ONE WITNESS SPEAKS
It was fully dark under the sail-cloth of the table d'hote. A strong
smell of rancid wicks disturbed nobody and in the charged, suspensive
air the cheap lamps burned with a still flame. This may in part have
been due to Herrick's tensely strung imagination, which Christina's
message of the night before still mercilessly played upon. From that
source no drop of further information had fallen through Tantalus on to
the parched tongue of Herrick's nor of Wheeler's nor of the Law's
desire.
That afternoon Herrick had seen Stanley off from the station where not
six weeks ago they had met as strangers. And so little was Fate's veil
lifted for him, even now, that he had no forewarning of when next, nor
why, he should be there again!--Stanley had, however, told him Ten
Euyck's latest news--how it was to the table d'hote the Italians had
conveyed their liberated prisoner from the Tombs!
The boy looked at his friend a little suspiciously even while he
repeated Ten Euyck's chagrin: "That's a hideously shameful thing to
happen to me! It's the annoyance of a blind, stupid, brutal
reproof--when I've worked so hard and suffered so much! Here, in my own
district--Under my own hand--!" There are no unalloyed elations in this
world! Nor did there seem any doubt in Ten Euyck's mind that this was
the long-sought-for secret place, where they should find a
printing-press. But he forebore to raid it until evening, when all
possible birds should have returned to the nest, and contented himself
with the sending of his disguised operatives peacefully to fetch from it
Will Denny, before whose coming Stanley had fled the police station.
That young gentleman had also gathered from Wheeler's thunderstorm of
oaths that Christina's manager considered himself under surveillance.
And this had made Herrick wonder if the same were not true of himself.
On account of his momentarily expected cablegram it was a crushing
suspicion. He spent an afternoon of aloof and goaded wandering, and at
last, shielded as he hoped by the darkness and by the company of a whole
group of entering diners, yielded to the temptation of the table d'hote.
He could not doubt it was encompassed by spies; he could not but attend
the seizure, the crisis, the outcome. Here, more than anywhere, were the
lines converging; here, for to-night, was the center of the web. He said
to himself, then, in his ignorance, that nothing mortal should induce
him to forsake it.
Under the sail-cloth there was no longer any room; but, within doors,
save for a couple of men at a distant table, Herrick was quite alone.
There was no change in the deportment of the place, no disturbance. The
Italian proprietress, in her comings and goings, found time to reply
that the old lady was still in the country but her prototype, the little
gray parrot, which he had not seen for a long time, was climbing in and
out of its cage and the angelic children still snuffled about the floor.
It was on these innocents that Herrick began as usual to practise his
Italian when the proprietress had gone affably to see about his order,
but if he thought one of them would lightly drop Christina's address
he was mistaken. Smother-y as the place was, with that same looming
sultriness of a week ago, agitated in its daily business, its pulse did
not beat so hard as his, its imagination did not quiver, like the
figures of a cinematograph, reviewing the movements of a motor-car that
until yesterday had sped through mire and dust and blood, through
sunrise and midnight, past the spread, astonished wings of the marble
Hoover lions, past the smoking-ruins of a post-office, past Riley's
where the shadow danced, after a will o' the wisp. There was no
suggestion, here, which could lift that phantom light; the customers
ordered, the little fat boy, next in age to Maria Rosa, leaned
familiarly against his knee, the parrot continued to clamber over its
cage, talking steadily, rapidly and monotonously to itself, and then
Herrick said in surprise,
"Why, the bird's speaking English!"
The parrot looked at him coldly, disinterred something which it had
buried in its food-cup, gnawed on the treasure, and dropped it. The
little fat boy picked it up and smiled at Herrick. Herrick said, "Let's
see!" It was a silver ring, holding a bluish-green Egyptian scarab.
It seemed to Herrick that he had heard of such a ring before, and he
tried to remember where. One of the men at the further table left and
the other was buried in a foreign newspaper. Herrick got up and went
over to the desk. That was English the bird was speaking. "No, no, no,
no! I don't believe it. I don't beli--"
"Polly," said Herrick, "what are you talking about? And what do I know
about this ring?"
The bird burst into a shriek of the ungodly laughter of its kind, pecked
the ring out of his hand, backed away with it, dropped it again; and
then, out of a perfect stillness, with its little eyes fixed on his face
it replied--
"Ask Nancy Cornish!"