Persons Unknown
CHAPTER VII
VANISHING LADY: THE SHADOW AT THE DANCE
The countryside slept vigorously and an hour's exhaustive inquirygleaned but the one circumstance--the search party itself discovered,pinned to the first door they came to, a note informing the neighbor hemight have the livestock in lieu of certain debts. It had not been therewhen the man had closed his house at nine o'clock. This limitation oftime was their sole reward, unless they counted the talk of an oldfarmer, after the sheriff, promising to drop the detectives at Riley's,had gone on to his post-office. The farmer said that hours ago, whenhe'd been ever so long in bed and asleep, he thought he heard somebodyhollerin' an' bangin' on his door. Kind o' half dreamed it. Kind o' halffancied it was a woman's voice. Storm was so bad he warn't sure. It waswith this pale fancy to keep them company that Herrick and Stanley letout their car along the road again, this time in a dryly nipping air andunder a troubled, scudding moon.
From that desert purity and freedom of cold space Riley's accosted themlike Babylon. It was one blare and glare of hot lights and jiggingmusic; colored globes over the gates, colored lanterns in the garden;along the driveway the blazing headlights of continually arriving anddeparting motor cars that hissed and shrieked and shuddered; on theveranda, where the tables indeed were nearly deserted, fur-coated menstood smoking huge cigars and women with complexions artificially secureagainst the wind passed in and out; their solitaire earrings pushedforward beyond the streaming scarlet or purple of the veils that boundtheir heads. The change of atmosphere warmed Herrick with thatunreasonable anger which the young feel against those who do not sufferwhen they suffer.
He followed Stanley Ingham morosely through the hubbub and felt nofitting gratitude for the table miraculously provided with a fortifyingmeal, since Thompson, the chief detective, had not yet been able to getKane upon the 'phone. The cabman was upstairs under guard of the others,babbling some trash about having taken the lady to the Amsterdam hoteland left her there. The thick smoke, the smell of wine and food andabominable coffee, the clatter of cheap china, the banging of the musicand the motions of the "trotting" dancers in street dress, the cries ofacquaintances urging them to new contortions, disgusted Herrick and setan edge upon the iron of his self-contempt. The woman calling andknocking in the night confronted him like a ghost, in the rank profusionand fever of that place. He, to eat and drink and wile away the time;what was _she_ doing? Was that she who had begged in vain for shelter,beaten by the wind and drenched by the storm, and with God knew whatterrors in her heart! Out of her pale face, with the rain upon it, hereyes besought him.
Stanley, anxious, but waving a cigar, for at twenty an adventure isstill an adventure, commented, "Say, old man, you want to relax! I couldlet things wear on me, too, if I wanted to!--What are those?"--For thedetective having again fidgetted to the 'phone, Herrick had shaken outupon the table-cloth the handful of torn scraps from the waste-paperbasket.
They were in the same handwriting as the interrupted note, but much morehurried and scrawled on cheap pad paper as if to a more intimateassociate. Only six of them were of appreciable size and these came toHerrick's hand in this order--
This time get rid of her. I say. She but she can't g real dau mother
et rid do the way een any She can but mebbe of she's got to ain't ever b ghter to me
At the phrase "get rid of her" Stanley quailed. But what the wordsbrought clearest to Herrick's mind was a small, spare face in its grayframe bent above its game of solitaire. Without help from the law couldhe make her speak? He heard Stanley saying, "How did Chris ever getmixed up with this lot? What kind of hold _can_ they have on her?""Sssh!'" he said, dropping his handkerchief over the scraps. Thedetective was returning.
Thompson sat down at their table, baulked and restive, and Herrick, ahundred times more so, was reduced to scowling at their surroundings.Near him sat a wrinkled, enameled, fluffy mite stubbing out hercigarette as she giggled at a masculine bulk whose face Herrick couldnot see. Dark and handsome as it vaguely promised to be this did notaccount for a curiosity which Herrick somehow at once felt to see it;but between them reared a gorged Amazon with a high bust and a coiffureof corrugated brass. The band struck up again, this time to a music-hallditty, so that the customers kept their seats. But the hired singerswere straining their poor voices above the tumult and some musiciansblacked up as negroes joined in the chorus, performing shuffles as theywalked up and down and slapping steps with a dreary, noisy simulation ofirrepressible glee; infected by this whirl of gaiety the Amazon friskedback from the little dyed man to whom she had been bending and gaveHerrick a clear view of a portly seigneur with a close beard. Instincthad not misled his curiosity; the portly seigneur was his oldacquaintance, Signor Emile Gabrielli.
He could not have told why this struck him as portentous. The men smiledand bowed. Then Gabrielli bowed to Stanley. "Didn't you know?" Stanleyasked. "He brought us letters--this is his first visit. He's going to doour Italian correspondence."
It was the more remarkable that there should be, in Signor Gabrielli'shoneyed civility, a kind of chill. Then Herrick remembered that he, atleast, was a marked man and that his old suspicion of shady corners inthe lawyer's experience had been partly due to that gentleman's extremedislike of being "mixed up" in things. Henrietta Deutch could also haveborne witness to that characteristic! Far from advancing toward theirold familiarity the signor began to round up his innocent flock andinsinuate it mildly from Herrick's polluted neighborhood. And thoughthis splendor retreated Herrick did not regret being left alone, as ifbeside the dear ghost with the rain upon its face!
But there was a singular beating at his heart, a feeling that he wasplucking at a veil which he longed and feared to raise. Yet that at someother time he had raised it and lived through a shock upon the thresholdof which he stood again. It was already time for another dance and thegroups about the tables rose to their feet. Herrick had a moment'svision, fever keen, of the room's arrested motion. Even the Gabrielliparty paused in the doorway; Herrick was moved by an uncontrollableimpulse to follow and accost the Italian and oddly impelled by hisexcitement Stanley, too, rose to his feet; all round them the couplesclasped each other; the musicians lifted their bows; after ten minutes'enforced repose the whole world seemed to hang in expectation of themaxixe. When, just ahead of the orchestra, from somewhere outside,beyond, above, into that instant's perfect silence there thrilled forththe voice of a single instrument; the full-tongued call of a piano,leaping, swelling, swaying into the march from Faust!
A gasp of amazement, a prickle, a shudder, ran over the skin of thatsusceptible assembly. It was a tune, just then, so well advertised! Theyrecovered themselves with amused, scared smiles, awaiting some jest inthe sequel. The piano stopped with a wild crash. Instantly, from thefront courtyard where the motors waited, a bomb of oaths, cries andmovement burst upon the night. The sound of men jumping and running,exclaiming, stumbling, swearing, of people bounding up the steps, of thehall filled with astonished, excited questioners merged with one phrasegrowing over, topping all the others--"The shadow! It's the shadow! Theshadow on the blind!"
Amazement, bewilderment, incredulity, obstructed the story which Herricktraced to a knot of chauffeurs. "Yes--up there! The third window! Look,it's dark--they've turned out the lights!" As Stanley, Herrick andThompson ran to the second story the legend still beat about their ears."It had its back to the window--it threw out its right arm--"
The door of the room was thrown open. The proprietor's wife, shaken withhysterical laughter, ushered in the crowd. She was a flushed, stoutwoman in the gaudiest of kimonos, larger than the fat man in thedriving-coat to whom she appealed. "My brother here 's from Mizzouri andI was just showing him how the shadow must have done--you can't earn anyreward's round here! Anyhow, you don't suppose that hussy spends all hertime giving signals for murders, do you?"--"But the shadow was so slim!"somebody s
aid, as Mrs. Riley scornfully assisted Thompson in hisresearches. These coming to nothing the young men were powerless torefuse going oil to Benning's Point and telephoning from there--Thompsonhad begun to be suspicious of this exchange.
They had gone perhaps a mile, moving slowly, watchful of the leaves inevery bush, and Herrick was remounting from the examination of a falsealarm when they heard a hail in their rear and beheld approachingthrough the moonlight a hatless figure on a motorcycle.
The elderly cousin of Joe Patrick, whom they had not seen since he firstwelcomed them, bore down upon them in timid and disheveled haste.--"Yis,sor. I tried to see y' alone, sor, but yeh were gone. 'T is the reward,sor; I'd not be sharin' it with the policeman an' him takin' th' wholeof it, not a doubt! An' impidence, beside, they do always give yeh! Buta gintleman, sor, I don't mind tellin' him; if yeh 'll exscuse me sayin'so, Mrs. Riley's a liar!"
Not that he really knew anything. "No more than yirselves! But thepiana, sor! It stands there fer the upstairs dances, an' her not knowin'wan note from another!--An' what's more, comin' down the back stairsfrom that same room wid the dhirty dishes, what did I see standin' atthe back door but a car like yer own--only still as death an' no lightsin its head! Wasn't that a queer thing, now? An' it gone whin I rodeout."
What was that?--down the road which crossed theirs, where they had justreconnoitered for a sound! Nothing but their distorted fancy, theirroused longing! "An' all I can tell surely, sor, is that awhile back,whin Riley sinds me upstairs with a bite o' supper for Mrs. Riley'sbrother that's just come in, barrin' the long drink, stheamin' hot,'twas chicken an' like that yeh'd give to a lady. He has his own room,has the brother, but 'twas to hers I took the thray. An' though I sawno wan an' I heard no wan, yit sure there was some wan beyond Riley shewas yellin' at an' him prayin' her 'Hoosh! Hoosh!' as I come to thedoor!"
"Did you hear anything of what she was saying?"
"Just the wan thing, sor, an' you'll remimber 'twas me told yeh. Shesaid, 'I'll thank yeh to hand over that diamond necklace!'"
There was something there! They could not hear, but they could somehowfeel from far behind them a stealthy purring. They turned; no lamp norheadlight but their own was anywhere to be seen. The second and lesstraveled road crossed theirs just above them at a narrow angle; but it,too, lay untenanted, not a breath quivering on the stillness. They sawthemselves quite alone beneath the moon, breathing a night silencedrenched with coldest sweetness; the last words rang in their blood withan accent that could not leave them wholly sober; they were, perhaps, alittle "fey." At any rate, it was by an impulse with which reason hadnothing to do that, as the old waiter continued--"'Twas for her, surely,they'd have that dark car waitin'!" Herrick held up a warning hand. Thewaiter hushed himself, stricken, and huddled in against their car;Herrick bent forward in a passionate readiness, and from far in therear, but nearing swifter than the flight of time, along theintersecting road came the tremulous vibration of a second automobile.