Persons Unknown

  CHAPTER X

  MIDNIGHT IN THE PARK; "JE SUIS AUSSI SANS DESIR--"

  The men were equally startled; a very slight quiver passed over Denny'sface, but he said nothing. "Good God!" Herrick cried, "what are youdoing here?"

  "The same to you," Denny replied.

  "But Christina! Where's Miss Hope?"

  "Christina! Has she been here?"

  Herrick pushed roughly past him. There was no sign of the girl, and in acold apprehension, Herrick stared out over the lake. Denny's voice athis elbow said, "She doesn't seem to float! Why not see if I've thrownher under the bench?"

  "Why not?" Herrick savagely replied.

  The other smiled faintly. "Christina? It wouldn't be such an easy job!"

  She wasn't under the bench and Herrick hurried back into the path.

  "Go and look for her, if you like. I'll wait here." He called in asibilant whisper after Herrick, "You'll have to hurry. Don't yell."

  No hurry availed, but as Herrick burst out of the Park he caught aglimpse of her back as she passed into a moving trolley car bound forhome. Only love's baser humors and blacker claims were left in him. Heknew that his dignity lay anywhere but in that little arbor, yet hedeliberately retraced his steps. Again he found Denny sitting there, andthis time the actor did not rise. But he must have been walking aboutin Herrick's absence for he made a slight motion to a dark blot on thebench near him. He said, "Are those your shoes?"

  Herrick sat down angrily and put them on, more and more exasperated evenby the dim shape of a cigar in Denny's fingers; although he was aseething volcano of accusation he could not think of anything to say andbesides, what with emotion and with haste, he was rather breathless. Sothat at last it was Denny who broke the silence with, "Well, now thatyou are here, have you got a match?--Thank you!" But he did not lightit. He seemed to forget all about it as he sat there silent again in thedarkness waiting for Herrick to speak.

  When Herrick struggled with himself and would not, Denny at lengthbegan. "I won't pretend to deny that she came here to find me. I onlydeny that she did find me. I missed her, poor child. Doesn't thatcontent you?"

  And Herrick asked him in the strangling voice of hate, "Do you usuallyhave ladies meet you here? At this hour?"

  "No. That's what disturbs me. It must have been something very urgent.She couldn't trust the telephone and she couldn't wait till morning. Sheknows that now I almost never sleep, and that I can't bear to be awakewith walls around me; if I'm not careful I shall have walls around meclose enough. I come here, as Chris remembered, because--I must besomewhere. So she chanced it. She didn't find me. I came just too late."

  Herrick rose. He felt as if he were stifling. "Do you pretend to tellme, then, that you don't know why she came?"

  "No, I'd better not pretend that. I suppose I know why she came." Headded, very low, in his clear voice, "I suppose she came to warn me."

  "Warn you? Of what?"

  "Come, do I need to tell you that? Her mother must have told her thatyou recognized me to-night and that the elevator boy recognized me, too,and told you."

  "You saw all that?"

  "I saw all that."

  "And did nothing?"

  "What could I do?"

  "You've had time, since the performance, to get away!"

  "Where to?" asked Denny.

  If it was the simplicity of despair it affected the distraught andbaffled Herrick like the simplicity of some subtle and fiendish triumph.Not for nothing had he observed the calm of the French marquis. Taking aviolent hold on himself, "Do you realize--" he demanded, "what you'readmitting?"

  "The mark of Cain?" said the other, with his faint smile. "Oh, yes!"

  Herrick incredulously demanded, "You don't deny it?"

  "Deny it? Why, yes, I deny it. I'm not looking for trouble and I deny itabsolutely. But what then? Will anybody believe me? Between friends, doyou believe me? Well--what's the use?"

  "You've no proofs? No defense?"

  "None whatever!--And I've been playing villains here for four years! Mydear fellow, don't blush! I'm complimented to find that you, too, arehit by that impression. And I shan't tell Christina!"

  "If I could see by what damned theatrical trick you go about admittingall this!"

  Denny seemed to take no offense. "I'm indifferent to who knows it. I'mtired out."

  Herrick flounced impatiently and, "But season your solicitude awhile,"the other added. "Remember that even to you I don't admit my--what's thephrase? My guilt! And legally I shall never admit it."

  "You merely 'among friends' allow its inference?"

  "If you like."

  "You don't seem very clear in your own mind!"

  "Clear?" The brilliance of his eyes searched Herrick's face with asingular, quick, sidelong glance for which he did not turn his head.Then the glance drooped heavily to earth and Herrick could just hear himadd, in a voice that fell like a stone, "No--pit-murk!" He sat therewith his elbows on his knees and seemed to stare at the loose droop ofhis clasped hands. He said, "I shall never play Hamlet. But at least Iam like him in one thing; I do not hold my life at a pin's fee."

  "Good God!" Herrick burst forth. "Do you think it's you I care about?"

  The other man replied softly into the darkness, "You mean, I'veimplicated Christina?"

  "You've admitted that she knows--and shields you!"

  "So she does, poor girl! But don't think I shall put either Chris or meto the horrors of a trial. I seem to have given some proof that I carrya revolver. And I haven't the least fear of being taken alive."

  "I care nothing about you!" Herrick repeated. "What I want to understandis why Miss Hope should shield you--if she is shielding you. Why sheshould come here, in the middle of the night, to warn you? Whoever shotIngham was mixed up with everything that's rotten--with blackmail--withthe disappearance of that girl--"

  "O!" Denny had perceptibly winced. But then he said, "I don't confess toall the crimes in the decalogue! For instance, Mr. Herrick, I amperfectly guiltless of those rude--ah--ornamentations on your own brow."He laughed outright. "How could I face Chris?" he said.

  Herrick jumped at him with an oath and bore him, by pure force ofweight, back against the lattice. His hand was on Denny's throat and itwas a moment before Denny could tear it away. When he had done so, hesaid nothing; he continued to sit there as if nothing had happened; andHerrick, a little ashamed, sulked at him, "Don't speak of her like that,then!" He walked to the door of the arbor and back, facing Denny andcontrolling himself, with his hands in his pocket. "There's been enoughof this," he said, through his teeth. "I've got to know now--what's sheto do with you? What's it to her, if you're caught? How, in the firstplace, did she ever come to know such a secret? Why should you confideit to _her_?"

  He was aware of Denny lifting his eyes and looking at him steadilythrough the half-dark. "I'll tell you why, if you'll sit down. I've donea hard night's work and, at any rate, I don't care to shout."

  Herrick dropped down beside him and Denny struck his match. "Smoke?" hequeried. Herrick shook his head and again, by the light of the littleflame, Denny stared gravely into his set and haggard face. "Is it somuch as that to you?" he said. "Well, then, I never told Christina.Nothing--whether I was innocent or guilty. I didn't need to. There wasa--friend of hers in the room when it was done. But here's my connectionwith the thing. You don't know, I suppose, that two months ago, Iexpected to marry Nancy Cornish?"

  "I might have known it!" Herrick said.

  "I don't see why! Unless you've observed that the sweetest women areborn with a natural kindness for cads. I was perfectly sure that sheloved me. I used to meet her here"--Herrick started--"and take her outin a boat and all that, as if I were a boy,--she was _so_ young! Well,then I displeased her and she sent me to the right about. It was hard. Idon't know if you're too happy and too virtuous to see that when anotherwoman was good to me, then, I fell in what it pleases us to call lovewith her. It came and passed, like fever. No matter. She belongedlegally, at tha
t time, to another man, but she swore to me she would getfree and marry me--yes, I believed she loved me, too, if you can swallowthat! You see, there were no limits to my complacency! There werecertain things I couldn't help but know, and she accounted for them all,to me, by a dreadful tale of ill-usage when she was just growing up--aman of the world, older than she, her first love, promise of marriage,desertion, the horrors after it; how she had been forced to accept thefirst chance of respectability--but now--for love of me--All the oldstory! She never would tell me that man's name. She pretended to hatehim and fear him, and I lashed myself into such a rage against him, andthe insults with which she said he was following her again, that Ihardly saw the streets I walked through. The afternoon before theshooting Nancy called me up; she said she had something to tell me, andasked me to meet her at the old place in the Park at five o'clock. Itwas cruel hard, because now I'd doubly lost her. I was sick of myselfand the whole world. It was touch and go with me. I sat here, waiting,waiting--if she'd brought her goodness, her freshness, her gentlenesseven within hailing distance of me, then, they might have shed a littlesanity on me as she passed."

  "And Christina?" Herrick persisted.

  "Well--this other woman was Christina's friend. That day that Nancydidn't come I had a dress rehearsal, and Christina and this other womandined with me, just before that. She said, then, for the first time thatIngham was the man she had told me of. She said she told me now becauseit was he who had sent Nancy away; that Nancy was afraid of me becausehe and she--I went straight for him after rehearsal. They didn't expectme. And up there, in that room with Ingham, I found that other woman.Would anybody believe in my innocence after that? Ought I to beinnocent? 'Deny it?' No, on the whole, I'd better not deny it!' That'sall!"

  They were both silent. Then through his groping thoughts Herrick couldhear Denny half-humming a catch of song whose words were instantlyfamiliar.

  "Je suis aussi sans desir Autre que d'en bien finir-- Sans regret, sans repentir, Sans espoir ni crainte--"

  "Without regret, without repentance--Repentance? Surely! But--withoutregret? He asked a good deal, that lad! You ought to like my littlesong--it was taught me by the erudite Christina."

  "Where's that woman, now?"

  "Ah!" said Denny, "that's her secret."

  "And Christina?" said Herrick, again.

  "Christina and I are very old chums; aside from the Deutches I am theoldest friend she has. It was I got Wheeler to go West and see her. Iwas in the first company she ever joined, when she was just a tall, slimkid--sixteen, I think--and I was twenty-six. We've worked together, andwon together and--gone without together. I had been at it for eightyears when she first went on; and I taught her all I knew; when I gotinto the moving pictures for a summer I worked her in--"

  Herrick started. "The best friend Christina ever had!" he exclaimed.

  "Oh!" said the other. "Thank you!" Herrick was aware of his quaintsmile. "Yes, I suppose I might be called that!"

  "I was told--I was led to believe you were an older man."

  "Ah, that's one of Christina's sweetest traits--she colors things soprettily! She can't help it! But you see, now, don't you, that she'dnever give me away? Chris would shield her friends as long as she hadbreath for a lie. She's pretended a quarrel with me all these weeks,because, thinking the police were following her, she didn't want them tofind me. She's kept you from knowing people who might speak of me. She'shad but the one thought since the beginning; and that was to save mylife. But she's in love with you, and she can't lie to you anylonger--you'll see. Besides, she thinks she can make you our accomplice;that because you're a friend of hers, you're a friend of mine. She hasstill her innocences, you see, and, in the drama, so many lovers behaveso handsomely." The ring had died out of his voice; but he went on, witha kind of rueful amusement, spurring himself to be persuasive, "Come,now, stop thinking of what would influence you, and try to think of whatwould influence Chris! Do you think she'd like to see Wheeler hanged?"

  "Wheeler!"

  "Well, allow me to put forward that Chris thinks me quite as good anactor as Wheeler, with the double endearment of not being so wellappreciated by outsiders!" He leaned forward with an intent flash. "Ifyou think she wouldn't stand by me, you don't know her!"

  "And is that the reason," asked Herrick, "why you left her in thelurch?" He was aware of behaving like a quarrelsome old woman, now thathe had a probable murderer on his hands and didn't quite know what to dowith him. The man must feel singularly safe. There was something at onceannoying and disarming in his passiveness, and Herrick drove home thisquestion with a voice as hard as a blow. "Was it because you could playon the loyalty and courage of a romantic girl, that, when you werelikely to be suspected, you ran away and left her to bear the publicaccusation?"

  Denny answered, with that gentleness which Herrick found offensive, "Ididn't run far."

  "You've been filling her, too, I suppose, with this cock and bullmelodrama of suicide if you're arrested?"

  He had touched a live nerve. "Would it be less melodramatic to cravethat other exit--have my head shaved so that the apparatus could befitted on--let them take half an hour strapping me into an electricchair! Do you think that would be soothing to her? No, thank you! Or doyou want me to hide and run, to twist and duck and turn and be caught inthe end?--I can't help your calling me a coward," Denny said, "and Idare say I am a coward. A jump over the edge I could manage well enough.But 'to sit in solemn silence, in a dark, dank dock, awaiting thesensation of a short, sharp shock--'" He seemed to rein in his voice inthe darkness. "If I were even sure of that! But to be shut up for life,for twenty years, death every minute of them! To be starved anddegraded, pawed over and mishandled by bullies--" He shuddered with aviolence that seemed to snap his breath; even his eyebrows gave aconvulsive twitch, as if he felt something crawling over his face. And,rising, he went across to the entrance of the arbor and stood leaning inthe doorway, looking out.

  Herrick did not want him to get away and at the same time he did notwant to bring about any crisis until he had seen Christina. He thoughtDenny's explanation of her attitude only too probable. "I've known thedearest fellows in the world--the cleverest, the gamest, the mostcharming. But they were all like poor Christina--fidgety things, nervousand on edge." Was she thinking of Denny then? "Oblige me by stayingwhere you are!" he said to Denny's back. Denny turned the grim delicacyof his pale face to smile at him and the smile maddened Herrick. He wenton, "You must see yourself I can't let you go! Will you come to myrooms for to-night, and in the morning Miss Hope can tell me if thisstory's true!"

  Denny walked slowly out and stood smoking in the center of the pathway,under the tall electric light. He was far from a happy-looking man, andyet he looked as if he were going to laugh. "And what then?" he asked.

  "Then I shall know if this isn't all a bid for sympathy. Whether there'sreally any other woman beside this Nancy Cornish--"

  Denny wheeled suddenly round on him.

  "Or whether you don't know more of her--"

  "Damn you!" Denny said. "You fool,--" He had come close to Herrick andthen remembering the limp hang of Herrick's arm, he paused. And as hepaused a man stepped out from among the trees and touched him on theshoulder.

  He wheeled round; there were two men behind him. They were in plainclothes but the man who had touched Denny showed a shield. "Come along!You're wanted at headquarters."

  Denny stood quiet, breathing a little rapidly. "Let me see yourwarrant," he said, and he took two steps backward to get it under thelight. So that before any one could stop him, he had whipped out arevolver, put the end of the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  There was a little click before the man could jump on him and thenanother; and then Herrick heard the steel cuffs snap over his wrists.The man with the shield drew back, and grinning, shook into his palmwhat were not even blank cartridges but only careful imitations. "Thenext time you rely on a gun," he said, "you want to look out for thatvalet of your
s!"

  Denny was standing with his heavy hair shaken by the struggle about hiseyes; one of the men obligingly pushed it back with the edge of Denny'sstraw hat which he picked up and put on Denny's head. "Come! Get a gaiton us," said the man with the star.

  Denny said, aloud, "You overheard those last remarks for which thisgentleman raised his voice?"

  "Rather!" the three grinned.

  "Ah, well, then there is certainly no more to be said." He noddedagreeably to Herrick, and then between his captors, walked lightly andquickly off, into the darkness.