A LIGHT ALONG THE ROAD: DENNY GIVES AN ADDRESS
Herrick felt the strong light of the one lamp like something hypnotic;
it reminded him of the glare in some Sardou or Belasco torture chamber.
It seemed to him that the scene wasn't real; it was like a council of
wolves and he powerless and quiet with them there, as they hungered to
run, baying, on Christina. It was only a nightmare and yet it was more
real and keen than life, and only God knew what would come of it! Then
he saw the slight, dark figure pass the door; every eye, but with what
different desires, turned, ravenous as his, for the secret that it
carried in its breast.
The doorman brought Denny up to the end of the table and withdrew. The
prisoner was very carefully dressed, his black hair brushed as smooth as
satin, and against his dark blue coat the black silk handkerchief that
supported his arm was scarcely noticeable. He looked a model of rigid
decorum until you observed the heavy straps of plaster across his hands.
Only his skin, always dark and pale, seemed really to be drained of
blood. He nodded gravely to Kane, and with a sort of still surprise to
Herrick. Ten Euyck he passed over. He remained standing until Kane told
him to sit down. If he then dropped rather wearily into a chair he
contrived to sit upright, with a good show of formal manners. As his
dark eyes met the keen light ones of the lawyer a faint, derisive smile
appeared, and was instantly suppressed, upon both their faces.
"You seem very sure of yourself!" Ten Euyck exploded.
Denny appeared to become slowly conscious of him. "Even the persuasive
manners of your department," he said, "couldn't make me tell what I
didn't know!"
Ten Euyck said quickly, "You don't know who killed Ingham?"
"If I said anything more incriminating, it's possible it might be used
against me."
"We're not here," Kane interposed, "to discuss Ingham's death. Mr.
Denny, within the last few days there have been some very grave
occurrences, about which it's possible you can enlighten us. If you can,
we shan't be ungrateful. Did you ever hear of an organization called the
Arm of Justice?"
"Is this a joke?"
"You never heard of it?"
"No."
"Well, then, you can have no objection to repeating the name and address
of Miss Hope's Italian friends?"
"Not the least in the world. Has she any?"
"You mean to tell me you don't know she has?"
"Not if it annoys you. I thought you asked."
Ten Euyck, with a gesture as of uncontrollable impatience, rose and went
to the window.
"Since you're in a jocular mood, I will ask you something you may think
extremely amusing. Do you know if Miss Christina Hope owns a red wig?"
He didn't think it amusing. He seemed to think little enough about it.
"I suppose so."
"But you never saw one about her house?"
"She wouldn't keep it about her house, like a pet. She'd keep it in a
trunk. She's not an amateur."
"You never saw her wear one in private life?"
"Not even on the first of April."
"You couldn't even swear she had one, perhaps."
"I certainly could not."
"Nor that she had not?"
"No."
"So that you wouldn't recognize hers if you saw it?"
"No."
The light was very strong upon his face, which remained relaxed and
tranquil. But he was very weak and a faint moisture broke out upon it.
"Was there any love affair between you and Miss Hope which angered Nancy
Cornish?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me!"
Denny drew in his breath a little. But he did not speak.
"What was your trouble with Nancy Cornish?"
Silence.
"Didn't she quarrel with you because of some woman?"
Silence.
"You know she did. You can't deny it. Do you know what many of your
friends are saying? That you kept that appointment with her and got rid
of her. They think you were tired of her and preferred Christina Hope!"
"Do they?"
It had missed fire utterly. Yet, since the mention of that other girl, a
kind of hunger had been growing in his face, and suddenly Kane wholly
veered on that new track.
"But I don't!" said Kane, leaning toward him, and trying to catch and
hold his eye. "I think you really care for Nancy Cornish, whether she's
alive or dead!" He paused. "I think you'll end by telling me what you
know of the woman whom you'll find parted you."
The same dead silence; only Denny had closed his eyes.
"Come, give me your attention. Look at me, please. Look at me, and
you'll see that I'm sincere. Did you hear me say if you can help me I
shan't be ungrateful? But you can do better for yourself than that. You
can simply tell the truth! Tell the truth and you won't need my favor.
You'll be free. And you'll have set me in the way to find Nancy Cornish!
It isn't possible you prefer to keep this ridiculous silence, to die
like a criminal for nothing; or spend fifteen to twenty years in the
penitentiary--spend life there,--ah, I thought so!" The
District-Attorney laughed with triumph at the little straightening of
Denny's nostrils. "There's your weak point, my friend! I have never seen
a man to whom the idea of jail was so entirely uncongenial! Get rid of
it, then! Admit the truth about Christina Hope! What do you owe her? She
never even came to me with the witness that she promised."
"I rather thought she'd have trouble doing that!"
"Because you knew there was no such woman. Or rather that that woman was
Christina Hope; that she tried to get up courage to incriminate herself
in your place and failed!"
"You're a bad guesser, Kane!" Denny said. He had sunk a little forward
with his arms upon his knees, and Kane rose and stood over him.
"Admit that your whole attitude is dictated simply by loyalty to her.
You need be loyal no longer. Has she been near you since you've been in
the Tombs?"
"No, you've kept her out. And a fine time you must have had doing it!"
Ten Euyck turned round and said, "She's so _fond_ of you, I suppose!"
Denny flushed. "Yes," he said, "she's fond of me. She was born to be a
good comrade-in-arms, to carry the flag of a forlorn hope and stand by
you in the last ditch. If you gentlemen can't understand that, I'm sorry
for you. I can't change her."
"Exactly," Kane said. "I knew that was your ground. Well, this
comrade-in-arms has deserted you altogether. The day she should have
brought me that witness, she threw down her engagement and left New
York!"
"Oh, guess again!" said Denny. "Not while she lived, she didn't!"
"And she took with her," Ten Euyck cried, "forty thousand dollars' worth
of my diamonds! Perhaps she was in hopes you'd get away and join her!"
"Well," said Denny, turning his eyes toward Herrick, without raising his
head, "you!--you're not a criminal!--are you going to stand for that?"
"Doesn't his standing for it speak for itself!" said Ten Euyck. "If you
want to defend a woman, why don't you come out like a man and confess
that you did it yourself."
They all looked at him in astonishment and, flushing at himself, he
subsided.
"Ah, thanks, Ten Euyck, that's what I've been suspecting! You think you
can trap me into one of your damned confessions with these tricks! Get
rid of that idea. I'll not confess. It's up to you to prove it; prove
it! Why should I help you!" He turned again to Herrick, as if in
justification. "Yes, I am afraid of jail! I'm a coward about prison, I
confess that! and to give myself up to a lifetime of it--no!--Herrick,
there's no chance of their being serious in this talk about Christina."
Kane took him by the unwounded shoulder and forced him from his leaning
posture, till his face came full into the light. "Upon my word of honor,
Denny," he said, "Christina Hope has disappeared."
The shock struck Denny like a sort of paralysis. He did not stir, but he
seemed to stiffen. His eyes dilated with a horrified amazement. "What do
you mean?" he said.
Kane handed him that evening's paper, folded to the headlines that dealt
with the missing girl. He read them with greed, but it was plain that he
found their information stupefying. "Chris, now! First, Nancy!" he
said, "and then, Christina! What is this thing? What can it be? You," to
Kane, "you that are so clever, have you any explanation at all? Have you
the least clue? Have you?" he insisted, and from the dark meaning of
their faces he seemed to kindle, and half rose, leaning on the table.
"My God, then," he cried, "what is it? What is it?"
"Well, then," said Kane, "as you yourself suggest, she is very probably
in the same place with Nancy Cornish." Denny continued to lean on the
table, looking at him with ravenous eyes. "You know that Joe Patrick was
knocked down by an automobile on his way to the inquest, that the same
so-called accident happened two or three days later to Herrick, here;
you know that subsequently four armed men attacked him in the park;
to-day you had an experience of your own. Well, all these things hang
together and were committed by a band of blackmailers. Your own shoulder
gives you a taste of their quality. You can judge for yourself what
they'll stop at. Brace yourself. We know, now, for a certainty that
Nancy Cornish is in their hands."
Denny continued to lean there, without stirring. "It's a trick! It's one
of your little tricks! Is it?" he said to Herrick with a sudden
shrillness, "Is it?"
"One of them brought us a message from her. It said, 'Help me, dear
Chris!'"
"No, no, no!" said Denny, as if to himself. "It's a lie. It's all a lie.
I won't be frightened. I know it's a lie."
"Is that her writing?"
He cried out, a dreadful, formless sound, and covered his face with his
hands. Kane's glance said to the others, "Let him alone! It's working!"
He asked them then, quite gravely and clearly, "When--do you expect--to
catch--this--gang?"
"I don't know that we can catch them at all. We don't know how to get
at them. We've no idea where they are."
His hands dropped from his face; it throbbed now and blazed; all the
nerves had come to life in a quivering network. "Oh, for God's sake," he
said, "don't tell me that!--Go on, then, go on! Tell me!" He looked
beseechingly and then in a fury of impatience from face to face. "Don't
stand gaping! You must know something! Look here, you don't understand!
You don't know all I've been through all these weeks--wondering!--If she
was in that lake where we used to row! If she'd only gone away, hating
me! My mind's in pieces trying to think--think--following every sign!
Hundreds of times I've seen her dead! And now you tell me she's alive!
and calling--calling for help! Do you? Do you?"
"Yes," said Kane.
He swayed forward so suddenly that he had to catch at the table. "It's
horrible! It's a nightmare!" With a strange monotonous inflection his
voice rose higher and higher on the one strained note. "It's the thing
I've dreamed of night and day, week out and in! That she was frightened
and in danger! With brutes! With the faces of beasts round her! Oh,
God--!"
"Don't!" Herrick cried.
"Yes, but look here!" With an eagerness sudden as a child's, he said to
Herrick, "But it's hope! Hope, isn't it? She's alive! And she didn't
just leave me!--I've got to get out of here! Yesterday--why,
yesterday--this morning--but now! 'Help me!' she says! I've got to get
out! I--" He stopped. The dusky choking red that had surged up horribly
over his face and forehead receded sharply, and left only his eyes
burning black in the white incredulous horror of his face. He cried,
"There's no way out!"
"There may be," said the District-Attorney, "if you will look very
carefully at this lock of hair."
Denny took the soft red curl in a hand that he vainly strove to steady;
they could read recognition, but no further enlightenment in his
tormented face.
"Sit down!" Kane said. "Untie the string. Shake the hair loose here on
the table under the lamp. Now, does anything strike you? No?"
Once more Herrick had that singular impression of Denny's going, for an
instant's flash, perfectly blind. Then he said, quite quietly, "Go! The
station you want is Waybrook. Drive five miles inland, on the road to
Benning's Point; about three miles south of the Hoover estate. The
left-hand side of the road; an old house newly fixed up and painted
yellow. Pascoe's the name. And, for God's sake, go quickly."
The District-Attorney sat back and wiped his forehead. It had been a
hard day's work. "Don't you, Herrick, want to take a look at the
curiosity without which I might as well have asked a clam for a Fourth
of July oration?"
The hair was spread out and thinned under the lamp. And now Herrick
could see distinctly that it was of two shades. The outer curl was the
dark red of Nancy Cornish; hidden within it was a smaller lock of a
singularly fine light shade, like the red of golden fire. This it was
which had wrung the address from Denny and stricken down Christina in a
faint.
"Nancy Cornish hid it there in the message she was allowed to send,"
guessed Herrick. "She was certain Miss Hope would know the head it came
from."
"Then I needn't point out to a gentleman of your discernment that it was
the head which astonished Joe Patrick on the night of Ingham's murder.
Directly afterward, I think Miss Hope stored that head, inconspicuously,
with her friends in the Arm of Justice."
Denny, rabid with impatience, seemed eating them alive with his savage
eyes. "Start!" he bit out. "Go, can't you? Go! What are you waiting
for?"
Kane looked up at him with a smile of triumphant ice. "We're waiting for
your account of midnight in these rooms between the fourth and fifth of
August. And no one stirs to Nancy Cornish till we get it."
Denny's jaw dropped and he hung against the edge of the table as if he
were struck too sick to stand.
Ten Euyck, too, cried out and Kane silenced him. "Why not--since he says
he's innocent?"
"You dog!" Denny groaned. "You won't save her?"
"_You_ won't save her--you know how!"
"Lose time and you lose everything!"
"What do you know?"
"Know! Know! Of course I know! But do you think you can make me tell?
Try that game! Try it! Try! You know damned well you can't! So what'll
you give for what I know?"
"You mean--?"
"Come back to me when you've found Nancy Cornish and you shall have your
murderer fast enough! Every detail, every fact, every clue! Till then I
don't trust you! Bring her here, bring her!" He leaned forward, beside
himself; shaken and exhausted, burning with fever, weak with loss of
blood, he reached toward Kane and beat the table with his wounded hands.
"That's my bargain! That's my price! I'm not going to give up for
nothing! You don't get my life unless you give me hers--"
"_What?_"
The great gasp broke into a buzz. Denny came slowly to himself and read
what he had uttered in their looks. His face went dead, a cold sweat
stood out upon it. "O!" he breathed. And once more he covered his face
with his hands.
It didn't take many questions to get his story from him after that.
"Yes, I killed him. Yes, I'm confessing. I've got to. All right,--take
it down. I killed James Ingham. I went to his apartment after my
dress-rehearsal on the night of the fourth of August. I had been told
that he had injured Nancy Cornish. I shot him dead. I've regretted it
every moment of my life since then. That's all. What are you waiting for
now?"
"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
passing 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 God! 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 anticipation 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, passed 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 God's name, can you
hurry? Hurry!"