CHAPTER XVII

HERSELF

There was no other cab in sight. But fortunately a 'bus was just

starting, and bye and bye he plunged from that into a taxi. All the way

up Fifth Avenue he continued to keep his quarry well in sight; flashing

in and out beneath the lamps, the beautiful tall figure sitting lightly

erect and neither shunning nor avoiding the public gaze. At first he

thought she had come back to be well in time for to-morrow night, but at

Forty-second Street she turned toward the depot. She was making for the

same train as himself.

A policeman, who should have died before he ever was born, let her cab

through the block and held up Herrick's. He saw with horror that it was

possible he should miss the train. Then, with a thrill of hope, that

they would probably both miss it. When he got to the depot there was no

sign of her. He tore like a madman across the vast stretches and up and

down the flights of stairs by which modern travel is precipitated and

came to the gate. She was inside, just stepping on the last car of the

train. Officials were shouting at her, enraged, because the train had

begun to creep.

"Tickets, tickets!" said the man at the gate. He was resolute, and

Herrick had to pick him up and lift him to one side. It took an instant,

and now the train was under way. But Herrick, as a free-born male

unhampered even by a suit-case, was privileged to risk his neck, and he

flew down the platform and gathered himself to leap upon the car. His

hand was outstretched for the railing but it never reached it. A single

zealous employee plunged at him, roaring. The sound halted his quarry in

the doorway, and when she saw him she stepped back on to the platform of

the car, bending toward him with a look of eager amusement, and throwing

back her veil. And Herrick lost his chance to jump.

For her face, framed in soft flames of red, of golden fire, was the face

of a stranger. It was extremely lovely, but for one curious defect. She

had a blue eye and a brown.

BOOK FOURTH

THE LIGHTED HOUSE

CHAPTER I

THE HOSTESS PREPARING

Herrick lay in the long grass of the wooded lot, against the wall of the

Hoover place. Already the night was velvet-black, and hot and

thunder-scented as in summer. A million vibrations that were scarcely

sound stirred with the myriad lives of leaf and blade in the dense

silence. And his expectancy vibrated too, reaching for the end of a long

chase. His slower train had followed on the very heels of that malign

and radiant red-haired changeling, whose mysterious brew he was at last

to taste for himself. Not this time in a little yellow cottage beside an

open road, but in that great house, walled and guarded, deep and still

in its own woodland, between the stone lions with their lifted wings and

the mighty current of the tidal river! What he should do when he got

there could be decided only by what he found. He had his revolver, and

he scarcely knew whether to pray that he might, or that he might not,

have need for it.

He remembered, tumbling over the wall from the inside, cascades of ivy,

which he now hoped might give him a hand up the rough stone. But they

tore away, one after the other, and sagged in his hold. He went on down

the field, scouting in the darkness for some friendly tree; when he

found one at last it was not so near the wall as he could have desired,

and the first branch that seemed likely to bear him for any distance he

judged to be about twenty feet above the ground. He crawled along this

till its circumference seemed so slight he dared not trust another inch

and peered into the pit. There was no way to make sure that the wall

was there but to let go; he lowered himself the whole six feet of his

length; let go; landed on the coping; by a miracle of balance maintained

his equilibrium; and then, dropping cautiously to his knees, flattened

himself along the edge. When you have dropped on to a wall which might

or might not be there, it is nothing at all to drop on to the earth,

which can not escape. He stood up, at last, within the Hoover grounds.

All was perfectly silent; the noise of his descent, which had seemed to

crash like an earthquake, in reality had not waked a bird. He had now to

make his way to the house through about a mile of perfect blackness; as

a good beginning, he ran into a tree, and this rebuke of nature's seemed

to put him in his place, and tell him to walk here like a spy, not like

a combatant. He went on, but now with infinite caution.

This part of the ground was as little tended as a wild wood; then

presently he came forth upon an old-fashioned garden, run wild, but

still sending out sweet smells beneath his trampling feet; beds of white

gillyflowers and fever-few and white banks of that odorous star-shaped

bloom which opens to the night made a kind of paleness in the dark which

perhaps he rather breathed and guessed than saw. It was an approach for

a Romeo, and seemed to cast a kind of dream over his desperate and grimy

business. He sped on to another little grove upon a rise of ground and

coming to the top of the slope saw, far ahead of him through the trees,

the shining of bright lights.

He could scarcely believe his eyes, for surely they would never dare to

light the house. And then again he remembered how far and lonely that

house stood, a mile and a half in from the road, and save through the

lodge or from the river how hard to come at! If this was really their

haunt it must have been so a long time; they must have grown used to

it, like their own house. All the more chance, then, for his spying!

Expectancy sprang higher. He kept on down the slope, this time at

something of a reckless pace, and, at the bottom, plumped full into a

pond.

The shock was horrid and without even the dignity of danger. He could

easily have scrambled back but that, as he re-opened his eyes, he found

himself gazing at a lantern, held up from across the pond. At that

moment three shots flew past him, aimed at the bank he had so

involuntarily and violently quitted. It seemed well to remain

inconspicuous as might be; the bullets began to skip close to him, and,

experimentally sinking, he found a fair depth and struck out under water

for the opposite shore.

In the middle of the pond his hands touched a solid and terrifying

obstruction. Heavens, what was this? Through what snares did he clumsily

struggle to make his way? And in what nightmare? Involuntarily he came

to the surface and found himself confronted by a high, overhanging

shape, bulking featureless in the darkness and chilling him with a sort

of superstitious despair. The more so that he seemed to be grasping

something shaped like a foot; his hand climbed a vast, cold leg and the

next moment he could have laughed aloud. He remembered, now, from his

daylight forays, an ornamental wilderness of rocks and ferns, across

which he had once glimpsed a stone lady; seated, and bending forward

with a vase extended in her hand. The pond had been hidden by that

wilderness; the vase had once been a playing fountain, and the lady

herself sat on a rock in the middle of the waters. It was against this

rock his hand had struck and it was her ankles which he thus ungallantly

grasped. He hung to them a moment, resting in her shadow, and then with

infinite precautions began to pull himself up those smooth, cold knees.

She was very large and dense, a bulwark between him and the spitting

bullets; he felt her rocky island beneath his feet, and gave himself,

even with ardor, to her embraces.

The light upon the shore split in two and one-half of it began to skirt

the pond at a brisk pace. He clambered across the stone lady's lap and

crouched, kneeling, in the shadow of her arm. Thus sheltered, his first

thought was for the priming of his revolver. It was soaked through! He

could have cried out like a child! But already his breathing space was

past.

The runner with the lantern had reached the spot where Herrick had

plunged in and the surface of the pond was now raked with rays of light,

crossing each other and striking perilously near his refuge so that they

sought out at once the breast and the bent back of the stone lady.

Herrick, as he blotted himself down the rock, observed that on the

further side the pond was edged by a coping of rough stones rising,

perhaps, two feet above the water and irregularly surmounted by small

boulders--the beginning of the ornamental wilderness. He came up close

against the wall; his fingers wedging themselves in a crack between the

stones, and his head, shadowed by a boulder, half above the water. Thus,

as he could hear and was not likely to be seen, he had every advantage

of that dangerous neighborhood. And also time for a somewhat chill

reflection. Suppose the life were not knocked out of him in the next

five minutes, what use was there in going on with a useless pistol? It

seemed even the outer grounds were being patroled or perhaps

searched--he remembered the light shining from the house--it came in

upon him that something unusual was going on, and that he might

presently succeed in being either the victim or the witness of a climax.

That thought was enough; his blood committed him beyond denial; and when

the searchers, without having dropped a single significant remark, began

scouting their own fears, and, accepting the surrounding silence as

empty of intruders, turned back through the artificial wilderness toward

the center of the estate, Herrick pulled himself out of the water and,

sometimes on his hands and knees, sometimes upon his stomach, followed

among the rocks.

The group with the lantern came out upon the carriage-way and paused. A

horse and two-seated wagon awaited them, the horse's head turned toward

the house; in the wagon sat Herrick's old friend, Mrs. Pascoe and the

little old, old couple from the lodge. As the other men tumbled in the

old lodge-keeper lifted up his voice: "I ain't slep' out o' the lodge,

nor your ma ain't, either, in forty years!"

"Well, you'll have to to-night, pa," said Mrs. Pascoe. "An' there ain't

any time to talk about it, either." She added, "You an' ma can come back

when we're gone. Don't ferget M'ree's your great gran'niece by marriage.

Have her visit yeh again." They were off and through the shrubbery;

Herrick followed.

But the carriage-way was clear of everything save errant weeds and at an

ordinary trot they very easily distanced him. After a while he ceased to

hear the wheels, but now again he could see the house shine among the

trees, and as he came closer still he listened for the sounds of their

arrival but heard nothing.

It was extraordinary what a stillness had again fallen upon the night.

No sound covered his approach, and when he came at last in view of the

great entrance no wagon waited on the path nor did any voice challenge

him from the doorway.

He stood among the trees and stared across the wide sweep of

carriage-way. He saw on either side depths of lawn, kept cut and roughly

trimmed, merging at last again into the darkness. The drive was bright

from the great glowing portico, and from the entrance doors set wide

into a stately hall; the hall was all in order as though for a

reception, with rugs and palms and candelabra, and to its left a vast

apartment like a ballroom flung from its long open windows, that crossed

the left front of the house and shone far along the side, spaces of

lamplight down the terraces. Save for one pane gleaming overhead, the

rest of the house stood dark, as if unoccupied. But in that still yet

quivering night, in that dense, black, vast but sultry silence, this

made a great illumination, and that wing of the old mansion seemed to

blaze like a palace in a wood; in the lack of sound or motion, it seemed

swept, opened and made ready by enchantment, and waiting for the

conqueror. It had indeed so great an air, so composed, so ordered, and

of such stately openness that it seemed to rebuke suspicion; surely law

and seemliness were on its side and not that of the dark, soiled,

muddied, creeping figure that skulked, staring, in the shrubbery like a

thief in the night; totally confounded, oppressed by every terror of the

house-breaker and yet with empty hands. But the bright house, which

should have threatened, invited him with every luster.

He was a fool, if you wish, but at least he knew his foolhardiness to

the core. The wagon he had followed must have passed the house and gone

on toward the river, but this bright vacancy and quiet had not been

arranged for nothing. To go forward was most likely death; a death quite

futile and unremarked, and scarcely a breathing-stage in the wild story

whose blazed trail of ruin and murder he had already followed so far.

Well, he had followed too far to go back. He was too near the goal; he

was too near the turning of the page, and, as far as was mortally

possible, he must read it.

The empty drive, the empty hall, the empty, shining windows drew him

like wires, and, dropping back across the border of the drive to a

far-lying depth of shadow, he crossed it like a ghost; taking advantage

of every unclipped shrub and moldering urn, began to mount the terraces.

Thus at last he came to the long windows, and huddling at one side,

peered in. He saw a proud interior, brilliant and pale, with panels of

latticed glass, after the French fashion, and other panels frescoed with

Pierrots and Columbines and with great clusters of wax candles set

between the panels. There was a great chandelier with swinging prisms

reflected in the floor that was waxed like satin; but this chandelier

was not lighted, and indeed everything suggested that they had never

dared to use any electricity, for which they would have to work the

power-house on the estate. But the clustered candles and the many lamps

made the place afloat with liquid gold, and the room trembled and

bloomed with the scent and the beauty of hot-house flowers, so that the

air seemed to shimmer with their sweetness. There was little enough

furniture; a golden grand piano with Cupids painted on it; a few chairs

from which Herrick guessed the holland had but lately been removed; and

near the huge, rose-filled fireplace, a little table, gleaming with

silver and linen, with lilies and crystal and lace. It was set for two;

close at hand was a serving-table with silver covers showing on it, and,

for a practical and modern touch, a chafing-dish! There was no one in

the room.

But the table was hint enough. Here was the center of these

preparations. Here two people were to meet, and Herrick thought he knew

the hostess. In the departing wagon-load, there had been no beautiful

tall figure with red hair. To this little private festivity Fate had led

him through the rough magic of his scramble in the night; she pointed at

the table with a very sure finger, and now all his vague expectancy was

centered in a single question, and his first necessity was to behold the

face of the red-haired woman's guest.

Now at the first glance he had taken this room for a sort of music-room

which had been used, too, for informal dances. And sure enough, along

one wall, just as though put there to tempt him to the final madness,

ran a little gallery for the dance-music. It had a balustrade about it

and within this balustrade hung short yellow brocaded curtains, in a

sort of valance, that seemed to Herrick strangely fresh, as though hung

there yesterday. And he determined if it should be his last move on

earth to get behind those curtains.

There was no staircase to the balcony from within the room. He crept to

the hall-door; the hall opened out square as a courtyard with doorways

and arches upon every side. At the rear the great staircase, after

perhaps a dozen steps, branched off to either hand, and on its left a

little gallery ran along the wall behind that very room and led to a

curtained niche. This would be the entrance to the musicians' balcony,

and there was nothing for it but that Herrick should traverse the hall

and mount the staircase. It was as if the house had turned to one great

eye; he thanked heaven for the rugs upon the marble and for the scanty

shelter of the palms; while with every step he took and every breath he

drew the house-breaker dreaded to hear another footstep in his rear or

to see an assailant rise before his eyes. But all remained vacant and

was as silent as the tomb. Running up those marble steps, he came at one

bound to the curtained niche, and, as he darted in between its hangings,

he had a strong inclination to laugh; for, if there were any one within,

it would be quaint to see whether he or they were the more startled! But

there was no one there. He had now his private box for the coming

entertainment. He dropped softly to the floor and, as he did so, some

one in the room below struck a match.

It startled him like the crack of doom. He parted the little curtains of

the valance, and beheld himself so far right that there stood the

red-haired lady lighting the chafing-dish.

Herrick was not more than about nine feet above the flooring of the

room, with the main door from the hall to his right hand and the

fireplace on his left, so that the little glittering table was before

him and to the left of him but a few feet. And there the red-haired

woman blew out the flame she had kindled, as if she had but meant to

test the wick. It was Herrick's first long clear look at her and he

looked hard. The resemblance to Christina lay only in a very striking

suggestion of the tall figure, a pose, a poise, an indescribable

lightness and sense of life; they had the same gracious, gallant

bearing, the same proud carriage of the head, and he suddenly realized

that he was looking at one of Christina's gowns. For the rest, she was,

of course, six years the elder, and her equal slenderness was much more

richly hued and softly curved. Handsome enough, her face at once

attracted and repelled by the diverse coloring of the eyes. It was a

face at once selfish and fierce and soft, with the softness of a woman

who is fashioned from head to foot in one ardent glow; a softness like a

panther's. In the flame-white allure of sex she struck straight at you,

as undisguised and challenging as lightning, and, to any but a

monomaniac, as soon wearied of. It seemed that she could never be

satisfied with her preparations. She walked about the room, touching and

re-touching the flowers; over and over again she scrutinized the

appointments of the table; lifted the silver covers; peered into the

chafing-dish, and tested the champagne in its bucket of ice. At last she

could find nothing more to do. Through all her coming and going, she had

seemed to be mocking and triumphing to herself; humming, singing and

even whistling very low with her mouth pursed into a confident and

quizzing little smile, or inclining her bright head, in victorious

scrutinies, from side to side; so that it seemed the guest must be very

welcome and, if she were bent on conquest, the conquest very sure.

She was not yet gowned for a festival, and, remembering the light in the

room above, Herrick, grim as the hour was, smiled to imagine that here

was to be played a little domestic comedy like thousands that go on in

Harlem flats and tame suburban cottages; the servantless hostess

satisfied at length about her cooking and her table and flying upstairs

at the last moment to dress for company. So indeed she turned to fly,

but then her mood changed. She whirled round upon the vacant table, her

comedy, her mockery quite fallen from her, and given way to a black

hate. All her quick humors swarmed in her, in a threatening storm; she

was not so much like a woman as like a great, bad, lovely, furious child

that runs its tongue out in defiance. But there was a power in this

defiance like the power in that soft panther of her grace. So that it

was a sort of curse her swirling movement cast upon the pretty table as

she flung one arm up and out above her head; the hand clinched, and then

the fingers slowly spreading and stiffening in the air. Then she went

out of the room and up the stair and overhead.

Herrick, scarcely knowing what he did, rose to his knees! Just then, he

thought he heard a slight noise behind him. As he turned, something

struck him on the head; he fell millions of miles through a black horror

stabbed with pain and forgot everything.

CHAPTER II

THE EXPECTED COMPANY

When he came to himself he was trussed up like a bundle, with arms and

ankles tied too tight for comfort. He still lay on the floor of the

musicians' gallery and the room below him was still lighted. He rolled

over and again could look through the valance. Only a little time must

have elapsed, for the room was still empty.

And with the sight of that emptiness, questions poured in upon him. Who

had found him out? And for what fate was he reserved? How long did they

mean to leave him here and why did they leave him here at all? Why had

he not been finished and done with? There struck through him, with

perhaps the first utter and broken fear of his life, the depth of the

silence by which he was again surrounded. No breath, no stir; that

intense stillness was vivid as a presence and positive like sound; he

was alone in it; he lay there helpless; a bound fool and sacrifice in

the bright house, in the middle of the wood and the depth of the night,

and, if those chose who left him so, he must lie there till he died. He

lurched up and sat quiet, waiting for the dreadful giddiness and nausea

that came with movement to pass by; determined to struggle till he got

to his knees and on his knees, if necessary, to attempt to pass out of

that house. He knew it was impossible, but movement he must have. Then,

through that density of silence, he heard a step upon the terrace.

His curiosity rushed back on him, like fire in a back-draft. He held

his breath; the step was a man's; it crossed the threshold of the great

door and sounded on the tiling of the hall. The next instant the guest

of the red-haired woman was in the room under Herrick's eyes.

Removing a long driving ulster and a soft hat, he proved to be in full

evening clothes, and expectancy, held firmly down, lay mute and rigid in

every part of him. He lifted a face the color of tallow and, staring

straight at Herrick's balcony with blank, black eyes, the visitor drew a

quivering breath. This visitor was Cuyler Ten Euyck.

The sound of his entrance had evidently been remarked. Again there was a

light footstep overhead, and Herrick guessed that enough time had

elapsed for the toilet to have been completed. The hostess came forth at

once, and could be heard slowly, and with great deliberation, descending

the stairs. Ten Euyck did not go to meet her. Only his eyes traveled to

the door and he stood stiff, with little swallowings in his throat.

Herrick could hear, as she came into the room, a swish, a tinkle about

her steps as though she walked through jeweled silk, and before her on

the waxed and gleaming floor there floated a pool of additional

brightness, so that he saw she had not been satisfied, after all, with

the lighting of her supper-party, but carried a lamp to her own beauty

as she came. Another step and there swam into his sight the beautiful,

tall figure, carrying her lamp high, and incomparably more than before

the mistress of that great apartment. This time it was Christina

herself.

CHAPTER III

THE SHIPS AT ACTIUM

She stretched out one arm, keeping Ten Euyck at the tips of her fingers.

He seemed content to stay so, looking at her.

She was dressed in a trailing gown of silken tissue that was now gold,

now silver, as the light took it; but the long vaporous slip beneath was

of pale rose; molded to her motion and stirring with her breath, there

dwelt in the gauze which covered her a perpetual faint flush. The stuffs

were cut as low about the breast as if she had been some social queen,

and her fair, pale arms were bare of gloves. Their adorable young

flatness below the gleam of the slim, smooth shoulders, was now

shimmered over and now revealed by short fringes of silver and gold, of

cooler colored amber and crystal, which were their only sleeve; and

these fringes hung about the borders of her gown and trembled into music

as she moved. In the high-piled softness of her hair, diamonds glimmered

like stars in a fair dusk; diamonds banded her brow in an inverted

crescent; diamonds and topaz dropped in long pendants from her ears;

diamonds and pearls clung round her arms; the restored necklace drooped

down her breast, and the peep and shine of jewels glanced from her

everywhere like glow-worms. She seemed to be clothed in fluctuant light,

and yet it could not dim one radiance of her beauty. This was more than

newly crowned; the rose was fully open; her loveliness had spread its

folded wings and come into its own. There was no shyness now in those

wide eyes; her spirit shone there, all in arms, and moved with a new and

deeper strength in her young body. Very faintly, on the pure and

delicate oval of her cheek, burned the soft, hot stain of rouge. This

was the reality of the dear ghost, calling in the night with the rain

upon its face; this was the pale girl in the gray suit who had once sat

beside her mother in the corner of the coroner's office. It may be Ten

Euyck thought of this; it may be she did.

"Well," she said, "have I made myself fine? Do I please you?"

He broke from his trance, took the lamp out of her hold, set it on the

mantelshelf, and returned to her without a word.

"Pray speak!" she said; "I am all yours!"

"Christina!" he broke out, and caught and covered her hand with kisses.

"It is quite true. Do I do you credit?

"Look at me here,

Look at me there,

Criticize me everywhere--"

He leaned toward her and she swayed past him to the piano. Over her

shoulder she sang to him--

"From head to feet

I am most sweet,

And most perfect and complete!"

She struck the chords a crash and whirled round to him with her hands in

her lap. "Yes, it is quite true. From my head to my feet--" here she

thrust forth through the music of the shaken fringe a slim gold shoe

with its buckle winking up at him--"you have paid for every rag I stand

in." Christina's accent upon the word "rag" suggested that she was

accustomed to standing in something much better. "It would be hard if

you were not suited. Would you like to go to your room a moment? It's

all ready."

He must have considered this jabber at somewhat its true worth, for what

he did was to draw up a chair and take and hold her hands. "Christina,"

said he, studying her face, "do you hate me so much?"

She remained a moment, silent. Then, "Yes!" she said. "I am a good

hater!" And she smiled at him, a soft, stinging smile, with her eyes

lingering on his.

"And yet you come--willingly--to me?"

"Willingly?" she said. "Oh, greedily!"

"Of your own suggestion?"

"Of my own suggestion."

"And on my terms?"

"Ah, no!" she cried. "On mine!"

"Well, then, for simply what you know I have?"

"For that," she said, "and nothing else."

"Great heavens!" he cried. "You're a cool hand!--You, who value yourself

so well, are willing to pay so high for it."

She replied, "To the last breath of my life!"

He leaned down and kissed her wrist and then her arm, and she sat quiet

in his grasp.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked, looking up.

She replied, "Of other kisses."

He sprang to his feet with a kind of snort, going to one of the windows,

and Christina purled at his broad back, "Don't be angry. How can I help

what I think? Have I not kept my part of the bargain? Have I not come

here to meet you without another soul? To a house I never saw before?

That you tell me you have hired? In a sort of wood, at night, quite

alone, not even a servant--although I must say everything seems to have

been well arranged and left quite handy! Would you like some supper,

now? If you ordered it, I am sure it must be good. I am very obedient.

All the same, I am rather hungry."

He came back to the table with the little pink line showing about his

nostrils. "I do not mind your not desiring me," he said, "and perhaps,

after all, I shall not mind your desiring another man. As you say, it is

not a question of what you desire, but of what I do. Well, Christina, I

am satisfied with your preparations for me; do you approve mine for you?

You shall have servants enough, Christina, when I am sure we may not be

traced by your sister's gentry! How do you like my trysting-place? You

gave me very little time. If you consider it a cage, is it sufficiently

gilded?"

Christina drew a long breath. "It's wonderful. A palace--wonderful!

Surely I was born to walk rooms like these! And a far cry from the

little boarding-house I lived in when you first met me! God knows," said

Christina, in a voice that trembled, "I am glad to be here!"

"You like it then?" he cried eagerly. "It's for sale. It shall be yours

to-morrow!"

"Give me some wine!" she said. "I am tired!"

He looked at her and said, yes, she was right; and she would better have

something to eat.

The wine brought back her brightness; it was she who lighted the wick,

heated the supper, and set the smoking chafing-dish before him. Till it

came to the serving she would not let him stir and he could only lean

forward on the table, looking and looking at her. During this she said

little enough, except that he must be sure to praise her cooking, for

she had always boasted she could be a good wife to a poor man! But once

she was seated she poured out a stream of chatter which he sometimes

answered and sometimes not, being intent upon but one thing, and that

was to drink deeper and deeper of her presence.

Now through much of this Herrick lost sight of them, for he had come

upon an interest of his own. He had discovered in one of the balusters

against which he lay the jutting head of a nail. Never was an object,

not in itself alluring, more dearly welcomed. For he saw that his legs

were bound with only the soft cord that had once looped back the

curtains between the inner and the outer balcony; there must have been

two of these cords, and if his arms were but fastened with the other the

edge of the nailhead might make, in the course of time, some impression

upon it. He sat up and found the nail of a good height to saw back and

forth upon, and if it did not convincingly appear that any effect would

be made upon the cord, at least it provided him with a violent, if

furtive, exercise. This was better than to lie there and let those below

saw upon his heart instead.

But he must stop at last from pure exhaustion; and at that moment there

was the sound of a chair pushed back. "I thank you for your

hospitality," said Christina's voice. "But, now to business. I have

played in too many melodramas to sign a contract without reading it. The

yacht sails at sunrise?"

"Or when you will."

"And takes with her Allegra and Mrs. Pascoe and whatever of their tribe

they choose?"

"Safely and secretly to Brazil! They have chosen their own crew. They

must be aboard of her already."

At such words as these Herrick may well be said to have picked up his

ears. He heard Ten Euyck go on:

"She is yours, Christina; and theirs if you choose to make her so!"

"You are very generous!" said Christina dryly. "But there is only one

way I can be sure of the end of all this. You know what is most

important to me." Herrick, leaning against the banisters had got his eye

to the opening in the valance again, and he could now see Christina with

her hands in her lap facing Ten Euyck. "Have you got that letter?" she

said.

Ten Euyck gave his breast a smart rap so that Christina, being so near,

must have heard the paper crackle there.

"Very well," said she; "so much for the District-Attorney's mail!"

He stood up, and his voice croaked with triumph as he talked.

"Christina," he said, "I have brought you that letter--it's the price of

my professional, my political honor; it's bought with my disgrace, with

my career! But I have brought it. I'm ridiculous to you, Christina, but

who got it for you? Your friends, the Inghams? your admirer, Wheeler?

your poor fool of a Herrick? your cherished jail-bird, Denny?--No, I

did! This letter that I have here Ann Cornish fell ill guarding, for her

vengeance. You stole and lost it. Your enterprising family broke into a

post-office to get it back. But the despised policeman brings it to

you."

"You got it by accident, you say," commented Christina. "Don't forget

that!"

"Forget! I shall never forget the triumph of catching that gang,

although I renounce it at your bidding. I shall never forget your

message when the letter was barely in my hands!--

"'I know now that I am come of a family of criminals. My pride is in the

dust, as deep as you could wish it. If you do not help us, if it must

come out that I am tied to blackmailers whom you will catch and send to

prison, I shall die of it!' Christina, can I forget that?"

"No," said Christina, "I never thought you could."

"And you will remember my answer, my dear! That I had the proof, the

letter in my hand, to publish or to destroy, as you should choose. You

haven't forgotten that?"

"No," said Christina again. "But the destroying, that's the thing!

You'll burn it?"

"Yes."

"Before my eyes?"

"Of course."

"To-night?"

"To-morrow!"

She seemed, for a moment, to take counsel with herself. "Very well."

An extraordinary limp helplessness, a kind of dejection of acquiescence,

seemed to melt her with lassitude at the words. It was enough to sicken

the heart of any lover, and even Ten Euyck cried out, as if to justify

himself, "Ah, remember--you gave me the slip once before!" And at the

memory he seemed to lose all control of himself, falling suddenly

forward, clinging to her knees and hiding his face in her skirts.

She sat for a moment motionless. Then, with fastidious deliberation, as

if they were bones which a dog had dropped in her lap, she plucked up

his wrists in the extreme tips of her fingers, and slowly pushed him

off. "Quietly!" she said. "You are one who would always do well to be

quiet!"

He sat on his heels, the picture of misery, already ashamed and almost

frightened at himself. And suddenly, "Christina," he whispered, while

another flash branded itself across his face, "whose kisses were you

thinking of?"

She did not, at first, understand; and then, remembering--"I will take a

page from your book. I will tell you to-morrow."

"Was it Denny?" he snapped.

"Denny?" said she, abstractedly. "Will? God bless me, no!"

He sighed with a kind of vacancy. "You could easily tell me so!"

"Well, then," said Christina, with considerable temper, "I will tell you

something else. When I came here to-night, that I might not die of my

own contempt I promised myself one thing. I swore to that girl I used to

be, who carried so high a head she could not breathe the same air with

you and never thought to stand you miawling and whimpering here about

her feet, that at least I should tell no lies of love. There shall never

come one out of my mouth to you and may God hear me. So if I do not tell

you the man I thought of, it is only because I can not bear to speak his

name in this place!--But rest easy! I am very capricious. Things will be

different to-morrow. To-morrow, if you still think it interesting, you

shall know."

"Know!" he cried. And catching her arm, looked at her with a baleful

face. "Yes, there's my trouble! What do I know of you at all! I met you

once four years ago--well, I forget myself, I know it! But did I?--Were

you even then--? Well, at the inquest, at that reception, in the

station, holding to Denny, the night of your performance, and now,

to-night! There's my knowledge of you! You dazzle, you befool, you drive

me crazy, and you leave me empty--why should I throw my life away for

that! After all, where were you when all New York was looking for you?

Nearly a week! Where were you?"

"Where was I!" Christina cried. "Well, it's rather long. But does not

the favorite slave always tell stories to her master? Listen to

Scheherezade."

Then, for the first time, Herrick heard the story of Christina's visit

to the yellow house; how she had determined that Allegra must tell the

authorities, in Denny's behalf, the story of his provocation against

Ingham; how then, hidden in Nancy's, she had found Allegra's hair and

guessed everything. "Then it seemed that the first thing was to get

Nancy away, quietly, without warning, so that there should be no danger

to her. I thought that then I could manage Allegra." She had had Allegra

come into town for her performance, and go straight from it to the

Amsterdam, up to Christina's apartment in Christina's name; following

her there she had slept on the couch, and slipped off early in the

morning. Suspecting the identity of the motor, she had telephoned for it

as though to meet them both, and now she went on to tell Ten Euyck of

her attempt to deceive Mrs. Pascoe, as though she had come from Allegra,

and of her imprisonment in the closet.

"Ah, that wretched necklace! I said to myself, 'If it comes to a fight,

they may find it and take it from me.' And then I should really have

been in your power! I buried it in the flower-pot, thinking to come back

with reinforcements!" She told of the flight in the rain, and of the

farmers who wouldn't wake up. Both men listened, absorbed, staring. And

Christina said, "I was afraid to go toward Waybrook, in case those men

followed me. I ran toward Benning's Point. I feared the main road, too,

and I thought I could follow the short cut. It is very hilly and broken

and I had never seen it before in the dark; the sheets of rain were like

the heavens falling, and the wind beat out my last strength; I was mud

up to my knees and I had on heavy clothes, too large for me, all

dragging down with wet. Perhaps it all made me stupid; at any rate, I

lost my way. Oh!" said Christina, "that was hard!" and she put her hand

over her heart. "I don't know--it must have been hours--I ran and

staggered and stumbled and climbed! You are to remember I had had no

food all day, and little enough the day before. And by and by I fell. I

got up and on again for a little, but I had hurt myself in falling, and

I fell again. And this time I lay there."

Ten Euyck lifted the border of her golden dress and put it to his lips.

The moisture of self-pity swam in Christina's eyes. "Nancy!" she said.

"That was worst to think of!" In her own lip she set her teeth and soon

she went on--"While I was still unconscious, a man came along with a

motor. Somehow, he didn't run over me; he found me. And he recognized

me! He wanted the reward. He took me to his sister's; to that Riley's.

They gave me all sorts of hot drinks and things; I think they saved my

life. But when I tried to thank them, something very comic had

happened--I had lost my voice." Christina closed her eyes.

"Well?" said Ten Euyck.

"Well, that woman said I needed sleep, so she sent her brother out of

the room--but she didn't send her husband. When she found I could not

speak, she pulled down the blinds of her room for fear some one should

see in, and said I needn't make a fuss, trying to get away, for she knew

as well as any one I was mixed up with murder and trying to clear out.

She said she was not going to hold any poor girl that was in trouble,

not for the few hundreds he would give her out of that reward. She was

going to let me go. 'But first,' said she, 'I'll thank you to hand over

that diamond necklace!'"

Both Ten Euyck and the unseen Herrick started and stared.

"She wouldn't believe me. If I didn't have it, I had hidden it since I

got in the house. 'Very well, if you won't do anything for me, I think

there's a gentleman who will. I think the party for me to send for is

Mr. Ten Euyck.' I wasn't ready for you, then, nor did I mean to be

handed over to you, like a thief done up in a bundle! But what was I to

do? I was still weak and she was between me and the locked door! I'm

grand at screaming," said Christina, "but I couldn't even speak! And

then, out of the stones of the courtyard, heaven raised up a miracle for

me!"

"It was you, then?"

"The shadow? yes. But how could I dream a friend would be going by? It

was just a desperate game, a wild chance! She had been telling me what

an outcry there was, how I would be recognized anywhere, and about the

moving-picture, and how they played the march from Faust, now, at that

film--and I thought of the reward and how there must be many looking for

it. There was a piano in that room and I went to it, put my foot on the

loud pedal and began to play. 'Oh,' I thought, 'will some one glance up?

Will some one guess?' And then I threw the shadow on the blind! Before

she could do much more than drag me away, my unsuspected friend was in

the room. She didn't dare to try to keep me. He put a hat and cloak on

me from her closet--oh, I'm sure he sent them back!--and snatched me

off!"

"And is this your idea of explanation?" said Ten Euyck. "Who was this

friend?"

"Ah," she said, "you ask too much! Leave something for to-morrow!" And

she went and sat at the piano, with her elbows on the keyboard and her

head in her hands.

This was the first moment in which Herrick began to be sensible of a

little hope. It seemed to him that the edge of the nail was beginning to

make some impression upon the soft silk cord that bound him. He ground

away, desperately, but always there was the dread of any sound, and

quivers of terror that the violence of his pressure might loosen the

nail. The blow on his head made him easily dizzy, and as he leaned there

quiet to recover himself, it was plain that Ten Euyck with a dozen

questions had endeavored to follow Christina to the piano, and been

checked where he was.

"No, we are both getting fussed. It is my right, perhaps, but hardly the

man's. As for me, I'm all for decorum. Sit back and smoke and when you

have smoked you will not fidget. I will play and sing to you--yes, I

should love it!" softly laughed Christina, her fingers moving on the

keys and her voice breaking into song--

"I'm only a poor little singing girl

That wanders to and fro,

Yet many have heard me with hearts awhirl;

At least they tell me so!

At least--"

she chanted, leaning with gay insolence toward Ten Euyck,

"At least they tell me so!"

"Christina!" he said hoarsely.

"You like personal ditties! You shall have another!

"You dressed me up in scarlet red

And used me very kindly--

But still I thought my heart would break

For the boy I left behind me!

That's too rowdy a song for a patrician! But I can sing only very simple

things! The one I always think of when I think of you is the simplest of

all!--

"We twa hae run about the braes

And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wandered many a weary foot

Sin auld lang syne."

The color rose up in her face and her eyes shone; her bosom rose and

fell in long, triumphing breaths, and--"Damn him!" Ten Euyck cried.

"It's not me you think of when you sing that! It's Denny!"

"For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne--

Is it?" Christina broke out. "Who knows!

"We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

For auld lang syne.

Ah, that stays my heart!--Ten Euyck!"

"My God!" he cried. "I won't bear it!"

He had his two hands on her shoulders and as she continued to play she

lifted up toward his at once a laughing and a tragic face. "What does he

matter to you?" she said, "to you, the Inspector of Police! Aren't you

here, with me, and isn't he down and done for, and out of every race? As

good as dead?

"He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone,

At his heels a grass-green turf;

At his head, a stone!

Come, pluck up spirit!

"Tramp, tramp, across the land they ride!

Hark, hark, across the sea!

Ah-ha, the dead do ride with speed!

Dost fear to ride with me?

--'Dost fear to ride with me?'" she sang, on the deepest note of her

voice, and turning, rose and held Ten Euyck off from her, seeming to

study and to challenge him, and then, with the excitement and the wild

emotion which she had kindled in both of them, dying slowly from her

face but not from his.

She released him, and, going to a little table, unclasped her necklace,

and slipped the strings of diamonds from her arms. The crescent round

her head came next. "What are you doing?" he almost whispered.

"Unclasp this earring. Thank you!" She lifted one foot and then the

other and tore the buckles from her shoes. She did not hesitate above

that bewildering heap, but pushed closer and closer together those

fallen stars and serpents of bright light. "There!" she cried. "Are they

all there? No--here!" At her breast there was still a quivering point or

two; she wrenched off the lace that held them and flung it on the pile.

"There!" she said again, "they are all there! My poor fellow, I have

changed my mind."

She walked away and leaned her forehead on the tall mantelshelf.

Whence she was perhaps prepared to have him turn her round and holding

her by the wrists say to her through stiff lips,--"Explain yourself!" He

shook from head to foot with temper; doubtless, too, with the scandalous

outrage to commonsense.

"There is so little to explain. I thought I could. I can't! It wouldn't

pay!"

"Not pay!"

"Oh," said Christina, indicating, with a scornful glance, the mirrored,

golden room and piled-up jewels, "these were only incidents! Try to

understand. Long ago, when I was a child, I set out to vanquish the

world. Not to belong to it, not to be of it, but to have it under foot!

I was so poor, so weak, so unbefriended. I thought it would be a fine

day when I could give this great, contemptuous, cold, self-satisfied

world a little push with my shoe and pass it by. It was a childish

ambition--well, in some ways I have never grown up! And to me, since our

first encounter, _you_ have always typified that world."

He started back, and released her hands.

"All that I really wanted I won for myself last week! And Allegra stole

from me when I saw her hair! You tell me that you can save it for me in

saving her, but it's not true! It was easy to think of you as the world,

to feel that you were giving me yourself and it to play with! It's easy

to imagine that you would be under my heel.--No, I should be under

yours! I shouldn't have vanquished the world, I should be vanquished by

it!--No, I thank you!"

"And Allegra?" he asked her, grimly.

Christina shuddered and closed her eyes. But she said, "Has Allegra been

so tender to me that I should lose myself for her? Understand me, it

never was for Allegra that I came here to-night. Ah, Ten Euyck, I have

been a good sister. It is time I thought of myself."

"Think," he replied, "that she will pass from ten to twenty years in

jail."

The girl's face trembled as if he had struck it, but--"Well," she said,

"you the upholder of the law--you shall judge. She lived off me--that's

nothing!--But she lived off and bled others, and drove and hounded them,

and made me an ignorant partner in it--that's something, you'll admit!

And--Nancy! How about that? She lied to Will about Nancy and Jim

Ingham.--Come, isn't the balance getting heavy? She just as much killed

Jim as if she had done it with her hand; and if Will--dies," cried

Christina, with a breath like a little scream upon the word, "it is my

sister kills him! I am stone and ice to her! When I saw Nancy's message,

in that moment I knew who and what my sister was, and then and there I

had done with her! Let me hear you blame me! And yet," said Christina

with a change of voice, "there is one more count!"

Her look had changed and darkened. "When that crew of hers laid hands

on _him_--O!" she cried out, suddenly. And flinging forth her arms

buried her face in them.

The effect on Ten Euyck was electrical. Hitherto drugged and fascinated

by the mobility of her beauty, the lights and emotions varying in it, he

now shot forward on his sofa as if, in a mechanical toy, a spring had

been touched.

"It isn't possible!" he cried. "That calf! That milk-sop! Christina, you

don't mean--Herrick!"

She let her arms fall, and without raising her head, lifted her eyes for

him to read.

He broke into a loud laugh that jangled, hysterically cold, round the

great, brilliant room. "And to think," he said, "that all this time I

have thought of him as my pet diversion, my wittol, my moon-calf! It has

been my one jest through all this wretched business to see the

importance of that great baby! To watch him industriously acquiring

bumps and bruises, and getting more and more scratches on his innocent

nose! I waited to see it put out of joint forever when you threw him

flat upon it! I thought that we were laughing in our sleeves at him,

together! When I had this appointment with you safe, I smiled to see him

careering up and down the country like Lochinvar in a child's reader.--

"'He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,

He swam the Eske River--'"

Ten Euyck sprang up and catching Christina by the elbows snatched her

smartly to her feet and shook her till, on her slim neck, her head

bobbed back and forth. "What did you tell me for," he cried, "if you

hoped to be rid of me! I, at least, am no baby, and I have had enough of

this! Your dear Lochinvar is doubtless swimming and riding somewhere in

the neighborhood. But not within call! And let me assure you, though he

stay not for brake and he stop not for stone--yet ere he alights here at

Netherby Gate--"

"Go on!" said Christina, "you know the end of the verse." She flung it,

with a gallant backward movement of her head, straight in his teeth--

"'For a laggard in love and a dastard in war--'

Oh, listen, listen, listen! Now you know! Now you know whose name I

would not speak! Not in this place! Oh, oh!--Will and Nancy; after all,

they are only pieces of myself! They are no more to me than--me! But he

is all I am not and long for! He is life outside myself, to meet mine!

He is my light and my air and my hope and my heart's desire! She knew

it--_she knew it_! She had taken my youth and my faith and my kindness

with the world, and killed them, and then she tried to kill him

too!--Love him? O God!" cried Christina, "what must he think of me!" And

she began to shake with weeping.

"That cub!" said Ten Euyck. "You love that cub!" And he took her in his

arms; and covering her throat and hair with kisses, he held her off

again, and tried to see into her face. "Do you?" he cried. "Do you? Do

you?"

"Give me a handkerchief!" Christina snapped.

He was surprised into releasing her; and plucking forth her own scrap of

lace, she wiped her nose with some deliberation. "I look hideous. I

should like those lights out!"

He went about putting out light after light, till she said,

"Leave my lamp!"

She was standing beneath it, pensive and grave and now quite pale, with

her back to the mantelshelf, her soft, fair arms stretched out along its

length, and her head hanging. She might have been bound there, beneath

the single lamp, like an olden criminal to a seacoast rock before the

rising tide. The pale light floated over her as Ten Euyck came up and

seemed to illumine her within a magic circle.

"My dear," Ten Euyck began, with a kind of solemn fierceness, "when you

made me accomplice in a crime, when you came here to me like this

to-night, did you really dream that you could change your mind? Did you

suppose you could make me ridiculous again? Do you know where you are?

And under what circumstances? There is a slang phrase, Christina--do you

really think you can get away with it?"

"No," Christina replied. She quietly lifted her head. Her eyes rested

soberly on his. "I am here, with you. I am alone. There is no Rebecca's

window here to dash myself from. You see I have counted up everything.

And this is what I will do. If I cannot die now, I can die to-morrow.

You can not watch me forever. And in the hour when you leave me, I shall

find a way to die."

His face grayed as he looked at her.

"Do you think I am not acquainted," Christina went on, "with the story

of Lucretia? I could strike a blow like hers! And oh, believe me, like

her I should not die in silence!" She felt him start. "Do you suppose I

should not tell why I came here? Do you by any chance suppose I should

not tell what bait I had from the Inspector of Police? Ah, when we have

something to lose, we stumble and make terms. But when we have no longer

anything, we are the masters of terms.--Is this my last night?"

Christina asked.

"By God!" he said, "you know how to defend yourself!" And his arms

dropped at his side.

He was a moment silent, his mouth twitching, his eyes drinking her up.

Christina had, in argument, that better sort of eloquence that calls up

convincing pictures. Doubtless, he knew she might denounce his theft of

the letter. Doubtless he saw her, then, clay-cold; lost to him,

utterly. On the other hand, to lose her, now, was a thing outside

nature and not to be endured. So that suddenly he broke out in a kind of

high, hoarse whisper; "Christina, there's another way! I never meant to

marry--but--Christina, shall it be that?"

"_What!_" she exclaimed. It was a volcanic outcry, not a question. She

stretched out her two arms, with the palms of her hands lifted against

him, and laughter and amazement seemed to course through her and to wave

and shine out of her face, like fire in a wind.

"Christina," he said; "Christina, I will marry you!--Oh, Christina,

isn't that the way! There's your ambition! There's your satisfaction!

There's the world under your shoe! Christina, will you?"

"Is it possible?" she said. And again--"Is it possible! What! Peter

Winthrop Brewster Cuyler Ten Euyck and the girl in the moving-picture

show? 'Mr. Ten Euyck' and the sister of a jail-bird! Eh, me, my poor

soul, is it as bad as that?" Her laughter died and her brows clouded.

"It's a far cry, Ten Euyck, since you stole my kiss on the sly! You laid

the first bruise on my soul! You put the first slur and sense of shame

into the shabby little girl in the stock-company who had no one to

defend her but a boy as poor as herself. What did it feel like, dear

sir, that check? We have come a long way since then, but have you

forgotten? And does the pure patrician and the representative of high

life now lay the cloak of his great name down at my feet? To walk on it,

yes! But to pick it up? After all, I think it would be stopping! Ah, my

good fellow, I don't jump at it!"

"I know you don't! That's why I want you! I've been jumped at all my

life!" Thus Ten Euyck, holding her fast, his face burning darkly under

her little blows of speech, and his pulse rising with the sense of

battle. "I think I've never known a woman who wouldn't have given her

eyes to marry me! I've never taken a step among them without looking out

for traps! Christina, I long to do the trapping and the giving, yes, and

the taking, for myself! You don't want me; well, I want you! Yes, for my

wife! I see it now. You dislike me, you despise me. Well, your dislike

doesn't count; believe me, you'd not despise me long! I'd rather see you

bearing my name--you, with another man for me to wipe out of your heart,

you, as cold as ice and as hard as nails to me,--than any of those soft,

waiting women! See, we'll play a great trick on the world! We'll be

married to-morrow! We'll sail for Europe. From there we'll send back

word we've been married all along. People shall think that when you left

me the other night I followed you; that we fooled them from the

beginning, and when next they see you, you shall be on my arm! Come,

Christina, will not that be a reentry? Will not the world be vanquished,

then?"

"Hush!" she said, with lifted finger. "I thought I heard some one!" She

lifted the lamp from the mantelshelf and going to the window held it far

out into the darkness with an anxious face. "No!" she breathed. Ten

Euyck observed with joy that her manner to him had changed; it had

become that of a fellow-conspirator. Up and down the terrace she sent

the light, her apprehensive eyes searching the shadows and the bushes.

"No!" said she again, "I was wrong."

She came back to him flushed and eager, and setting the light upon the

table, he caught her hands. "Remember!" he said, "otherwise I shall stop

your sister. And where will your name be then?"

Her nostrils widened, her eyes contracted, doubt succeeded to triumph in

her face. "If it were not the truth!" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If there were no such necessity! If you did not have my name in your

power at all. If you have no such letter!"

"Christina!"

"It is what I have doubted from the beginning! How do I know you haven't

lied to me all along? I ask you if you have that letter, and you thump

your breast! I ask you to show it to me and you answer, 'To-morrow'!

Traps--did you say? Did you think I was to be caught in a trap? When you

were looking for a poor gull, did you cast eyes on Christina Hope? If

you had that proof to show me, you wouldn't hesitate! There is no such

letter--I can see it in your face!"

He took the letter from his coat and held it up.

"Oh, well," Christina said, "I see an envelope. Am I to marry for an

envelope?"

He cast the envelope away, folded the letter to a certain page and held

it for her to read.

She read it and a faintness seized her. She stood there, swaying, with

closed eyes, and he put an arm about her for support. She leaned upon

him, and he put down his mouth to hers. "Christina, look up!" he cried.

"Don't be afraid! Don't tremble so! My darling, here's your first

wedding-present!" And, alarmed by her half-swoon, transported by that

surrender in his arms, he held the letter above the lamp and let its

edge catch fire.

Christina opened her sick eyes and they dwelt dully on the paper and

then with pleasure on the little flame. "Let me!" she breathed. "Yes,

let me. It's my right."

He put the burning paper in her hands, smiling on her with a tender

playfulness. "Take care!" he said.

[Illustration: "You fool!" she cried. "You miserable, monstrous fool!

Thank God, I've done with you!"]

"I will take care." She held up the paper, intent on the thin edges

crisping in the glowing fire, and then, swift as a deer and wild as a

lion's mate, she sprang away, clapped her hands hard upon the burning

paper, pressed out the flame upon the bosom of her gown, and thrust the

letter in her breast. "You fool!" she cried. "You miserable, monstrous

fool! Thank God, I've done with you!"

CHAPTER IV

TURN, FORTUNE, TURN THY WHEEL--

Ten Euyck's face blazed white with anger. Sick with rage, driven with

bewilderment and some touch of vague suspicion, all his cold strength

gathered itself. He was no longer merely a harp for Christina's fingers.

She stood at the far end of the room with her back against the wall,

barricaded, indeed, by a little gilded table, but not at all alarmed or

even concerned, and the master of the situation forced himself to say

quietly, "I am tired of play, my dear. I shall not run after you. Bring

that letter here!"

Christina laughed.

"You will come to me, quite obediently, and give that letter here to

me."

"Oh, I think not!" Christina said. "Not to a thief! Not to a

blackmailer! Nor even to a gentleman who tried, and failed, at

murder.--How much did you give the man in the Tombs?"

A profound silence fell upon that house. It was as if, in that great

golden room, among the mirrored gulfs of shadow, something held its

breath. Night seemed to look in at the windows with a startled face.

Then somewhere, a hawk cried. And still there was no movement in the

room. The homely sound of crickets rose from without like the stir of a

world immeasurably far away. And Christina, in the changing lusters of

her gold and silver gown, stood half in shadow; flushed and radiant, a

little shaken with triumph, as a spent runner who has touched his goal,

and with her hand above the letter on her heaving breast. Ten Euyck did

not make one sound. But his face had a paralyzed, chalky stiffness, and

the jaw dropped, like the jaw of a corpse.

"You fatuous hypocrite!" cried the girl. "You pillar of society! And

could you ever imagine it was for _you_ I came! For your name, for your

position! I thank you, I prefer my own! For your protection? Can you

protect yourself? Am I the girl to throw myself away on you for the sake

of a bad sister, who has treated me with so much hate? It took all your

greed, all your vanity, all your stupid, cruel pomp and dullness to be

fooled like that! Did you ever really think I could stoop to such a

scene as this to-night for you--or me? Oh, blind, blind, blind! How

could you imagine I would leave him in your hands and never make a fight

for it? Did you think I didn't remember?--that I couldn't still hear, as

I heard when I was a frightened girl, the stroke of his hand across your

face, and that I didn't know you had always had death for him in your

heart?"

She covered her face with her hands and then she stood up tall again.

"My dear Will, my poor boy!--who treated me as if I were his little

brother! Oh, the cold night trips on railway trains when I couldn't pay

for a sleeper and used to sit wrapped in his coat; the morning races

down the track for coffee; the scenes we used to work and work on and

get so cross we almost struck each other; the time I was discharged and

he lent me his few dollars till I should get work again; his first big

hit and then mine; and then--Nancy, and all the sweetness of a hundred

times with both my dears! Did you think I was going to sit quiet and let

you turn your heel on all of that? Allow your conceit and insolence and

spite to feed on his disgrace and danger! Let _you_ sneer at _him_!

Leave _him_ to be triumphed over by _you_!--Will Denny by a Ten Euyck!

An artist by a bourgeois Inspector of Police! An actor," cried

Christina, beginning to soar, "and _such_ an actor, by a mere outsider!

Your side over mine!--Why did you try? Will to be shamed and hidden in

the dark! And you to be bowed down to, to swell and strut and smirk and

look dull and glossy and respectable, and be brushed by valets, and have

prize cattle raised for you to eat, and carry gold umbrellas! He to die!

And you to pillow yourself upon a hundred crimes he never dreamed

of!--Tybalt in triumph and Mercutio slain!--You poor, pretentious,

silly, vulnerable soul!--not while he was paying for one moment's

madness, and I began to guess and hope and pray that about you there was

something prisons had been gaping for, year after year, if only I could

find it out! Did you really think I didn't guess what was in this

letter? Do you think I didn't know you sent Nicola into that post-office

to steal it? Why, it was I, with my last strength, who mailed it there.

He must have found some trace of me and guessed. Nothing in heaven or

earth would have brought me here, except to steal it back!"

"How did you--" he tried to say. But the machinery of his throat was

stiff and could not work. He swallowed once or twice, and then, dropping

his dulled eyes, he got out--"When--did you--at first--?"

"When you came so grandly to the station, a master of the trap that my

poor boy was caught in, and said, 'If she would tell the jury what she

told him--' Don't you remember that I answered, 'How do you know what

she told him?' A strange confidant for Allegra! It wasn't accident,

coincidence--for you knew the music that she made for Will's and my

French song! Not five minutes later I learned what Allegra was! A

queerer confidant, still, for an Inspector of Police! I said to myself,

'There is a very black spot frozen inside that block of bilious ice. If

one could know, now, what it was!' Then came your necklace and your

note. And I saw you were a violent, greedy creature, after all, who

would go a long way to get your will; I saw you could be managed--and

how. I remembered Will's saying that people like us had nothing but

ourselves to fight with. Oh, it has been with myself that I have fought!

I'm sorry, I'm ashamed. But I've won!--What was my second hint? Do you

remember the torn card of the Italian Bryce Herrick had to kill? How it

said, 1411--nothing more? When I 'phoned you to call for your necklace

your number wasn't in the book. The girl, at first, gave me a wrong

direction. Then she remembered that was your old number which you had

just had changed. The district was the same, of course. But the old

number ran, 1--4--1--1.--Ah, wait for my third--the best of all! My good

Ten Euyck, you never made quite such a mistake as when you lost one

symbol of respectability--as when you forgot your umbrella!"

This time he looked up with a stare.

"You left it at Allegra's, and, like all excellent housekeepers, Mrs.

Pascoe put it in the closet under the stairs. I found it there. I was

looking for something to break the window with. A little light came in

then, and I saw the gold handle, like a staff of office, with your name.

I broke the rod and have the handle still." Christina paused and smiled

at him. "My sister's partner in the business of blackmail; you, whose

money robbed and burned a post-office of the United States; you, whose

influence attempted murder in jail, on the highroads, in the Park,

rather than be found out, I make you my bow! If I cannot save Will with

you, if I cannot trade you for him with the law--and oh, I think I

can!--at least our side shan't fall alone! If he is to be punished, at

least he will never be punished by you! But you, Mr. Ten Euyck, who

exulted in his trouble, who are afraid, as he is not, who will perish at

the scorn of every fool, as he has not, you, who of shame are about to

die, I salute you! Your career as a criminal, your career as a shining

light, they are both at an end!--And why? Because you declared war

against people without money, without position, without influence, whom

you despised! Because you weren't strong enough to fight Christina Hope!

Remember that!"

The heart knoweth its own bitterness. For one little moment Ten Euyck

stood with his eyes upon the reckless girl who was driving him to the

last terrible extreme of self-defense. He had come there a happy and

indulgent conqueror, and even the sweetness of a necessary revenge was

black and poisoned in him. Then, in that moment, he heard what

Christina, flushed with victory, did not hear at all--a little sound

behind him and above his head.

His driving-coat still lay across a chair and he went slowly to it and

drew the case of his revolver from its pocket; the revolver was fully

loaded; he looked at the barrel a long time, as if he were thinking

something out, and then he heard Christina laugh. "Take care!" she said.

"I did not come without a guard."

He did not turn upon her. He still stood with his back to her, and, from

under his bent brows, his glance shot up and found the parting of the

valance. Now, since the lessening of the lights, Herrick, half-mad and

goaded by the continual slight weakening of the cords, had grown

careless of concealment. There, in the opening, his face showed. Not

much, indeed; not enough to be easily recognized; all masked, too, with

blood and sweat and with the gag across the mouth. But still whiter than

the Italian face Ten Euyck had most expected. Then he caught a glimpse

of the brown, ruddy hair, and knew. This was Nicola's and Allegra's idea

of a jest.

"A guard?" he said. And he turned then upon Christina.

"Don't come near me!" the girl cried. "And if you want to live, don't

shoot! My friends are all about this house! They are in waiting down the

road! They have waited the whole evening long, watching for my signal.

They started to close in on us when I waved my lamp. Let me cry out my

name and you will hear, in answer, the horn of an automobile. It will

blow three times--two short notes and one long. That means--Stand out of

the way, Christina Hope; the men are ready!--Don't come near me!"

"Cry out your name!" Ten Euyck replied.

The girl lifted up her voice, and gave forth the words "Christina Hope"

so that they leaped out in the still darkness and went shrilling and

searching through the night, the vibrations dying in the distance, and

the air giving back an echo of their call. Till, after an age-long

moment, their last note died away. And nothing happened. No note from

the horn of an automobile broke forth in answer; there was only a

profounder stillness. Christina was left face to face with nothingness

and Cuyler Ten Euyck.

"You spoke too soon!" he said. "You were always foolhardy. This time you

have outdone yourself. The clever Christina was not the only person, on

coming here, to take precautions. If I gave so much to the guard in the

Tombs, what did I give to buy off these friends of yours? The agreeable

gang your sister commands--did you think it was in your pay for

to-night? It is in mine! I suspected nothing, but I took no chances. I

prepared for accident. No automobile can pass that lodge. No spy can

creep about these grounds. One tried, my dear. They caught him. He is

lying in that little gallery gagged and bound. When his body is

discovered, he will have been shot by blackmailers, whom Cuyler Ten

Euyck never so much as saw. I thought you wouldn't leave me!"

Christina had gathered up her train for flight and had been

manoeuvering nearer and nearer to the window that gave deepest into

the shelter of the dark. Only at the first word of a spy she had stood

still.

"Yes," Ten Euyck went on, "I see that you guess his name. I am not a bad

shot, and he can't move, poor fellow. Give me that letter!"

Christina looked along his arm, along the lifted revolver, to what was

now only a dark opening in the valance. Her mouth opened, but no sound

came. The life went out of her like the flame from a dying candle, and

she seemed to shrink and crumple and to sway upon her feet. There was a

long stillness.

"That letter, if you please!" Ten Euyck said.

"Bryce!" Christina called, quite low. "Bryce, are you there! Let me

see!" she screamed out, and ran forward.

Ten Euyck held up a finger, and she stopped dead. "Do you understand

that I, too, have a signal and these fellows will come at it? Do you

understand what cause they have to love Herrick?--Fetch that chair!"

She brought it forward.

"No, under the balcony. Pardon my not helping you. I dare not lower my

hand. Stand on the chair! Can you reach those little curtains? No? Take

this candlestick--push them back! What do you see?"

Christina shuddered like a stricken birch, and gave forth a lamentable

cry. The candlestick fell to the ground. She had met Herrick's eyes.

"Have I won?" said Ten Euyck.

"You are a brave girl, but you lack discretion.--Get down! Take that

letter from your breast. That's right. What a pretty change in manners,

my dear! Come here! Come!"

Her face looked thin and her eyes were set with fear. She came slowly

on, like a person in a trance, half hanging back, half drawn with

ropes. She stopped at one end of the little table, a few feet from him.

"Put out your hand and offer me that letter."

She put it out and he seized the letter and the hand in his.

"And now, my dear, understand me. In my connection with the Arm of

Justice, I hold myself neither stained nor shamed. It has been an arm of

_justice_; when I have struck it was--as poor Kane will tell

you!--always at those who had sinned against the law, though I could not

then reach them through the law. In that punishment I used an imperfect

instrument, as a man who stands for decency must do, in an imperfect

world. When I recognized your sister as our mysterious shadow I forced

her to write this account of her disgraceful life not, as she supposed,

for fear she might some day blackmail me--for there was nothing in my

life to be used for blackmail--but for a net to snare you with! In that

net you are caught. Never till its loss determined me to have it back at

any cost did I really sin. And never legally! For when I give money to a

needy woman I do not question what she does with it. If there is

violence--why not? In self-defense! But if I sinned, at least I have

succeeded in my sin. For here you are! While you--you have forfeited

even your price. But when Denny is dead, talk over with Allegra, in her

prison, the story of his death--it may divert you both! For now she,

too, is lost, as well as he. And through your fault as Herrick is!"

She lifted her white face and questioned him, with the darkness of her

eyes.

"Let him go! After all that he has heard? How could I? You gave your

signal and now I must give mine!--It's been a hard fight, Christina! And

to the victor belong the spoils!"

He dragged her slowly toward him by the clenched hand he held, his

hungry smile flushed and yet cold with hate, feeding on her desperate

compliance. And as he drew her past the table, Christina caught up the

lamp and struck it with her whole force into his face.

There was a tremendous noise of crashing glass, and then darkness,

filled with the smell of oil. Christina's slender strength had found

force for such a blow that the lamp had been put out before it could

explode,--and what it had been put out upon was Ten Euyck's head. He

floundered back; dazed, cut, with the sense battered out of him. And at

the same moment the last knot yielded to stiff fingers and Herrick

staggered to his feet. He dropped over the balcony to the ground, and

Christina ran toward the sound of him, in the darkness. "Oh! Oh!" she

said, and clung like a child upon his breast.

But for a little crack under the door into the hall, the blackness had

swallowed every shape. This was all in their favor. They stood

listening, holding their breath, knowing that Ten Euyck was there before

them but not able to see where; and then he fired. Herrick followed the

lead of the flash and leaped upon him. Ten Euyck sank to one knee, but

he had gripped Herrick as he fell; the two men struggled to their feet,

and across the room and up and down they fought and clung and swayed and

trampled, upsetting chairs, their feet slipping and grinding on the

smooth floor; and though the shots continued to sound, they were fired

downward and Christina guessed that Herrick forced Ten Euyck's hand

toward the ground and was struggling for possession of the pistol. She

could hear their breath pulsing and sobbing in the darkness. Suddenly

their black, struggling bulk crashed down on the piano and the shots

ceased. The pistol fell to the ground. Ten Euyck's voice gasped out,

like rending cloth: "All six are fired! That's my signal!" Then there

was an oath, a lurch, a sound of blows, the table tipped over with a

smash, followed by the thud of both men falling to the floor; there was

a groan, a pause, a last decisive blow, and then some one rose and came

slowly toward Christina through the dark room.

In a childish terror of broken nerves, "Bryce!" Christina shrieked. Then

her shrieking, outstretched fingers touched a rough, damp sleeve, and

"Bryce!" she sobbed contentedly. They met with a bump, and clutched each

other, laughing with joy, in this little moment before the last. Already

they could hear the hurrying men; dark figures blackened on the

darkness, the terraces came alive with sound, lights showed and were

gone; and Herrick, holding the empty gun, sought vainly to put Christina

back from him. She held to him, leaning on him, hardly breathing. "It's

death, dear!" she said. "Forgive me!"

"Oh!"

She felt him bend his head, and lifting up her face, she set her mouth

to his.

From the carriage sweep without there came--two short and one

long--three notes from the horn of an automobile.

CHAPTER V

CARNAGE: A COMIC OPERA CLIMAX

The door from the hall opened, letting in a flood of light. At the same

time a man stepped through one of the windows. He was the first of a

number whom the halls and staircases instantly absorbed. Out of

Herrick's very hold Christina slipped and caught this man by the arm and

hung away from him as she was wont to hang upon the arm of Hermann

Deutch. "Oh, heaven and our fathers!" cried she in a faint wail. "But

you were a little late!"

The man, standing tense in the shadow, was examining the room with

appraising eyes. Christina, blind to something rigid in him, hurried on.

"And I did so depend on a quick curtain! But all's well that ends

well--I've got it! Mr. District-Attorney, your mail!"

"Who's that with you?" said the voice of Henry Kane.

As he took, from the hand that had never once resigned them, the

scorched and torn sheets and buttoned them beneath his coat he glanced

over his shoulder, expectantly.

"You'll go to the Governor, yourself, to-morrow? To-morrow!"

"Please God! Ah, Herrick, you make one more! Hear anything, Sheriff?" he

called into the hall.

Kane had turned to close the shutters at his back but Christina, blind

with triumph, continued to Herrick: "He saw my shadow at Riley's. I told

him all that I suspected and he believed me. He spoke to the Governor.

They promised me if I could give Mr. Kane that man and the headquarters

of the others I should have Will's life in exchange. I knew from Nancy's

holding that letter and it's being addressed in Allegra's hand that it

must be the story which caused his feeling against Ingham--that Nancy,

as well as I, must have hoped it might even set him free. Mr. Kane got

me a doctor and as soon as I had my voice he sent me to a little hotel

up the river here, kept by Ten Euyck's old servants whom he would know

must recognize him, and there I sent for him. He was afraid to come

there, of course, into my disreputable company. But he was fine and

eager to meet me somewhere. We hoped he would name that stronghold of

Allegra's where he would feel safe and when he named this house our

hopes leaped.--Oh, I'm so tired!" cried Christina, sitting down on the

floor like a worn-out child and snuggling her head forward in her lap.

"Are those doors fast?" called Kane from his second window. "That

shutter's loose! What's that balcony? This room won't stand a siege!

You, Herrick, the sheriff and I and five men--can we hold this house?"

Sheriff Buckley had just limped in with his bruised, cut face further

discolored by the blood from a scalp-wound which he was binding with a

handkerchief. Herrick had already noticed that Kane's arm was tied

tight, just above the elbow, with a gaily flaunting necktie and around

this necktie the torn sleeve was soaked and stained.--"Against how

many?" he replied.

It was not till then that, lifting a face of weary dismay, "Are we still

fighting?" Christina almost sobbingly demanded.

"Now, don't frighten the lady!" The sheriff turned to Kane. "We just got

into a mix-up at the gate with the whole Dago gang. They'll never come

up here after us."

All three men, none the less, were busy latching shutters, locking,

barricading. They were not interrupted and no alarm but their own

seemed in the air. As they worked Kane said, "There's something up we

don't understand. This is something more than any bunch of Pascoes. We

expected a fight. We had over a dozen men. We were attacked by a

hundred. They had made an obstacle race for the motors. One they put out

for good. But the sheriff got this one through."

"We've left 'em a mile behind!" said the sheriff. "Before they can get

here the river police'll have taken the yacht. They'll be up here before

long. We're safe here awhile, all to ourselves, and they can't get

within a hundred feet of the house without being picked off by our boys

upstairs!"

As he spoke the pane above Herrick's head, where he struggled with the

loose shutter, cracked into flying splinters. A small hard object had

hurtled into the room and thumped at Kane's feet. A bewilderment

ludicrous as hysteria came over Herrick. For the object that carried a

bit of paper rolled in its mouth was a little golden pistol--which

though sufficiently valued to carry on its handle a monogram of three

capital A's, picked out in jewels, was yet no pistol at all. It was a

dummy made all in one piece!

"So!" said the District-Attorney. "Now we know!"

"What?"

"I asked you, Herrick, if we could hold this house. And you asked me

against how many. I can't tell you against how many but I can now tell

you against what. Against an army of which you have read, not so long

since, a considerable deal in the papers. Against the Camorra."

"Here!"

"After us?"

"The Italian Camorra!"

"In America!"

"Yes," Kane insisted, "and under those trees."

"In costume!" cried Christina, with rising spirits and flitting to the

window.

"A skeleton pistol is its badge. The owner of this trinket is a member.

Please, Miss Hope, translate us this paper."

She read aloud, "Alieni the infamous and all his house die here to-night

the death of traitors."