SEARCH-LIGHTS FLASHED IN THE EYES: KANE'S STORY
"Well, for one thing," Kane said, "no mortal creature ever looked at
that girl and thought her a quitter." He was standing at Ingham's table,
wrinkling his eyebrows at the storied blind. "I've come within the
fascinations of that young person myself, but I don't think it's
infatuation which makes me say that she didn't drop down in a dead faint
yesterday afternoon, just to pass the time. When those clear eyes of
hers looked at that lock of hair she learned something that astonished
and horrified her. From that moment she made up her mind to go somewhere
and, at the appointed hour, go she did. Devil take her for not confiding
in Mrs. Deutch! She meant, I daresay, to return. But she must have been
greeted with the news of the moving picture advertisement and thought
herself very well off where she was. Eventually, she'll pull some string
from there."
He began putting out all lights but the table-lamp.
"I fancied, at first, the mother had followed, for she lied about going
to Europe. We've had every steamship and railway line watched since long
before she left, so she's not beyond the scope of trolleys. But she'd
only be a nuisance to the girl, nor is she one to pursue risks--more
likely, she just skipped out early to avoid the rush. All sorts of
intimidating things have happened lately; then, last night, Christina
threatened her with some exposure, this morning she was frightened by an
Italian, and the climax has been capped by whatever it was Deutch told
her--Don't jump! No, I'm no mind-reader. But I had, of course, the
Deutch apartment, as well as yours, wired for a dictograph. Useful thing
a dictograph--especially when there are ladies about!"
With a happy indifference to the effect of this statement upon Herrick
he cast about the room, appearing to sniff up its suggestions and to
compare them with a vision in his mind's eye. Absorbed, elate, on edge,
tingling with some suspended energy, as he raised the blind and peered
out he radiated a good humor somehow inhuman.
"That wasn't a taxi? I'm expecting a couple of my boys and," he grinned,
"poor Ten Euyck!" He disappeared, bent on examining the bedroom.
Herrick still stood, dumb and raging, with his back against the door. In
his impotent rebellion against Kane's inferences he had been almost
indifferent to the fateful setting of the new scene in that night's
hurrying kinetoscope. But slowly this had begun to assume its natural
imaginative sway. There were the dim blue walls framed in their outline
of smooth, black wood. There before him was the long white blind; to his
left the piano where Ingham had sat playing; by stretching out his right
hand he could touch the portieres of the room in which they had found
Ingham's body. It was all in order now. The cushions of the couch had
been smoothed and set up. The chair that had lain overturned beside the
table had been stood in its proper place, at the edge of the portieres,
near the door. The newspapers and ashes, the siphon and half-empty glass
had been cleared away. The little puddle by the piano stool, too, was
gone. All was in order; Ingham's hand might have been about to draw
those portieres, he might have stepped between them to tell--what? What,
the poor fellow persisted, was there to tell? He knew the secret of the
shadow on the blind, the secret of the shot in Ingham's breast. Only
the one thing was unknown--Who had contrived to bolt the door? That he
had always felt the puzzle's essence and its answer; there stole through
him again that sense of a skeleton still locked within those walls to be
discovered with some recognizing shock; once more his fancy began to
search through those hollow rooms in desperate hope, driven by that
superstition, by the obstinate unreason with which a starving hand
continues to fumble in an empty pocket. Futilest of occupations! The
sense of shamed stupidity, of failure in Christina's cause, warned him
with a squelching sneer that he was the merest pawn in Kane's hand and
that the room would yield its secret, if it had one, to Kane and not to
him. At any rate, how could that secret find Christina? And, if he were
not looking for Christina, what was he doing there?
As he turned to go it was Kane who came back through the portieres and
said, "Sit down, for heaven's sake! Don't stand there glaring at me as
if I were Ingham's corpse!"
The sharpness of his entrance suggested something.
Herrick answered with his hand on the knob, "I'm virtually a prisoner, I
suppose?"
"Oh, don't you care to sit out the show?"
"If I left here should I be arrested?"
"Arrested's an exaggeration."
"I should be shadowed, then?"
"Well, my dear fellow, there've been so many disappearances! And you're
so near the storm-center--you make such a sensitive barometer!"
Herrick dropped on to the couch as a mouse might give itself up to a cat
and leaned forward, frowning, motionless.
"It's a great game, this, of 'Vanishing Lady'! But I don't mind telling
you that it's the Italian background to the vanishings that interests
us. An obscure young girl--but a great friend of Christina Hope's--is
the first to vanish. She sends an appeal for aid to Christina Hope,
through the Arm of Justice.
"A publisher--betrothed to Christina Hope--receives blackmailing letters
from the Arm of Justice, and is murdered.
"A young author--also betrothed to Christina Hope--is attacked. But, as
a victim, proves a failure.
"An actor--also--well, also an old friend of Christina Hope, and said to
have been recently in love with the vanished Nancy Cornish is arrested
for Ingham's murder. And what happens? S-s-z-boum! A cluster of
respectable and comfortable persons scatter for the ends of the earth.
While, ahead of them all, pop goes the beauty! In a white and silver
dress. So she didn't go farther than the embrace held wide open to
receive her."
"You mean, of course, the Arm of Justice?"
"Of course."
"What are you trying to do with me?" Herrick snarled.
Kane answered with great deliberation, "I'm trying to save you, you
young fool!"
"Spare yourself wasted time. What does all this matter to me? What does
a lot of gab matter? I've heard enough of it to-night, God knows! But
does it tell me anything? You're all full of suggestions, but where is
she? Do something if you know how--find her, find her! She's in danger,
that's all that matters! Where is she? Where is she?"
"You talk about danger! And you want _me_ to find her?"
"Has Denny retained you, then?"
"Oh, you poor kid!--Now, Herrick, I know your place in life. I studied,
one term, under your father. I breathe familiarly the air of Brainerd,
Connecticut. Corey and old Ingham are friends of mine. This muss
of--Paah! Come out of it, Herrick, it isn't good enough! She in her
rotten world and you--Oh, all right!"
Kane rose and went again to the window. "Rain's held up." He looked at
his watch. Strolling back to his chair he fixed his eyes on Herrick,
across his interwoven knuckles.
"But you've listened so willingly to Wheeler and to Mrs. Deutch, why not
listen to me? I've something of a confession to make, myself. Do you
know what it is to be possessed by a mania?"
A man with a mania!
"I heard Ten Euyck call you that, the first time I ever saw you."
"Good! A man with a mania, a prosecutor with a pet criminal! But he
didn't mention the criminal? Allow me--the Arm of Justice!"
Herrick's pulse gave a mad leap and he slowly raised his head.
"You've taken that business, all along, as just a mask for some
desperate amateur. Then, too, you were all thrown off the track--and
small wonder!--by those literate, unbusinesslike letters in idiomatic
English. A lady's letters, in fact!--My dear fellow, a very real and
definite 'Arm of Justice,' a low-lived little gang that sunny Italy knew
how to get rid of, has made its living at blackmailing certain gutters
of ours for a generation. What nobody but your humble servant has
believed is that this more stylish business, using our language and
dwelling very evidently in our midst, has any connection with the
original A. of J. beyond borrowing its title from the police reports.
Not for the first time! See here! The Arm of Justice started life as the
humblest little blackguard gang, extorting money from low-class
Italians. It was like all its class, strictly minding its own business
in its own nationality and considered worth nobody's while to catch. But
to my mind about four years ago this violet by a mossy stone burst out
like a sunflower. To my mind, it was this very same Arm of Justice
which abandoned every precedent by entering, with one bound, into
American life."
His look seemed to ring with triumph, but his voice kept a cold edge.
"No Italian gang, real or bogie, big or little, had ever thrown its
shadow there. But the Arm of Justice flew high, carried the new
territory at a rush, and struck at the very proudest families in New
York, the most powerful individuals!"
"But how? How?"
"Ah, if I knew! What's its source of information? How does it get hold
of those unhappy secrets that its owners guard like Koh-i-noors? Well,
men will tell a good deal to a woman--and those were a woman's letters,
Herrick! Once it gets its secret it starts a correspondence. How often
it has succeeded, grabbed its hush-money and retreated, of course I
don't know. But when its advances are rejected it abandons its
typewriter and calmly prints a scant edition of a dirty little rag
calling itself _The Voice of Justice_ and telling the blackmailing
story. It then mails marked copies through various New York post offices
to the family, friends and enemies of its victims--the three before
Ingham were all of Knickerbocker standing. What a revenge! What a
prestige for next time such a threat gave it! The desire of my life is
to smash that printing-press!"
"But it followed up the Ingham business with letters alone?"
"There you are--the whole Ingham business is a departure! Observe that
until Ingham's death the English-speaking branch of the business never
committed itself to violence; it caused four tragedies in four years,
but it simply pressed the button of exposure and its vengeance came off
automatically. The first time a young girl went crazy. The second there
was a divorce and the wife shot herself. And the third time a bad
stumble, lived down for twenty years by a fine old friend of mine, a
judge of the highest standing who had made himself an honorable
character, was exposed to such relentless political foes that this
office had to prosecute. Well, Mrs. Deutch's father isn't the only
gentle soul who's died in jail!"
Kane's voice had risen in hot anger. "Perhaps you think I ought to be
grateful--thank them for doing my work! Am I to do theirs, then? Execute
their orders, their sentences? Make my office the tool of cowards and
criminals worse than those I convict? Ah, my boy, that did turn me into
a monomaniac! Is there anything I wouldn't give to break that particular
bone in the Arm of Justice?--to lay hands on the real villain of that
little evening party in these rooms that night--not the one who fired
the shot but who prompted it! Believe me, the death of Ingham was a
slip, an accident, bitterly repented. Some last new element got in this
time and got in wrong. The Arm was using a new tool and pushed it
farther than it dreamed the tool would go. The English-speaking branch,
always so careful not to commit murder--I could almost be thankful for
this time--it's put a definite, popular crime into my hand! And now the
poor fools've lost their heads! They that were so cautious, they're
following one sensation with another. They've tried anything,
everything, to get clear! They've only floundered further and further
in! And now they're wild as rats in a trap!"
"Like rats in a trap!" There it was again! "The wages of sin is more
sinning!" Good heavens, what was his novel to him, now?
"Still people don't believe me. They can't credit that a single criminal
gang has its feet in the slums, its hand in the pocket of Fifth Avenue,
and its head--well, for instance, on Broadway. Naturally, it wants a
connecting thread. I was so keen after that, even before I came into
office, that they used to call me The Blackhander and say I ought to
write a comic opera. Well, Italy's an operatic nation! And this great
brat of a city, that thinks there's nothing doing in the world but
Anglo-Saxon temperaments, embezzling and baseball games, doesn't know
what it may get up against! I'm sure if I can nab either end of the
skein it will carry conviction. But unfortunately even the Eastsiders
never gave us a map of their whereabouts. There are about seven hundred
Italians in New York who might be called professional gangsters and very
likely a cozy, private little affair like the A. of J. but murmurs, 'We
are seven.' So I've never been able to put the slightest Italian accent
on those illustrious letters till I saw the body of your gunman from
Central Park. Encouraging though not overwhelming evidence! But the
knife that stuck in Denny's arm is a bigger business."
He might well congratulate himself, Herrick inwardly groaned, over the
color and the emphasis liberally supplied him in the story of Mrs.
Deutch.
"Of course, you understood what had happened? The farmer had refused
toll to the brigands who governed the south so capably in those days.
They killed his child, leaving their mark on it as a warning that toll
must be paid. The poor wine-merchant attempted to set the authorities on
that sign. The authorities were too weak to take up the gage, and, of
course, a stranger and a Jew made an easy scape-goat. But the brother
didn't take warning from the father's fate. Then the mark on him warned
the countryside that the family was taboo. They became simply lepers.
Not, this time, because the people were religious bigots nor social
asses but because they were scared stiff. Every one connected with the
tabooed strangers must have dreaded some brigand dictum. Every Gabrielli
may have squirmed under that thumb for many a year. Whatever she
romantically believes, her fiance's family simply dared not, for their
lives, receive Henrietta. Nobody dared, except, apparently, our little
friend, Hermann Deutch. Hats off--I salute Hermann! Really, for an
excited man--! But how's that for the nationality of the three-cornered
knife? The nation's pitched it out, over there; and now, to-day, in the
city of New York, in the city's jail, in broad daylight, some descendant
of this agreeable Sicilian clan uses the same weapon to silence a wiry
gentleman who turns out a bit too much for him--being a little on the
Sicilian order himself! But isn't that a sign of something doing between
the slums and Broadway? For what were they afraid Denny would tell? Why
did they wish to silence him except for what he could tell of a certain
lady?"
Herrick rose, lighted a cigar and flicked out the match with steady
fingers. "And you picture Miss Hope as The Queen of the Black Hand?"
This pleasantry was delivered with such a raucous and guttural attempt
at quiet satire that Kane returned to earth and smiled.
"Put in that way it's comic opera, indeed. But it's the tune that makes
the song. I know how crass the thing seems. Good heavens, says common
sense, in what century are we living? And who believes in comic opera?
What's the clue? What's the connecting thread that can reach from the
lowest dives of the East Side, out of another country and another race,
and mix with the grandeurs of so extremely well-known and high-flying a
young lady, on the very day that she becomes a world-celebrity? What's
the answer?"
The extreme nonchalance of Herrick's voice shook a little as he
remarked, "That's up to you, isn't it?"
"It's bound to lie in some dangerous indiscretion of her youth. She's
had hard struggling years, in which her temper was still luxurious--a
youth that's ambitious is never too scrupulous--if she had a friend
unscrupulous by profession--And yet I was so sure they had got hold of
her by some secret of her mother's! The Hope honeymoon took place in
Italy--but, in that day, so did everybody's! After all, perhaps they had
a closer clutch. What do we inevitably find in the pasts of all very
young, very beautiful and very successful actresses? We find a dark and
early husband. Italians whose humbler connections still sojourn in
tenements are often highly ornamental and blackmailers aren't branded,
you know, to keep them out of matrimony. Well, whatever the start,
whether she was coaxed in or threatened or married, forced by poverty or
blackmail, she's made them a wonderful--Do you know the thieves' slang
of Naples? And the term 'basista'?"
"A basista's a sort of fence, isn't he? A confederate on the outside?"
"A good deal more. A basista, without being a member of the gang, is the
invaluable unsuspected spy in the camp of the victims, who loots
profitable news and sends it in. He or she is sometimes the brilliant
amateur director, the educated person with an outlook, the Adviser
Plenipotentiary. A dramatic-minded young lady with extravagant tastes
and some kind of righteous grudge against society might hardly realize
at first what she was doing--and oh, how she has struggled to be rid of
it, since! Naturally, she's become worth double to them. And she's
recently furnished them with such a hold that, so far from getting
clear, I fancy she was pushed to furnish them with another victim; that
if it hadn't been for the moving-picture another person would soon have
received an Arm of Justice letter, and that person Cuyler Ten Euyck.
What do you think of my thread?"
"Pretty thin, isn't it?"
"Wait, encouraging youth! You'll be grateful some day! Come, I'll show
you my hand! Ever since the inquest it has been perfectly clear to the
unprejudiced mind that Christina Hope was in that room when Ingham was
shot. It was perfectly evident that she was shielding somebody. We say,
now, that she was shielding Denny. When we began to suspect Denny we had
to run down his friend, Christina Hope, who left behind her a scarf
bordered with the color in which, through his craze for her, Ingham's
apartment was decorated--a color which up to the time of the murder she
wore so constantly that it was like a part of her personal effect, and
which she has never worn since."
The color was all about them--blue-gray. What could that have to do with
the shimmer of a dummy pistol, scratched upon whose golden surface
Herrick once more confronted the initial "C"? But he did not put this
question to the District-Attorney. And it was Kane who continued. "Shall
I treat you to a bit of ancient history; shall I reconstruct for you the
movements of Miss Hope on the night of the fourth of August?"
"As you please."
"She testified to have dined at home. So she did; but with so poor an
appetite that the maids said to each other that she had really dined
early somewhere else. She testified to being ill and out of sorts; so
she was. But she was incited by this being out of sorts to something
very different from the languor to which she testified. Far from having
bade Ingham farewell forever she called him up at the Van Dam on an
average of every half hour, as well as at his club, and at two
restaurants which he frequented. Failing to find him, at eleven o'clock
she did, indeed, go to the post-box and mail a letter; but at twenty
minutes past eleven she was waiting in a taxi outside the theater where
Denny was rehearsing and sent in a message, without any concealment of
her name, that she wished to speak to him. He sent out word that he was
engaged. An hour later she was there again, and not believing the back
doorman who told her that he had left, she stopped Wheeler, who had
been inside, and besought him to get Denny to speak to her. He replied
that Denny was gone, whereupon she called out to her chauffeur, with
every adjuration to hurry, the name of the Van Dam apartment
house--where, say at a quarter after one, you, Herrick, saw her shadow
on the blind. According to Joe Patrick she was the first on the
spot.--Was she the last there, too?"
Herrick paused in a long stride; with his bones slowly freezing in him
he turned and faced the District-Attorney.
"If Denny loved her and went there on her account did he shoot down
Ingham before her eyes? Or did she run out, as she suggested at the
inquest, and Denny shoot Ingham as he turned to follow her? There's your
chance, Herrick, prove that! Mr. Bird tells us when our prisoner came
in. But, before all and everything, when did he come out?"
He had a way for which Herrick could have slain him, of driving points
home with a smile.
"But suppose, now, she did most of the loving on her own account.
Ingham, to a certainty, had found out her connection with the Arm of
Justice, when it tried to blackmail him through her. From the row you
heard between them he's likely to have been threatening her with
exposure. Suppose Denny's story is straight and when he found her there
with Ingham he just turned and walked off. Was Ingham a man to refrain
from threatening to send his revelations, first of all, to a man who had
treated him so cavalierly? Is she a girl to stop short of the desperate
in preventing him? Isn't she one to avenge herself in advance? It may
not have been wholly in revenge. Ingham was himself a wild revengeful
fellow who sometimes had too much to drink. He may have provoked her
even to bodily fear. If he guessed such a thing do you think Denny would
not keep silence? I see it strikes you."
It seemed to him as if it struck the life out of his heart over which
he folded his arms. "Try somebody else," he said, in defiance of the
little clasps of proof which he could hear snapping into each other,
"next time you accuse her."
"Yes, I'll try Deutch. I gave her every doubt till I heard of his
secret. Is it possible you don't know what he found? And is it possible
that you don't see a preparation for emergency in her taking such pains
to establish--well, not an alibi, but a substitute?--A mysterious
unknown lady with the most conspicuous physical attributes, in whose
person this admirable actress appears before Joe Patrick as the
red-headed murderess of the drama on the front stairs, before, on the
back stairs, with which she appears to be so familiar, she resumes
herself and turns to see what can be done with Ingham! That's the worst
point in the story of a distracted girl, pushed to the wall, driven past
her last stand, maddened by a suddenly enlightened and too cruel Ingham,
hounded by her friends, the Arm of Justice, to their work; herself no
more--as I was once no more!--than a trigger pulled by their hand! No
wonder they've had a firmer hold on her than ever since that night, and
shield her, now, with all their care because in doing so they shield
themselves!"
"That's what you think, is it?"
"It's what I fear--and it's what you fear! Or--what's a
District-Attorney to a lover?--you'd have knocked me down long
ago!--There's not a man of you, knowing the girl, in whose mind, in
whose pulse, it hasn't been from the first hour! Yet there's not one of
you who hasn't sacrificed Denny to her without a scruple. One man in the
end won't do it. I mean Denny himself. He, too, is prepared to go
extraordinary lengths not to betray her. He will deny, of course, that
it was she who was there that night. But I rely on one thing. He knows
that in the State of New York he can not plead guilty to murder in the
first degree. And he won't send himself up for anything less. He's not
afraid of death, but he's mortally afraid of prison--it gets on every
one of his nerves. And he seems to have a great many of them. If they
are ground on the idea of jail so that they break they may break quite
contrary to poor Deutch's--they may set him talking! Ah, if he and
Deutch could happen to meet; those two temperamental persons!--Here, in
this room, in the night, now when neither of them are quite themselves,
what a start they might get! What mightn't it shake out of
them?--There's one final thing the person who shot Ingham, the person
who was last with him in this room, alone, can tell me--How came that
door bolted? Whatever Denny guesses, you'll find he won't guess me
that!--Come in!"
He conferred with some one on the threshold. "Ask Inspector Ten Euyck to
come up." Turning back to take his place at the library table he
motioned Herrick to a seat. "Pity the sorrows of a poor policeman whose
legal sense is too strong to let him ask a single question of an accused
man, yet who was born to be the head of the Inquisition and looks at the
prisoner with a deep desire quite simply to tear him open! The prisoner
is well held together with surgeon's plaster, but the poor Inspector's
pride in his profession is suffering horribly from the inadequate
conduct of his city's jail to-day and of our detectives' search.--Here
we are!"
A group of young men appeared in the doorway, with Ten Euyck looming
like a damaged monument in their wake. Civility and self-control forced
themselves on Herrick. He and Ten Euyck sniffed each other, wary as
strange dogs, their spines beginning to rise. "Inspector," said Kane,
"cheer up!" And indeed the funereal quality in that gentleman's
appearance had greatly increased. He sat down, as directed, but when he
looked at Herrick he had to turn his growl into a cough and when he
looked at Kane he winced. It was evidently not alone the errors of the
Tombs and the police department which had bowed his head. It was the
knowledge of last night. His magnificent storm coat could not hide his
riddled dignity. Only by the sight of Christina in his grasp could he
get his dignity back again.
"Ten Euyck, I sent for you because this is so largely your affair, but
you are not going to be asked to do anything immoral. I am about to
examine a witness, but with no illegal questions nor shall I force him
to testify against himself. He is only going to be asked about another,
a missing witness. Your legal mind doesn't quarrel with his being hard
pushed in that direction? I thought not!"
Ten Euyck exclaimed, eagerly, "But Deutch can't talk yet!"
"Deutch? Did you think I meant Deutch? There is some one dearer to
Christina Hope than her dear Deutches and still nearer to the habits of
her life. I mean a gentleman who can talk but won't. Ah, brighten up Ten
Euyck--he shall be got to! He may be ignorant of certain amiable
Italians as criminal characters, it's inconceivable he can be ignorant
of them as Christina Hope's familiar friends. He mayn't be able to tell
me the secret of their lives. But he can give me their address. And he
will."
They were all grouped about the long table: Kane at its center, facing
the window; Ten Euyck and Herrick bearing with each other at one end;
Holt, an assistant of Kane's, between him and Ten Euyck; to his right, a
stenographer with a short-hand pad. The end of the table was still
vacant. Kane's own doorman stood on the threshold.
"Wade, have you got Mrs. Deutch? Please step into the bedroom, Mrs.
Deutch. Sit down comfortably, keep silent and listen to everything.--I
want to remind you all that, wise as our witness is, there are some
things he doesn't know. So far as we know he has never connected the
Cornish girl's disappearance with the blackmailers. He's not supposed to
know there are any blackmailers. And, for certain, he's seen no papers
nor been allowed to talk with any one. He doesn't know that Christina
Hope has disappeared! He doesn't know that New York has seen a
moving-picture!" Turning to the man at the door Kane said, "Bring in
William Denny."