Persons Unknown

  CHAPTER XV

  ONE WITNESS SPEAKS

  It was fully dark under the sail-cloth of the table d'hote. A strongsmell of rancid wicks disturbed nobody and in the charged, suspensiveair the cheap lamps burned with a still flame. This may in part havebeen due to Herrick's tensely strung imagination, which Christina'smessage of the night before still mercilessly played upon. From thatsource no drop of further information had fallen through Tantalus on tothe parched tongue of Herrick's nor of Wheeler's nor of the Law'sdesire.

  That afternoon Herrick had seen Stanley off from the station where notsix weeks ago they had met as strangers. And so little was Fate's veillifted for him, even now, that he had no forewarning of when next, norwhy, he should be there again!--Stanley had, however, told him TenEuyck's latest news--how it was to the table d'hote the Italians hadconveyed their liberated prisoner from the Tombs!

  The boy looked at his friend a little suspiciously even while herepeated Ten Euyck's chagrin: "That's a hideously shameful thing tohappen to me! It's the annoyance of a blind, stupid, brutalreproof--when I've worked so hard and suffered so much! Here, in my owndistrict--Under my own hand--!" There are no unalloyed elations in thisworld! Nor did there seem any doubt in Ten Euyck's mind that this wasthe long-sought-for secret place, where they should find aprinting-press. But he forebore to raid it until evening, when allpossible birds should have returned to the nest, and contented himselfwith the sending of his disguised operatives peacefully to fetch from itWill Denny, before whose coming Stanley had fled the police station.That young gentleman had also gathered from Wheeler's thunderstorm ofoaths that Christina's manager considered himself under surveillance.And this had made Herrick wonder if the same were not true of himself.

  On account of his momentarily expected cablegram it was a crushingsuspicion. He spent an afternoon of aloof and goaded wandering, and atlast, shielded as he hoped by the darkness and by the company of a wholegroup of entering diners, yielded to the temptation of the table d'hote.He could not doubt it was encompassed by spies; he could not but attendthe seizure, the crisis, the outcome. Here, more than anywhere, were thelines converging; here, for to-night, was the center of the web. He saidto himself, then, in his ignorance, that nothing mortal should inducehim to forsake it.

  Under the sail-cloth there was no longer any room; but, within doors,save for a couple of men at a distant table, Herrick was quite alone.There was no change in the deportment of the place, no disturbance. TheItalian proprietress, in her comings and goings, found time to replythat the old lady was still in the country but her prototype, the littlegray parrot, which he had not seen for a long time, was climbing in andout of its cage and the angelic children still snuffled about the floor.It was on these innocents that Herrick began as usual to practise hisItalian when the proprietress had gone affably to see about his order,but if he thought one of them would lightly drop Christina's addresshe was mistaken. Smother-y as the place was, with that same loomingsultriness of a week ago, agitated in its daily business, its pulse didnot beat so hard as his, its imagination did not quiver, like thefigures of a cinematograph, reviewing the movements of a motor-car thatuntil yesterday had sped through mire and dust and blood, throughsunrise and midnight, past the spread, astonished wings of the marbleHoover lions, past the smoking-ruins of a post-office, past Riley'swhere the shadow danced, after a will o' the wisp. There was nosuggestion, here, which could lift that phantom light; the customersordered, the little fat boy, next in age to Maria Rosa, leanedfamiliarly against his knee, the parrot continued to clamber over itscage, talking steadily, rapidly and monotonously to itself, and thenHerrick said in surprise,

  "Why, the bird's speaking English!"

  The parrot looked at him coldly, disinterred something which it hadburied in its food-cup, gnawed on the treasure, and dropped it. Thelittle fat boy picked it up and smiled at Herrick. Herrick said, "Let'ssee!" It was a silver ring, holding a bluish-green Egyptian scarab.

  It seemed to Herrick that he had heard of such a ring before, and hetried to remember where. One of the men at the further table left andthe other was buried in a foreign newspaper. Herrick got up and wentover to the desk. That was English the bird was speaking. "No, no, no,no! I don't believe it. I don't beli--"

  "Polly," said Herrick, "what are you talking about? And what do I knowabout this ring?"

  The bird burst into a shriek of the ungodly laughter of its kind, peckedthe ring out of his hand, backed away with it, dropped it again; andthen, out of a perfect stillness, with its little eyes fixed on his faceit replied--

  "Ask Nancy Cornish!"