THE LAST SHADOW: "LEAVE ALL THAT TIES THY FOOT BEHIND AND FOLLOW, FOLLOW
ME!"
Oh, yes, the Italian proprietress cheerfully informed him, the parrot
had been in the country with Maria Rosa and her great-aunt. Truly, the
great-aunt was fond of the country, she was still there. When was he
going to see Maria Rosa again? Oh, there, alas!--Maria Rosa had gone
with her father to the moving-picture show--
He could get no further and he feared to excite conjecture. He might
waylay the little girl as she returned, but not too near the watched
house--nor was the idea of the father encouraging. Nevertheless, he
betook himself outside, turning toward Third Avenue where the
picture-shows flourished. About two blocks down the street he took
refuge in the hole of a tobacconist, whose door stood open into the warm
dusk. On the farther corner the bright blue interior of a delicatessen
that was also a fruit stand blazed hot with gas and, in exchange for a
bottle of oil, a child passed a coin over the counter. The gas gleamed
on the child's face and Herrick crossed the street. Here was Maria Rosa
and here the moving-picture show which she attended!
He stopped on the outside for some nuts and affected surprise when Maria
appeared. She accepted various delicacies and was freely chatty about
her country visit. Oh, she had been in a beautiful place; grass, trees,
flowers--nothing of its whereabouts could be ascertained. Great-auntie
had lived there with old auntie--old auntie was her mama--when she was
a little girl no bigger than Maria Rosa! But they had gone often to a
grand big place where Cousin Nick's office used to be in the basement.
But the morning after they brought the sick lady the things for the
office were all gone! Ah, the grand big place had made the greater
impression, but ignorance had evidently been carefully preserved.
Herrick tried the words "Waybridge" and "Benning's Point" to no avail.
With "river" he was more successful. Did you go there by the boat?
Apparently not. Finally it came out that you went there by the walk past
old auntie's house. And what pretty thing had she ever noticed about old
auntie's house? Eh? Come, now? What did she like best?
"The marble kitties with wings."
The marble--
A child had dropped an address, after all!
Herrick, reaching into his pocket for a time table, had discovered a
train for Benning's Point at eight-fifteen when, hearing his name he
turned; beyond the now hurrying figure of Maria Rosa Joe Patrick was
advancing toward him.
The boy came up hastily, extending an envelope addressed to Herrick in
Mrs. Deutch's hand. As he took it he saw that Joe was brimming with some
communication. "I saw you from down street. She sent for me an' says to
bring you this. I was lookin' for you when I met Mr. Ten Euyck and he
said the place to find you was around here."
"Touche!" Herrick said to himself. Even at that moment he vouchsafed an
admiring smile to Ten Euyck's able conveying of a taunt.
"Mr. Herrick?"
"Yes, Joe."
"I got to get right back in time for the theayter. But I'd like to speak
to you a minute."
"Walk back toward the Square with me."
"It's something I been worried about telling for days an' now I'm goin'
to. I mean--Mr. Herrick, I wouldn't tell it to anybody but a friend o'
hers! But I make out that it's right to tell it to you.--You remember
that night out to Riley's?"
"Yes."
"An' the shadder the chaufers seen?"
"Yes?"
"I was there. My cousin Sweeney sent for me, an' my uncle an' me come
out together. As we come into the yard--that toon--you know! There was
the shadder--I seen it, too! And another man seen it an' skipped up the
steps an' went inside. Me after him! An' before he'd got in, hardly, out
he bounced with a lady. That lady wasn't no Mrs. Riley, Mr. Herrick. It
was--_her_!"
"You've seen the moving-picture?"
"Yes, sir."
"And this gesture was the same?"
"Yes, sir."
"So that you thought you saw Miss Hope's shadow?"
"I know I did, sir."
"Wait. This gentleman, had you ever seen him before?"
"No, I never laid eyes on him."
"He went right into the room?"
"Popped right in as if he lived there!"
"And came out with Miss Hope?"
"Yes, sir."
"How was she dressed?"
"She had on a long coat an' a fussed up hat o' Mrs. Riley's."
"And no one else saw them?"
"No, sir. They run down the back-stairs as everybody come up the
front."
"She was willing to go with him, then? He wasn't forcing her?"
"Well, you bet he wasn't! She was hangin' right on to him!"
"What was your idea of the whole business?"
"I thought mebbe she done it for a signal to him when to come in."
"Now, Joe, don't you believe that--it being, as you say, done so
quick--and you having just seen this shadow which you had taken for Miss
Hope's, you might have imagined it was she who came out with this man?"
"No, Mr. Herrick. I was at the door when they come out. I saw her face
clear. I didn't make no mistake this time."
"And you didn't follow?"
"No, sir. Because--because--Oh, Mr. Herrick, she seen me as plain as I
see you an' she smiled at me!"
Herrick paused with a threatening cry. "Why didn't you speak to her,
then? Why didn't you tell--"
"Because, Mr. Herrick, when she opened her eyes wide and smiled at me,
that way, she put her finger to her lips! Oh, Mr. Herrick, I ain't ever
told a soul but you!"
She put her finger to her lips! Secret she had ever been, and there was
another way in which Christina had never failed. She had never failed,
in any stress of change or chance, to seize the measure of a devotion
and use it to its hilt.
She smiled and put her finger to her lips! She pleased herself, then!
She was free! She came and went at her own pleasure! Secretly, with
companions of her choice! While he, in the room below--That night, too!
That night of the road and the fields, of Denny and the yellow house!
Bitterness mastered him. An indifference like the indifference of sleep
somehow wearied him to the bone. After Joe's departure, when he stopped
under a street-lamp to open Mrs. Deutch's letter, he scarcely cared what
it contained.
"--When you were not at home he sent this to me. Think you for yourself
the meaning for it. What in myself I believed and prayed, that
afternoon, now in person have I ascertained. Christina was born in this
city of New York; she was baptized in the same month in the Church of
the Holy Service, April 17, 1892."
He unfolded Gabrielli's cablegram:
Girl you inquire of victimized family named Hope, in America. They lived
at Naples 1886. Record daughter born to Hopes, Allegra, not Christina,
1886. Died 1889.
The Hopes had had a child, that died three years before Christina was
born! What was the meaning in the case of this dead baby? And if
Christina was Mrs. Pascoe's child, what had the death of Allegra Hope to
do with her? How could she have passed herself off on the Hopes for a
dead child six years older than herself? He knew that somewhere in his
aching brain the answer quivered to spring forth, when--at about the
time when the Italians started with their prisoner from the garage--an
open taxi hesitated at the corner nearest to the table d'hote and then
spun on without stopping. As it passed under the lamp Herrick was just
leaving, a veiled lady rose in it to her tall height and pulled on a
long, light coat. And all the pulses in his body stopped as though they
had been stricken dead. For his eyes had recognized Christina.