Persons Unknown Part 12

"There was never, of course, any grounds for this jealousy?"

Christina looked through him without replying.

"Well, well. And was there nothing but this?"

"He objected to my profession; and when I was first in love with him I thought that I could give it up for his sake. But as I came to know more of--everything--and to understand more of myself, I knew that I could not. And I would not."

"So that it was partly Mr. Ingham, himself, in his insistence upon your renouncing your profession, who broke the engagement?"

"If you like."

"At least, your continuance in it made his jealousy more active?"

"It made it unbearable. And as it gradually became clear to me that he scarcely pretended to practise even the rudiments of the fidelity that he exacted, it seemed to me that there were limits to the insults which even a gentleman may offer to his betrothed. And I--freed myself."

Two or three people exchanged glances.

"Was the engagement ever broken before and patched up again?"

"We had quarreled before, but not definitely. Last spring I asked him to release me, and he would not. But he consented to my remaining on the stage, and to going away for the summer, so that I could think things out."

"And you immediately took a house from which to be married!"

"Yes. I tried to go on with it. I thought furnishing it might make me want to. But I couldn't. I wrote him so, and he came home. While he was on the ocean I found out something which made any marrying between us utterly impossible. When he drove to my house the day before he was killed, I told him so. We had a terrible scene, but he knew then as well as I that it was the end. I never saw him again."

"As a matter of fact, then, the definite breaking of the engagement was caused by something new and wholly extraneous to your profession or his jealousy?"

"Yes."

"And what was this discovery, Miss Hope?"

"Oh!" said Christina, quite simply, "I am not going to tell you that."

And she suddenly began to speak quite fast. "Do you think I don't know what I am doing when I say that? Do you think you have not taught me?

But I don't care about appearing innocent any longer. And so I know, now, what I'm saying. I will never tell you the cause of our quarrel. It had nothing to do with Mr. Ingham's death. It was simply something--monstrous--which happened a long time ago. But, between us two, it had to fall like a gulf. More than that I will not tell you. And you can never make me."

"And you don't know Ann Cornish?"

Christina hesitated. "Of course I thought of her. But I couldn't bear to have that little girl brought into it. She's only twenty," Christina added, as if the difference in their ages were half a century. "And, besides, how could it be she? She scarcely knew Mr. Ingham; she never had an appointment with him; I can't believe she ever told him ill of me. She is my dearest friend. But ask her, Mr. Coroner, ask her. Her address is--" And Christina gave an address which was hastily copied.

"She is rehearsing at the Sheridan Theater. She, too, is an actress, poor child!"

"Let us go back a moment, Miss Hope. What do you mean,--you don't care about appearing innocent any longer?"

"I mean that never again will I go through what I have gone through this afternoon. You have asked me the last question I shall answer. You've made me sound like a liar, and feel like a liar; you've made me turn and twist and dodge, trying to convince you of the truth about me, and now that I have told you all the truth, you may think a lie about me, if you choose!"

Her face was all alive, now, and her voice thrilled out its deep notes, impa.s.sioned as they were soft. "Oh, I wished so much to say nothing! Not to have to stand up here and tell all sorts of intimate things, in this horrible place before these gaping people! But when you began to worry me, to threaten and jeer at me, trying to trip me, I was afraid of you!

I know people say that your one thought is to make a mark and have a career, and I seemed to see in your face that you would be glad to kill me for that. I remembered all I had ever heard of you; how you hated women--once, I suppose, some woman hurt you badly;--how you copied an attorney who made all his reputation by the prosecution, by the persecution, of women, and how they say you never run a woman so hard as when she has to work for her living, as I do, and stands exposed to every scandal, as I am! And so I tried to convince you, to answer everything you asked; I am in great trouble, and I am not so very old, and since this came I have scarcely eaten and not slept at all. For if you imagine that, because I haven't really loved him this long while, it is easy to bear thinking how his life had been rived out of him like that, oh, you are wrong--and my nerves are all in shreds. So that it seemed as if I must clear myself, as if it were too hideous to be hated, and to have every one thinking I had murdered him! I struggled to defend myself, and I let you torture me. But oh, I was wrong, wrong! To be judged and condemned and insulted, that's hard, but it's not degrading.

But to explain, and pick about, and plead, and wrack your brain to make people believe your word, oh, that degrades!" She paused on a little choking breath. "Think what you like! I have no witness but my mother, and I know very well, in such a case, she doesn't count. I can't prove that I returned to my house, I can't prove that I stayed in it. It's worse than useless to try. If I had friends to speak for me do you think I would have them subjected to what Mr. Deutch has borne for me to-day?

I've nothing that shop-keepers call position; I've no money; I'm all alone. Think what you please." And Christina crossed the room and sat down beside her mother.

Conflicting emotions clashed in the silence. She seemed to flash such different lights! She had so little, now, the manners or the sentiments of a sweet young lady. Many people were greatly moved, but no one knew what to think. If Christina had brought herself to slightly more conciliatory language or if, even now, she had thrown herself girlishly into her mother's arms, she could, at that moment, easily have melted the public heart. But she sat with her head tipped back against the wall, with her eyes on vacancy, and great, slow tears rolling down her unshielded face, "as bold as bra.s.s." And the coroner, leaning forward across his desk, surveyed the a.s.semblage with a cold, fine smile. "My friends," he began, "after the young lady's eloquence, I can hardly expect you to care for mine. Nevertheless, while we are waiting for a witness unavoidably detained, I will ask you to listen to me. Let us get into shape what we have already learned.--The first thing of which we are sure is that James Ingham landed in New York on the afternoon of the third of August and drove directly to the residence of Miss Christina Hope, his betrothed. Miss Hope tells us that when he left that house their engagement was broken; that he was unbearably jealous; that he disapproved of the profession which she persisted in following and that they quarreled over something which she refuses to divulge. We have no witness to this quarrel, but I will ask you to remember it. I will ask you to remember that neither have we witnesses to Miss Hope's statement that it was she, rather than Mr. Ingham, who broke the engagement.

"Let us get to our next positive fact. Our next positive fact is that Mr. Ingham, on the next afternoon, the afternoon of August fourth, had an appointment with a lady for four o'clock--an appointment the hour of which he was so anxious not to forget that he wrote it on the lady's visiting-card, and stood the card against a candle on his piano. Our next facts are that the lady kept this appointment, that she had a private interview with Mr. Ingham which greatly excited him; that, as soon as she was gone, he drove off in a taxi with desperate haste, and that he returned in about an hour, still under the repressed excitement of some disagreeable emotion. If, gentlemen of the jury, you should bring in a verdict warranting the State in examining that cabman and in questioning Miss Ann Cornish as to the news she imparted to Mr. Ingham, then, indeed, I am much mistaken if we do not have our hands upon the great clue to all murders, gentlemen, the motive. For, as you have clearly perceived, the meeting between Mr. Ingham and Miss Cornish was not a lover's meeting. Or, if so, it was not a meeting of acknowledged lovers. Miss Hope tells us that Miss Cornish is her confidential friend, and, as far as she knew, had only the most formal acquaintance with Mr.

Ingham. No, Miss Cornish had a piece of information to give Mr. Ingham, and she expected this information to serve her own ends, for she said--'It is good of you to see me.' And Mr. Ingham found the information important, for he soon wished it told him at greater length upstairs, 'where we shall be quite undisturbed.' The lady agrees; although she adds, 'I don't want to get Christina into trouble.' Now, I ask you, gentlemen, what could have been her object except to get Christina into trouble. Why does a pretty young woman who refuses to give her name come to a specially attractive man with news of her dearest friend whom she supposes him to be still engaged to marry--news for which she feels it necessary to apologize--for but one of two reasons;--either she is in love with him herself, and wishes to injure her friend in his eyes, or she is in love with some other man and jealous of her friend whom she wishes warned off by the friend's legitimate proprietor. In either case, she evidently effected her point for she sent Mr. Ingham rushing from the house. He, however, apparently failed in what he set out to do. All this, gentlemen, is but conjecture.

"Here is where I expected to present you with an astonishing bridge of facts. I had now meant to show you that Mr. Ingham, that evening, expected an unwelcome visitor; that he left orders she was not to be admitted; that she came, that she was well-known to the elevator boy, and to all of us here present as well as to a greater public; that despite the efforts of the elevator boy, she penetrated to Mr. Ingham's apartment, whence she was not seen to return, and that she was the only visitor he had that night. But in the continued absence of the boy, Joseph Patrick, all this must wait.

"Our next known fact is that Mr. Herrick was wakened by Mr. Ingham's playing at one or shortly before. You will remember that it was after eleven when Miss Hope spoke to Mrs. Johnson on her way to the post-box, and that after that no one but her mother claims to have seen or spoken with her. For a quarter of an hour, Mr. Herrick tells us, Mr. Ingham played, calmly and beautifully. All was peace. But then there began to be the sound of voices talking through the music--the voices, as other witnesses have testified, of a man and a woman. And the piano begins to sound fitfully and brokenly. The man and the woman have begun to quarrel. Their voices--particularly the woman's voice--rise higher and stormier. Mr. Herrick, with the whole street between, has fallen asleep.

But Mrs. Willing, just across the court, hears a voice she knows, and says to her husband, who has just come in, 'He's got that actress he's engaged to in there with him.' And then even Mr. Herrick is awakened by a deliberate discord from the piano; a jarring crash, 'a kind of h.e.l.lish eloquence.' In other words, the man, with his comparative calm and his mastery over his instrument, is mocking and goading the woman, whose shadow, convulsed, threatening, furious, immediately springs out upon the blind. Gentlemen, can you not imagine the sensations of that woman?

Let us suppose a case. Let us suppose that a girl ambitious and lovely, but of a type of loveliness not easily grasped by the mob, a girl who has had to work hard and fight hard, who is worthy to adorn the highest circles, but who is, in Miss Christina Hope's feeling expression, without position, without money, without friends, suddenly meets and becomes engaged to marry a distinguished and wealthy man. Let us suppose that she puts up with this man's exactions, with his furious jealousies, with his continual infidelities for the sake of the security and affluence of becoming his wife. But is it not possible that when this exacting gentleman is safely across the ocean she may allow herself a little liberty? That in the chagrin of knowing she is presently to be torn from her really more congenial friends and surroundings she goes, in his absence, a little too far? At any rate, he cuts short his visit in Europe, he flies to her from the steamer, full of accusations, but--contrary to the experience narrated by Miss Hope--he is perhaps soothed by her version of things and goes away, without having fully withdrawn his word, to examine matters. Let us suppose that on the next day he receives a call from his fiancee's confidential friend,--very possibly his informant while he was abroad--who circ.u.mstantially confirms his worst suspicions. Let us suppose he drives wildly to the house of his betrothed; but she is not at home, and after a time he gives up looking for her. He comes miserably back, dines out, returns early, but leaves word that he is not at home. But in the meanwhile may not the lady have got word of all this? Suppose that when she does, she comes to him,--at any hour, at any risk,--and uses her hitherto infallible charm to get him back. Suppose she gets him back; they are alone together; she is excited and confident and off her guard. She lets something slip. Instantly the battle is on. This time she cannot get him back. She becomes desperate. If he speaks, as perhaps he has threatened to, she loses not only him, but everything. For she is on the brink of the great step of her career. She is to play the leading feminine role under a celebrated star, who does not care for scandal in his advertis.e.m.e.nts. On the contrary, he has bruited everywhere her youth, her propriety, her breeding, her good blood. She is a fairy-tale of the girlish virtues. He has no use for her otherwise. And still the man at the piano proclaims her everything that is otherwise, and she sees that she is to lose him and all she has struggled for, professionally, in one breath. He sits there--he, he, the man who has been continually false to her, claiming for himself a different morality--he sits there playing, playing, shattering her nerves with his crash of chords, with his h.e.l.lish eloquence. But with his back to her, you observe, where she stands at the window and suddenly she sees something lying on a little table or the foot of the couch--something not unusual in a man's apartment, although we have Miss Hope's word that Mr. Ingham did not possess one--something which, perhaps, in his wrecked happiness, he had loaded earlier in the evening with that sinister intention of suicide in which Miss Hope's respected friend, Mr. Deutch, so profoundly believes.

Well, gentlemen, the frenzied eye of this tormented girl lights on that little object, she stoops to pick it up, he turns,--and then comes a pistol-shot. There is an end to the strength of a woman's nerves, gentlemen, and she has found it. She cannot look upon her handiwork. She springs off the light and flees. In the confusion she escapes.

Gentlemen, with the dumbfounding mystery of that bolted door I can not deal, unless--as Miss Hope has reminded us--medical science may be for once at fault,--unless the wounded man instinctively staggered to the door and bolted it, staggered toward his telephone, in his bedroom, and died there. That, gentlemen, can be threshed out at the trial. In the meantime, I must ask you to remember that the lady whom events seem to indicate is high-strung and overwrought; that her natural grief and nervousness led her through a long cross-examination in which she never once betrayed any hesitation, or the fact that she had quarreled with Mr. Ingham or that she was aware of the existence of Ann Cornish, to a satirical attack upon Mrs. Willing, whose remarks had annoyed her; that, as she tells us, she has no one to take care of her, and if we are inclined to think that she can take very good care of herself, we must remember that when she was confronted with a lady's scarf found not far from the murdered man, she screamed at the sight of it, and when confronted with the visiting-card of Ann Cornish, she so much wished her friend to be kept out of it that she fainted, and, afterwards, _changed all her evidence_.--Gentlemen, I rejoice to see, entering this room, our witness, Joseph Patrick."

Joe Patrick, a short, thick-set young fellow, with rough hair and a bright eye, advanced to the coroner's desk. His forehead was ornamented with a great deal of very fresh surgeon's plaster, and when asked why he was so late, he replied that he had been knocked down by an automobile on his way to the inquest. Well, yes, he would sit down; he did feel a little weak, but it wasn't so much from that--he'd had some candy sent him day before yesterday and he'd been awful sick ever since he ate it.

Joe was a friendly soul and he added that he was sorry the man the coroner sent hadn't seen anybody but his mother. He was to the doctor's, then.

"But you had telephoned a pretty detailed account to your mother, hadn't you, before you left the Van Dam--on the morning of the murder--much more detailed than you gave the police?"

"Yes, sir. I guess I did."

"Well, then, please give that account to us."

Joe looked rather at sea, and the coroner added, "You have said from the beginning, that a lady called upon Mr. Ingham the night of his death?"

"Oh, yes, sir! She did!"

"Well, tell us first what happened when you went on watch. You had a message from Mr. Ingham?"

"Yes, sir. He telephoned down to me. He says, 'I'm out. And if any lady comes to see me this evening, you say right away I'm out.'"

"Well, and then?"

"Well, along about half-past twelve--it was awful hot and lonesome, and--and--"

"And you began to get sleepy! It seems that at least the house-staff was able to sleep that night!"

"Well," said Joe, "I guess anybody'd get sleepy, been sittin' there for four hours in that heat! Anyhow, it seemed like I'd just closed my eyes, when they came open all of a sudden and I was looking at the front door. And there, all in white--'Great Scott!' I says to myself, 'there's Miss Hope!' I don't know why it seemed so awful queer to me, unless because I wasn't really but half-awake."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Great Scott!' I says to myself, 'there's Miss Hope!'"]

It is not too much to say that a shudder traversed the court. Christina, white as death, and her eyes black and strained with horror, leaned toward him in an agony.

"Perhaps you thought she was rather a late visitor!" smiled the coroner.

"Well? She didn't melt away, I suppose?"

"No, sir. She came up to me, all smiles like, but you bet there was something that wasn't a bit funny in that smile. And she says to me, 'Is our friend, Mr. Ingham, at home?' she says. And I says, 'No, ma'am.' And she says, 'You're a bad liar, my boy! But you won't take me up, I suppose?' And I says, 'He told me not to, ma'am.'"

"Well? Go on!"

"So she says, 'Well, then, I must take myself up.' And before you could say 'Pop,' she was up the stairs."