A SIGN IN THE SKY
At the end of four days Christina's friends gave up their private search
for the retreat of the Arm of Justice.
During those days Herrick and the faithful Stanley, sometimes
accompanied by Wheeler's stalwart hopefulness, had persistently
attempted to take up the trail where it had broken--in the fields at one
end of the Hoover estate. The beautiful old place, one of the great show
places of the Hudson, stretched three miles deep to the river bank and a
mile and a half along the road; remembering the theory of an escape
through the grounds they presented themselves as richly tipping tourists
to the little old, old couple at the lodge. These aged folk accustomed,
during the Hoovers' prolonged absence abroad, to curious sightseers,
welcomed them beneath the winged marble lions of the entrance-gates and
made them free of the grounds with a host-like courtesy. But no broken
shrubbery, no footstep save of that of a stray gardener or of their
rival searchers the police, rewarded them; from the Hudson Club's
boathouse, which had rented a strip of the beach, no boat was missing;
the shores of unbroken woodland for a league on either side yielded no
sign; when a hanging shutter at the great house led to a belief that the
refugees had sheltered there the friends watched anxiously the
disappointed ransacking of privileged authorities, and their only gain
came from the gossip of the old lodge-keepers which informed them that
the body of Nicola Pascoe had never been found. He could, then, have
been only stunned. Thus it was still he they were most alert for during
the next three days when the whole district--inns and post-offices,
country-stores and stable-yards as well as every grove and
by-lane--yielded them by day or night no scrap of news.
During their search, indeed, what clues existed had crumbled away. The
cabman, for instance, had most truly driven Christina to the Amsterdam
hotel, where she had simply given him so large a tip as to upset his
sobriety and earn his discharge. Meeting in with the manager of The
Palisades and applying fuddleheadedly for relief he had conveyed to that
gentleman the idea of "knowing something," and had been sent to sober up
at Riley's in order to keep the reward in the family. Then the day-clerk
of the Amsterdam brought forth Christina's registered signature,
engaging a suite on Thursday afternoon for Thursday night; she had
claimed this suite from the night-clerk and occupied it; early in the
morning she had sent for the housekeeper and hired some clothes of hers,
saying she couldn't wait for her maid to bring her any. The frightened
housekeeper had at length displayed the white and silver dress. Last and
worst, to Herrick, when, on Saturday, he had sought out the table
d'hote, the dogs, the cats, the babies were unchanged, the Italian
proprietress greeted him with a smile of welcome, but no gray-haired
woman played solitaire behind the desk.
It was a curious enough blight without being heightened by the fact that
Kane's patience with Herrick had plainly given out. Ever since the young
man's return from Waybridge he had been aware of a change in the
official attitude which rendered it suddenly impossible for him to see
any one whom he asked to see and stretched like a fine wire excluding
him from the whole affair. It increased his sense of outlawry, but a
private preoccupation kept it from striking home.
This preoccupation ran parallel with, but, alas! could never be brought
to meet that old story of the Hopes' love-affair which he could not help
feeling to be the key to the true, the hidden, situation. That little
pitted speck--and his novel! His novel of the Italian impostor! On the
morrow of his chase after Nicola the table d'hote had scarcely failed
him before he was knocking at the door of Mrs. Deutch.
He took her for a walk on Riverside Drive, to be out of the way of
dictographs, and laid before her not only the whole labyrinth of his
perplexities but the best outline he could make of his dim conjectures.
He had not failed to secure Signor Gabrielli's address from the Ingham
office and he now put forward a petition which he tried not to feel
monstrous. "Mrs. Deutch, there is a man who knows some strange things
and strange people, who might perhaps send to Naples and receive from
there a very enlightening cablegram. I am less than nothing to him, he
will never send it for me. But I needn't tell you he is a man of great
sensibility, very susceptible both to shame and pride. And still, after
twenty-five years, he carries the miniature of his betrothed."
Mrs. Deutch looked out across the proud bright waters. Through the
serene air the somber glory of an autumn leaf floated to her feet; its
fellows were gathered everywhere in withered piles which shouting
children rejoiced to trample into powder. "Yes," she said, by-and-by, "I
will see him. There are always perhaps those of whom he is afraid.
Perhaps he is like that. But it will be easy to say, 'We were very fond
of each other, you and I, we were so young and you were so beautiful a
person! It would be a great happiness to think that now you were brave!'
I can tell him 'Christina is my youth and my prettiness and my true
faith and all that you once knew.' Oh, yes, he will give them back to
me! He will send your message!"
He had, indeed, sent it; but on Tuesday afternoon no reply had arrived.
Having given up the countryside in despair Herrick could not keep away
from the table d'hote and, merely as a curious resort, he asked Stanley,
who was returning to Springfield on Wednesday, to meet him there for
dinner. He was able to show his guest the gorgeous Mr. Gumama with the
knit, gloomy glories of his Saracen brow, but no mystery showed a
feather. Inquiry, in his primitive Italian, elicited a statement that
nearly wrenched a groan from his lips--his old lady had taken her eldest
grandniece, Maria Rosa, to visit relations in the country! The mother of
Maria Rosa insisted with a sweet smile that she could not remember the
name of the place.
The young men sat for a while in the square, where Stanley's astuteness
discovered so many blackmailers in the gentle, lolling crowd that even
the statue of Garibaldi seemed scarcely safe, and then they started up
Fifth Avenue; the austere, departing dignities of whose lower end never
seem so faded, so historic, so composed, as in September dusks. When
they made out the identity of an angular correctness sailing stiffly but
handsomely some distance ahead of them, it seemed of all neighborhoods
the most suitable in which to encounter Ten Euyck; yet they loitered,
lacking the spirit to cope with their opportunities. And Stanley, who
was still in favor with the powers, began to attempt the diversion of
his moodier companion with an account of Ten Euyck's efforts to propel
the Commissioner of Police. "Every little while you forget that he isn't
anybody and can't do anything, even if there were anything to do. And
you say to yourself, 'Golly! I'd rather Chris stayed lost than that he
laid hands on her.' He looks so black and white and dried in vinegar he
does get on your nerves all right. You remember what a lot of money he's
got, after all, and pull and all the rest of it, and you feel as if he'd
be able to find _something_ against her--or, even if he didn't--"
In the warm still evening his voice had carried farther than he thought;
Ten Euyck turned round and recognized them. Evidently without offense,
since he stood waiting for them to overtake him. "Good news for you,
Ingham," he greeted the boy. "Judge Fletcher does not consider a
confession equivalent to pleading guilty in the first degree! Moreover,
in strict confidence, the judge is a veteran with an extreme distaste
for the artistic temperament! If the prisoner is brought before him we
shall get a first degree sentence yet!"
"Oh, I don't care!" cried the lad, making a disgusted face. "It's all
too horrible and--and queer, somehow! I don't want to hear about it."
"Oh, if your consideration is for the actor in the lady's cloak--what a
symbol of his whole conduct!--I understand he prefers it." Ten Euyck
gave a short laugh. He was evidently in his happy vein of inquisitorial
power. "When a man's been ruffling before the public in lace and satin
and diamonds of course he baulks at prison accommodations. Yet even
there our temperamental friend is welching."--He had evidently
approached his point and they could not deny him the tribute of a stare.
"We may be very foolish, my dear sirs, but we are not incapable of
learning and I may tell you that we have acted on a hint."
"You mean by 'we' yourself and the law?"
"Perhaps I do, Mr. Herrick. At any rate, this time to-morrow we shall
have rung the door-bell of the Arm of Justice."
He took a tolerant pity on their restiveness, relaxing to an urbane
smile as though his machinery were eased by the oil which always flowed
when his prosecuting talent raised its head. "When that disgraceful
laxity occurred at the Tombs and a prisoner was attacked there, we took
a leaf from the criminals' book and put in among the guards some men of
our own. One of these, a man named Firenzi, a very capable fellow,
informed himself in no time of a marvelously well-paid plan for the
prisoner's escape. Yes, by the very tribe who tried to kill him.
Anything, you see, to get him out of the way. The idea is the old one of
passing him out as a guard, leaving the true-false guard quite overcome
in his cell;--a slim chap who's let wear a black beard on account of
asthma or some such nonsense. They naturally suppose that an actor will
look less conspicuous than most criminals in a bit of make-up! Does our
consistent hero refuse to go? Filled with the bright hope of a hanging
judge he does have to be coaxed a little, but not much. He is not lured
by being told that he is to be sent to the safety of foreign lands, a
far-off country and, I believe, a tropical climate, suited to his
complexion. Firenzi reports him as demanding what they suppose there is
in this foreign country to interest him. 'The lady who throws a shadow
that you know.' 'It's enough!' says Denny, through his teeth, I am
informed. I don't mind telling you that it's enough for us, too! They
will be sure to take him to their nest to transfer him to the escort of
their gang and his visit--before a Sampson shorn of his new beard and
having still further done for himself with Fletcher, is returned to a
jail somewhat less porous than he imagines to-night--his visit will be
well watched!"
They had reached Thirty-fourth Street and turned toward Broadway where
Stanley had an errand. The two puppets in Ten Euyck's hands had nothing
to say. Neither of them could bring himself to utter his excitement in
that now potent presence and Herrick wondered if he were really
trembling. A far-off country! The phrase chilled and hardened him, as
premeditated safety always does. He was scarcely even grateful for the
strength and fleetness of her wings. Never had Ten Euyck's inspectorship
seemed less absurd or more really a fact. Of to-night and to-morrow he
was now the master. And yet, beside the news of a far-off country, what
news could he wring from the Arm of Justice to-morrow for which Herrick
need care so much? They stopped on the corner of Long Acre and as
Stanley plunged into a drug-store, a certain embarrassment fell upon the
two men left together. "It's remarkable how warm it is!" Ten Euyck said.
Herrick refrained from the flippancy of replying, "Wonderful weather for
the time of year!" On closer inspection Ten Euyck proved a good deal
worked up. His excitement was like a sort of dry paste and as he now
grew pastier and pastier something that was almost a tremor seemed about
to crack it; in fact the dry mask of his face was suffering from a
lockjaw which was his form of hysteria. He took off his hat and, cold as
he looked, produced an extremely superior handkerchief and wiped his
brow. He said something about the last hot spell of the year and his
lips clicked on the words as though they were rather a compromising
statement; was it the coming crisis that creaked in his throat? It
occurred to Herrick that Ten Euyck might be suffering from a sense that
his vanity of achievement and his taste for torture, in leading him to
disclose to-morrow's program, had led him injudiciously far. At any rate
he studied, as if for sympathy, the irreproachable excellence of his
hat-lining and a little pink line came out about his nose.
Herrick looked uneasily at the doorway beyond which Stanley still
loitered; he saw no reprieve. And as he made sure of this Ten Euyck
again fortified himself with the interior of his hat and spoke. "On your
honor, now, Herrick, you wouldn't keep it from me? You've no idea where
she is?" And he followed this extraordinary question with a piteous, a
blenching glance.
Herrick did not speak; and Ten Euyck moistened his lips. The whole
outline of his face seemed to take on a certain sharpness, and famine
and fever thrust themselves, for a moment, into the windows of his eyes.
In the silence which Herrick could not break, he murmured, "I'm not like
this about women! You know that! Only she--" His voice cracked and then
snapped off short, but with a hundred quiverings, like the string of a
banjo breaking.
Herrick seemed to himself to look through a door, in a house of
revelations. Was this what covered Ten Euyck's complacent coldness to
the other sex? Did those neat and formal lips often stifle an outcry
like this? True, Christina's own story had revealed to him that Ten
Euyck's coldness was all hot ice and very swarthy snow. But he had
presumed that incident to be a deliberate brutality; Ten Euyck had
always appeared to govern his instincts masterfully or to walk on them,
indeed, with heels of iron. To see him bared and shaken like this was to
put a new value on the force that had betrayed him; but Herrick was too
young and too much in love to endure this lusting and trembling breath
when it blew upon Christina.
"On the whole," said he, deliberately, "keep your confidences to
yourself, can't you? They make me sick."
The pinkness spread over Ten Euyck's face:
"Oh, I had forgotten your happiness!" he managed to cry, with a fierce
shaking laugh. "Do let me know the date of the wedding!" He lifted his
hat and strode from a neighborhood dangerous to dignity. But as he flung
over his shoulder the ejaculation, "I hope you thought my diamonds
became her!" Stanley's return arrested him.
"These infernal papers!" the boy cried.
Neither he nor Herrick had ever been strong enough to deny themselves
the foolish headlines where one hour Christina had been seen as a
passenger for Hongkong and another as a chambermaid in Yonkers. Nancy's
ill-treated locket had roused the public to frenzy, but its imagination
had definite items only of the eclipsing Christina Hope who, in the
mid-day editions, generally lapsed to a lunatic in a suburban
sanitarium; but nightfall always saw her mount again to the ghastliest
and most criminal of "bodies." It was some such horror upon which
Stanley had now fallen; below it Herrick saw the statement that in a day
or two Denny would come up for sentence before Judge Fletcher.
He had little enough love for Will Denny, but it was with a feeling of
nausea that he observed the mounting satisfaction of Ten Euyck. After
four years the law was to wipe out, for its most obedient son, a blow
across the mouth! It was, nevertheless, the poisoned rumor of Christina
which had set the air afire between all three men. This dealt with some
lovely fugitive hunted out that day by wireless and then disappearing
from a steamer in mid-ocean. The languor of an incredible fatigue stole
feverishly through Herrick's veins. Ten Euyck shouted to Stanley in a
kind of bark, "Well, no waves can hold her down!" And he began to hum a
tune in defiance of the faith with which Herrick's silence defied the
printed words. Herrick looked up and their gaze met across the screaming
columns. Ten Euyck's tune was, "Come rest in this bosom, my own stricken
deer." Herrick knocked the newspaper out of his hand and there was a
second's tense fury before these two, who had forgotten everything else,
should leap at each other. In that second Stanley, lifting his eyes,
whistled excitedly and caught Herrick's arm.
They were standing at the corner of Long Acre where five nights ago
Herrick had met Wheeler in the rain. Fiery words and figures flashed
their announcements, bright as ever, against the soft, lowering, purple
blackness of the night. Down the side street Wheeler's theater, since
Christina's disappearance, had been dark. It was still closed, but
Wheeler must now have taken heart; for dark, save in theatrical
parlance, it was no longer. The electric sign--
ROBERT WHEELER
IN
THE VICTORS
had been re-lighted. And beneath this, in letters of equal size and
brilliancy ran the surprising legend--
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20TH,
CHRISTINA HOPE
WILL POSITIVELY REAPPEAR