweet girl," said the old gentleman, "a sweet, good girl--" He paused, as if he were feeling for words delicate enough for what he had to say; and then a little breath that was like a cry broke from him. "My son was a wild boy, Mr.

Herrick, but he loved her--he loved her! Will it be necessary to add to her grief by telling her that, at the very last, he was entertaining--?

I wanted her for my daughter! May she not keep even the memory of my son?"

Herrick could have groaned aloud. "Only tell me," he said, "what can I do?"

"Mr. Ingham means to ask"--Corey interposed--"whether, at the--the inquest, it will be necessary to lay so much emphasis on that shadow you observed?"

Thus, for the second time that day, from what different mouths and under what different circ.u.mstances, came the same request! And there pa.s.sed over Herrick that little s.h.i.+ver of the skin which takes place, the country people tell you, when some one steps over your grave.

"Could you not a.s.sume that you might have been mistaken? That it might have been a man's shadow--?"

"I was not mistaken--Why, look here!" he continued, eagerly. "Can't you see that it would be the worst kind of a mistake for me to change now?

They'd think I'd heard who the woman was, and was trying to s.h.i.+eld her!

And, besides," he added to Corey, "it's your only clue." It occurred to him, as he spoke, that Ingham's family might be concerned for his reputation rather than for vengeance; this continued to seem probable even while they a.s.sured him that it was not the police, but Miss Hope alone, from whom they wished to keep the circ.u.mstance; they were thinking of what would have been the dead man's dearest wish. What she read in the papers they could perhaps deny; but what she heard at the inquest--

When, however, they reluctantly agreed with him that it was too late for any effectual reticence it was with unabated kindliness that Corey went with him into the hall. "We remain infinitely obliged to you, Mr.

Herrick, and--later on--we mustn't lose track of you again--Well, good-morning! Good-morning!"

It was nearly afternoon and Herrick stepped out from the dark, old-fas.h.i.+oned elevator into its sunny heat, which occasional spattering showers had vainly tried to dissipate, with a very highly charged sense of moving among vivid personalities. Concerning two of these there persisted a certain lack of rea.s.surance, and as that of Ingham brightened or darkened the shadow herself now shone as a tigress devouring, now an avenging angel. Sometimes her figure stood out clearly, by itself; sometimes it wavered and changed, and pa.s.sed, whether Herrick willed it or not, into the figure of Christina Hope.

Then, whether for Deutch's or Ingham's sake, or for Evadne's, there was something oppressive in the suns.h.i.+ne.

But the young fellow was not enough of a hypocrite to pretend, even to himself, that all this excitement, all this acquaintance with swift events, with salient people under the influence of strong emotion, all this quick, warm, and strong feeling which had been aroused in himself, were anything but very welcome. Nor were his adventures over yet. His walk brought him, with a thoughtful forehead but all in a breathing glow of interest, to City Hall Park; a spot where he had loitered that summer a score of times, wearying vaguely for a friendly face. To-day, his brisk step had scarcely carried him within its boundaries before he heard his name called and, turning, was accosted by a _Record_ acquaintance of six years ago whose recognition displayed the utmost eagerness.

The spirit of New York City, which had hitherto considered him merely one of her returned failures, had now made up her mind to show what she could do for such a darling as the near-eye-witness of a murder. He found himself hailed into the office of the _Record_, whence they had been madly telephoning him this long while, and immediately commissioned, at the price of a high, temporary specialist, to report the Ingham inquest, and to write a Sunday special of the murder!

He thought of Ingham's father, and "It isn't a tasty job!" he said to his old chief. But it swept upon him what material it was; it felt, in his empty hand, like the key of success; and then, there is always in our ears at such a time the whisper that it will certainly be done by somebody. "And never, surely," Herrick wrote his sister that night, "so chastely, so justly, with either such dash or such discretion, as by our elegant selves!"

This, at least, was the view which the Ingham office took of it. Corey reported the family as glad to leave it in Herrick's hands; while a tremor at once of regret, pleasure and superst.i.tion p.r.i.c.ked over Herrick's nerves as Corey followed up this statement with an invitation through the _Record_ phone to meet him at the Pilgrims' Club and talk some things over during lunch!

"To shake the iron hand of Fate" was becoming so much the rule that Herrick was nearly capable of feeling gripped by it even in the somewhat remote circ.u.mstances that the Pilgrims' had been founded as a club of actors and, overrun as it was by men of all professions and particularly literary men, it had remained essentially a club of actors--while he, Bryce Herrick, hastening toward it through a smart shower, had at first conceived of his novel as a play and then, in Switzerland, been baffled by the inaccessibility of that world! His novel, of whom the heroine had been so unwittingly Christina Hope!--However, the low, wide portals of the Pilgrims' received him under their great, wrought iron lanterns without excitement and he pa.s.sed, self-consciously and with a certain shyness, into the cooling twilight of a hallway still perfectly calm and over the l.u.s.trous, glinting sweeps of easy and quite indifferent stairs up to an "apartment brown and booklined" that looked out on a green park.

At one of the windows Corey stood talking to a dark, heavy, vigorous man whose face was familiar to Herrick and whom Corey introduced as Robert Wheeler. It was a name of note but Herrick bewilderedly exclaimed "Miss Hope's manager?" Two or three men turned to Wheeler and grinned and he, himself, said with a gruff chuckle, yes, he supposed it had come to that, already! Herrick's embarra.s.sed tactlessness sought refuge in looking out of doors.

The famous square had kept its ancient privacy secure from all the city's noise and hurry. It was still, secluded; self-sufficient with an old-world grace; and the green park shone fresh after the shower, its flower beds and the window boxes of its grave, dark houses gave out a delicate, glimmering sparkle along with their moist and newly piercing sweetness. Nothing could have been more tranquil except the cool s.p.a.ces, the dusky, sunny, airy, oak-hued shadows of the wide-windowed club--neither could anything have been less like Mrs. Grubey's or even Professor Herrick's idea of what an actors' club would be. The whole place seemed to rebuke its visitor, more graciously than had Hermann Deutch, for the feverish suggestion which Christina's calling had hinted round her name. The blithe young gentlemen in light clothes, fussing over with cigarette smoke and real and unreal English accents, the older men, less saddled and bridled and fit for the fray but still with something at once lazy and boyish in the quick sensibility of their faces, appeared to have no very lurid intensities up their sleeve and amid so much serene and humorous a.s.surance Ingham senior's "sweet, good girl," Hermann Deutch's "Miss Christina" seemed better founded in kind and credible probabilities. She bloomed, indeed, hedged with all proprieties in the sound of Wheeler's voice saying, "But must Miss Hope appear at the inquest?"

"Yes," said Corey, tartly, "since her name will add to its notoriety!

Have you forgotten our coroner?" Wheeler lifted his thick brows in annoyance and with the same sourness of inflection Corey added, "Is it possible any corner of the universe can for a moment forget Cuyler Ten Euyck!"

Herrick started and looked at the two men with quick eagerness. "You don't mean--"

"Precisely! The mighty in high places--Peter Winthrop Brewster Cuyler Ten Euyck! No less!"

Wheeler broke into a curse and then into his deep laugh, and said Miss Hope's manager would do well to clear out before any Sherlock Holmes with wings got to throwing his mouth around here. "I can stand his always bringing down a curtain with 'Seventy times a millionaire--the world is at my feet!' A man has to believe in something! But it's his taking himself for a tin District-Attorney-on-wheels that'll get his poor jaw broken one of these days!"

Herrick's curiosity was roused to certain reminiscences and he went on putting them together even while he followed Corey downstairs and out onto an open gallery whose tables overlooked a little garden. As soon as the waiter left them he asked Corey, "But--I've been so long away--this coroner can't be the same Ten Euyck--"

"Can you think there are two?"

Well, the world is certainly full of entertainment! A man born to one of the proudest names and greatest fortunes of his time serving as coroner--coroner! That was what certain references of McGarrigle's meant, certain newspaper flippancies. "Mr. Ten Euyck!" Herrick's extreme youth had witnessed the historic thrill that shook society when the full significance of the great creature's visiting-cards first burst upon a startled and ingenuous nation! But even then Mr. Ten Euyck must have aspired beyond social thrills and seen himself as a man of parts and public conscience. It was not so much later that Herrick remembered him as a literary dabbler, an amateur statesman, endeavoring by means of elegant Ciceronics to waken his cla.s.s to its duty as leader of the people! He had then seemed merely a solemn a.s.s who, having learned during a long residence abroad an aristocratic notion of government, took his caste and its duties much too seriously.--"But why coroner?"

Despair, apparently, over that caste's lack of seriousness! There had been talk of abolis.h.i.+ng the coroners.h.i.+p, Corey said, and Ten Euyck had run for it. If irresponsible idlers dared to slight even the presidency in their choice of careers let them see what could be done with the least considerable of offices! If younger sons dared lessen cla.s.s-power by neglecting government, let them see to what Mr. Ten Euyck could condescend in the public service! It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned, an old-world ambition; the man, essentially stiff-necked, essentially egotistical, was in no sense a reformer. "He pushes his office, upon my word, to the diversion of the whole town; holding court, if you please, as if he were launching a thunderbolt, making speeches and denunciations, and taking himself for a kind of District Attorney.--I may as well say, Mr.

Herrick, that it's a black bitterness to me that that pretentious puppy should have authority in--in dealing with Mr. James. There was never anything cordial between them; in fact, quite the contrary. We refused a book of his once!"

"But, great heavens,--"

"It was a book of plays, Mr. Herrick; blank verse and Roman soldiery--with orations! I don't deny Mr. James's letter was a trifle saucy; he was often not conciliating; no, not conciliating! Well, now, it's Ten Euyck's turn. If he can soil Mr. James's memory in Miss Hope's eyes, why, that will be just to his taste, believe me. Now I come to think of it, I believe Miss Hope herself is rather in his black books!

It seems to me she once took part in one of the plays, and it failed. I tell you all this, Mr. Herrick, because James Ingham had the highest admiration for you, and had great pleasure in the hope of bringing out your novel."

Herrick gaped at him in an astonishment which had not so much as become articulate before--such is our mortal frailty--his slight, but hitherto persistent, repulsion from the dead man was shaken to its foundation and moldered in dust away.

"Yes, when we are ourselves again, you must bring in that ma.n.u.script.

Yes, yes, he wished it! They were almost the last words I had from him.

He was very pleased to get your letter, very pleased. He was talking about it to Stanley, his young brother, and to me; we were all there yesterday--think of it, Mr. Herrick, yesterday!--working out his ideas for our new Weekly. He was always an enthusiast, a keen enthusiast, and the Weekly was his latest enthusiasm. Its politics would have been very different from Mr. Ten Euyck's--"

A friendly visage at another table favored them with a sidelong contortion and a warning wink. Just behind them a shrewd voice ceased abruptly and a metallic tone responded, "Yes, but you--you're a man with a mania!"

The first voice replied, "Well, you're down on criminals and I'm down on crime."

Then Ten Euyck's was again lifted. "You're out after a criminal whom you think corrupting and to wipe him out you'll pa.s.s by fifty of the plainest personal guilt! In my view n.o.body but the corruptible is corrupted. Any person who commits a crime belongs in the criminal cla.s.s."

"Crime may end in the criminal cla.s.s," the other voice took up the challenge, "but it begins at home. You can't always pounce upon the decayed core. But if you observe a very little speck on a healthy surface, one of two things--either you can cut it away and save the apple, or your tunneling will lead you farther and farther in, it will open wider and wider and the speck will vanish, automatically, because the whole rotten fruit will fall open in your hand."

"Delightful, when it does! But in this short life I prefer the pounce!"

By this time everybody was harkening and Herrick ventured to turn his chair and look round. He beheld a sallow man, nearer forty than thirty and as tall as himself or taller, but of a straighter and stiffer height; with a long head, a long handsome nose and chin, long hands and long ears. This elongated countenance was not without contradictions.

Under the spa.r.s.e, squarely cut mustache Herrick was surprised to find the lips a little pouting, and the glossily black eyes were prominent and full. Fastidiously as he was dressed there persisted something funereal in the effect; forward of each ear a shadow of clipped whisker leant him the dignity of a daguerreotype. He spoke neatly, distinctly.

His excellent, strong voice was dry, cold and inflexible. On the whole Herrick's easy and contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt received a slight set-back.

"I prefer the pounce!" To be pounced upon by that bony intensity might not be amusing at all!