Persons Unknown Part 18

"Yes, you do. You spy on me, both of you."

"But, my little one--" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Deutch.

"You spy on me, you whisper, you stare, you guess, you talk! Talk! Talk!

And you remember nothing that I tell you! I shall go mad! I am among spies in my own house!"

Herrick quickened his petrified muscles and went. Even to his infatuation it occurred that whatever might have been the faults of James Ingham, Christina herself was a person with whom it would not be too difficult to quarrel.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS ARM IS OUTSTRETCHED

It was not because this reflection was in any way cooling to his love that Herrick did not see again, for some days, the lady of his heart. He was, perhaps, not very self-a.s.sured. Yet when his story of the murder and the inquest appeared he became a marked man. He awoke to find himself famous, and to be summoned to another interview at the Ingham publishing house.

There seemed to be no thought of allowing the prestige of "Ingham's" to perish with its brilliant junior partner. Ingham, senior, who for years had been only nominally its head, intended to resume active work once more, at least until the younger son should have finished college and gone into training for his brother's place. Perhaps the real pillar of the house was Corey; and Corey remained, to sustain both father and son.

And they had all three agreed not to forsake the new, the yet unborn enterprise of _Ingham's Weekly_. "Mr. James Ingham was wrapped up in it," Corey told Herrick, whom he had met with the kindest compliments, "and his father can't bear that all his work should be wasted now.

Besides, in the whole of the business, it's the thing that most interests young Mr. Stanley, and it seems to me the place where the boy may be most of use. We want the _Weekly_ to be a real force, Mr.

Herrick, and in its first number we shall want to give up the usual editorial pages to a memoir of its founder and his ideals for it. Mr.

Herrick, if we could induce you to undertake that memoir we should think ourselves extremely fortunate."

Herrick could not believe his ears; it seemed such a strange sequel to a kind of police report, however able, for the Sunday papers. There began to be something uncanny to him about his connection with Ingham's death and how it continued to seem his Open Sesame to fortune. But he was glad enough and grateful enough. He ventured to send Christina a note telling her that her new friend was now being pursued by good not evil fortune and her reply came in the same mail with a letter from his sister to whom he had written for details about Nancy Cornish.

Marion remembered only that Nancy's parents had been killed in a runaway when she was about fourteen and that Nancy had gone out West somewhere,--to Portland, Oregon, Marion thought, to live with an uncle--and had gradually ceased to write. Of this uncle's name or address both Marion and the princ.i.p.al of the school which both girls had attended were amiably ignorant.

"There's only one thing I'm positive about; she was the best little soul alive. Never in this world did she go to that man's rooms to tell tales of her friend. She never told tales. She was a natural born hero-worshiper; the most loyal child I ever saw and the most generous, the bravest, the lovingest, the most devoted. If she went to Mr. Ingham, it wasn't to injure that Christina Hope; it was to help her out of some sc.r.a.pe. She was just the kind of girl to be taken in by a woman like that, whom I must say sounds--"

Herrick dropped this letter to return to that other which it cannot be denied he had read first. It was directed in a penmanship new to him but recognized at once in every nerve, and he had drawn forth Christina's note with that strange thrill which stirs in us at the first sight of the handwriting of the beloved. She thanked him, with a certain shyness, for his news. It was so good one must take it with their breath held!

And now she had a favor to ask. Stanley Ingham had gone home to Springfield for the week-end, but he had just telephoned her that he would be back in town on Tuesday morning, by the train which got in to the Grand Central at eleven thirty-five. He had some news for her but she would be at rehearsal; she should not see him until the evening, and she was naturally an impatient person. Would not Mr. Herrick humor a spoiled girl, meet the train and bring her the news at about noon to a certain little tea-room of which she gave him the address. "You may find it a great bore. They are supposed to let us out for an hour, like the shop-girls. But, alas! they don't do it so regularly. They may push us straight through till mid-afternoon. But I know you will have patience with my eagerness to hear any news where it need not trouble my mother.

She has had anxiety enough." It may be taken as a measure of Herrick's infatuation that he saw nothing in this letter which was not angelic.

The Grand Central Station, however, is no sylvan spot and Herrick wondered how he should recognize an unknown Stanley Ingham among the hordes swarming in its vast marble labyrinth. But that gentleman proved to be a lively youth of about twenty, who plucked Herrick from the crowd without hesitation and led him to a secluded seat with that air of deferential protection which a really smart chap owes it to himself to show to age. His collar was so high that it was remarkable how powerfully he had established winking terms with the world over the top of it, but he stooped to account for himself at once as an emissary of Christina's.

"She wired me to see you here, and here I am. You know I'm the bearer of some new exhibits for the police. We think we've struck a new trail.

After I've handed 'em over I'm dining with Miss Hope, and as she'd have heard all about 'em then, should think she might have waited. Still, you know how women are!

"In the first place," young Mr. Ingham continued, "we want you, we want everybody, to know we're Miss Hope's friends. We want to go on record that the way she's been knocked around in this thing has been simply d.a.m.nable, and, if poor old Jim were alive--"

He stopped. At the mention of his brother a moisture, which Herrick knew he considered the last word of shame, rose in his eyes; behind his high collar something swelled and impeded his utterance. Then Mr. Stanley Ingham became once more a man of the world.

"You can take it from me that if you hadn't treated her as jolly well as you did in that capital article of yours, we shouldn't be trying to la.s.so you now onto the staff of the _Weekly_." Herrick started, but the man of the world was not easily checked. "You were awfully decent, you know, to all of us, and Corey was all the more pleased because that--that last day, old Jim was down at the office till three o'clock--the first day after he was home, too,--working like a dog, and yet when he found that letter of Rennett's introducing you he was as pleased as Punch, and when he made the appointment with you for next day, he said to Corey, 'People are taking that boy pretty easy yet awhile, but he's the best short-story writer on this side of the Atlantic; and if he's really got a novel about him, the old house will show him it's still awake.'" The man of the world repeated these phrases with an innocent satisfaction in having them at first hand, and Herrick's own heart went questing into the future.

Then his attention returned to the words of his young friend. "We don't think we've done enough for her, and we want to do all we can do."

"Miss Hope?"

"Of course. You see, we don't any of us feel she was wrong in quarreling with Jim--except the mater, who thinks she ought to have let him cut her throat for breakfast every morning and d.a.m.ned glad to get him--and, considering everything, we think she let him down pretty easy at the inquest. There's no denying the dear old fellow had been a gay one in his time, and, of course, he drove a high-spirited girl like that frantic with a lot of antiquated notions about the stage. You see, he was pretty close to thirty-five, and when a man gets along about there he's apt to lose touch with what's going on. Well, having her in our pew and our carriage at the funeral didn't shut all the fools' mouths in New York nor Springfield either! So now we're going to do something really swotting--we've taken a box for her first night, and we're going to get mother into it, mourning and all, if we have to bring her in a bag. It's our duty. Read that."

"My dear and kind Mr. Ingham (ran Christina's letter): You must try and be patient with me, and not think hardly of me, when I tell you that I can not profit by the terms of Jim's will. He made those provisions for the girl who was to be his wife, and not for me who never could be.

"As I write this I feel your good heart harden to me, with the sense that I never loved him. But oh, believe me!--time was when I loved him better than earth or heaven. We couldn't agree, he and I.

Let it remain my consolation that between us there was never any question of expedient nor compromise.

"If she can bear it, give my love to his mother.

"My heart is full of fondest grat.i.tude to all that family which I should have been so proud to enter. And do you keep a little kindness for your unhappy,

"CHRISTINA HOPE."

"What do you think of that? Won't take a cent! You can easily see,"

commented the wise one, "that they'd have made it up all right. Splendid girl! Best thing the poor old chap ever did was trying to get her into the family. I don't suppose you're as hipped about her good looks as I am? Takes a special kind of eye, I fancy! I snaked this particularly to show you--but we want everybody to know she's turned down the coin. And we're going to have the beast that fired that shot if he's alive on this planet. 'Tisn't only on Jim's account! It's for her--it's the only way you can knock that d.a.m.ned lie on the head about her being up there in his rooms that night.--Chris! Why, she's a regular kid! And the straightest kid that ever lived! We mean to keep the police hot at it.

And look here what I'm turning in to them!"

It was a typewritten envelope, postmarked "New York City" and addressed to Mr. James Ingham.

"We found it, opened, in his desk at the office," the boy explained.

"But we've only just got it away from my mother." Its contents were a piece of red ribbon and a single sheet of paper, closely typed.

The Arm of Justice warns Mr. James Ingham--

("Is this a joke?") "Go on! Read it!"

--warns Mr. James Ingham that it demands ten thousand dollars. ("By George!") If Mr. Ingham wisely decides to grant this application, he will tie the enclosed ribbon to the frame work of his awning on the afternoon of August fourth, at four o'clock. It will be seen by an agent of the Society, who will then advise Mr. Ingham as to how and where the money may be paid. If Mr. Ingham decides against the application, he will do nothing.

But in that case he must be prepared for the publication of a paragraph in the _Voice of Justice_, beginning--"There has recently come to light an episode in the career of Mr. James Ingham, the well-known publisher, eldest son of Robert Ingham of Springfield and New York, who is engaged to be married to the popular actress, Christina Hope--"

It will go on to relate the story of his a.s.sociation with a young, pure and helpless girl eight years ago; how he betrayed her, and, after a promise of marriage--she being then dest.i.tute--abandoned her. It will tell this girl's name and where she is. It will give all names in connection with the affair. It will publish letters that pa.s.sed between Mr. Ingham and this young girl, corroborating the worst that has been said.

Mr. Ingham knows the standards of society, the reputation, the probity and the justice of his father, and also the temper of Miss Christina Hope. Mr. Ingham is the best judge of whether or not it will be wise to pay for silence.

"That's all!" exclaimed Stanley Ingham, as if the absence of signature were really remarkable. "Well, how's that! Poor old chap, you know--how dare they!" He reddened. "Because, hang it all, of course a man has to be a man, and you've got to be liberal-minded and all that; but, just the same, a fellow that would do what that thing says--why, he'd be regularly rotten! You can't deny it, he'd be rotten."

Herrick sat dumb. Words of Christina's were pa.s.sing in his mind.--"I will never tell you the cause of our quarrel. It was simply something monstrous which happened a long time ago." Because he had to say something, he said--"And you're taking this in to the police?"

"Yes. Isn't it a mercy Jim didn't destroy it? Meant it for the detectives himself, I dare say. Perhaps his not hanging out that piece of ribbon didn't have anything to do with his death. And perhaps it did.

Anyhow, wait a bit--I'm a walking post-office this morning. Here's the last exhibit!" And he plumped down on Herrick's knee the duplicate of the typewritten envelope. The postmark, however, was dated August ninth, and it was directed to Ingham senior.

"It opened with the same formalities, but this time its threat ran--

"The _Voice_ will relate the actual circ.u.mstances connected with the death of Mr. James Ingham--"

"Jove!" cried Herrick, "that would be something!"

"Wait till you read 'em!"