Persons Unknown Part 24

"Did you tell him there was a lady here?"

"He knew it himself, sir."

"Well, she came in here because she felt ill; I'm just taking her home.

She can't be bothered."

"He said it was very important, sir. Something she's to do to-morrow,"

he said.

"Christina! It's only some one about your going away."

"No. It's the end. Take the card."

Springing on the light, he took the card to rea.s.sure her. She motioned him to read it. And he read aloud the words "Mr. Ten Euyck."

CHAPTER VI

AND HOLDS A RECEPTION AFTER ALL

Christina took the card from him, and seemed to put him to one side.

Almost inaudibly she said, "I will go down."

Before Herrick could prevent her, a voice from just outside the door replied, "Don't trouble yourself, Miss Hope. May I come in?" Ten Euyck, hat in hand, appeared in the doorway.

He looked from one to the other, noting Christina's tear-stained face, with a civil, sour smile. "I am sorry if I intrude. I had no idea Mr.

Herrick was to be my host. The truth is, Miss Hope, I followed you and have been waiting for you, in the hope of making peace--where it was once my unhappy fortune to make war."

Christina said, "You followed me!"

"But I shouldn't have yielded to that impulse so far as to--well, break into Mr. Herrick's apartment, if I had not become, in the meanwhile, simply the messenger of--a higher power." Ten Euyck tried to say the last phrase like a jest, but it stuck in his throat. He moved out of the doorway, and there stepped past him into the room the man whom Herrick had seen at the Pilgrims'. "Miss Hope, Mr. Herrick," Ten Euyck said, "Mr. Kane; our District Attorney."

Kane nodded quickly to each of them. "Miss Hope," he said, "I don't often play postman; but when I met our friend Ten Euyck outside and he told me you were here, the opportunity was too good to lose." He took a letter out of his pocket, watching her with shrewd and smiling eyes.

"We've been tampering with your mail. Allow me."

Christina took the letter wonderingly, but at its heading her face contemptuously brightened. "I can hardly see," she said, pa.s.sing it to Herrick. "Read it, will you?--He would have to know anyhow," she said sweetly to the two officials. "We are just engaged to be married. You must congratulate us."

Herrick, never very eloquent, was stricken dumb. "Sit down, won't you?"

was as much as he could ask his guests. The letter ran--

"The Arm of Justice suggests to Miss Christina Hope that she exert her well-known powers of fascination to persuade the Ingham family into paying the Arm of Justice its ten thousand dollars. Miss Hope need not work for nothing, nor even in order to avert an accusation against which she doubtless feels secure. But the Arm of Justice has in its possession a secret which Miss Hope would give much to know. She may learn what that secret is, and how it may be negotiated if she will hang this white ribbon out of the window wherever she may be dining on Monday. She will receive a communication at once."

"Exactly!" said Kane, as though in triumph. "For such swells as the Arms of Justice it's about dinner-time now. Would you oblige me, Miss Hope, by tying the ribbon out of the window? Show yourself as clearly as possible. All the lights, please."

As Christina stepped to the window, he added, "I'm trusting they didn't recognize us as we came in. It's pretty dark."

They waited. The three men were strung to a high degree of expectation.

"But it's all so silly!" Christina said. The call of the telephone shrilled through the room.

"Miss Hope?" Herrick asked. "Yes, she's here."

Then they heard Christina answering, "Yes, yes, it's Miss Hope. I hear.

I understand. I'll be there." She hung up the receiver and turned round.

"The Park. To-morrow. At ten in the morning. The bench under the squirrel's house at the top of the hill beyond the Hundred-and-tenth Street entrance. And be sure to come alone." She sat down, staring at Kane.

He said, "Excuse me!" and went to the 'phone. "Boy! Did that party ask for Miss Hope in the first place? All right. That's queer. They asked for Mr. Herrick's apartment."

"They knew I was living here? Why, I only moved in this morning."

"And they must know I'm going on the road to-morrow; the eleven-thirty train!"

"Exactly. They're well informed." Kane had been pa.s.sing up and down; now he stopped in front of Christina and again he seemed to measure her with his keen eyes. "Well!" he said; "are you game for it?"

Christina sprang up and stood before him, glowing.

"You'll keep this appointment?"

"Surely! And alone!"

"Not by a long shot! Your mother and Mr. Ingham have feared exactly some such escapade; that's why you've had to be shadowed all this while and not advised of the activities of the police. There will be plenty of plain clothes men, well planted. But not you, Mr. Herrick, whom they would know. If you attempt to smuggle yourself in, we'll have to put you in irons. Well, Miss Hope?"

"My mother," said Christina, rising, and faintly smiling, "deserves to have her hair turn as white as I'm sure it has by this time." She held out her hand. "You gave me a great fright," she said. "Did you know it?

I thought you had all come to execute me. Don't! I'm not worth it!"

The admiration which no man could withhold from her for very long colored Kane's studying face and warmed his handshake. "I can count on your not losing your head, I think. You'll be there?"

"I'll be there.--But have these people really any secret? Are they really going to tell me something?"

"Well, my dear young lady, we'll know that to-morrow."

CHAPTER VII

MORNING IN THE PARK: THE SILENT OUTCRY

The week in which Christina was to open in "The Victors" was one of those which call down the curses of dramatic critics by producing a new play each night. Thursday was to see the opening of openings; there were but two nights on the road and Mrs. Hope and Herrick were to live through these as best they might in a metropolis that was once more a desert.

After that momentous interview of Monday evening Christina would not let Herrick drive home with her. "Come to the station in the morning, and hear what has happened. Lunch with me on Thursday. But don't let me see you alone again till Friday noon, when--" she laughed--"when I've read my notices. Let your poor Christina tell you her trouble then. Till then she has trouble enough!" She put her face up with a kind of humble frankness, to be kissed. And he saw that it was a weary face, indeed.

Throughout the night his anxiety concerning the next day's meeting with the blackmailers contended in him with that other anxiety: what she was to tell him on Friday--when she had read her notices! Whatever it was, it was not for his pa.s.sion that he feared. There were even times when he could almost have wished it were not some distorted molehill that the girl's excitable broodings had swollen past all proportion, but some test of his strength, some plumbing of his tenderness. And then again he would be aware of a cold air crawling over his heart, of that horrible sinking of the stomach with which, walking in the dark, we feel that we are taking a step into s.p.a.ce. A black wall, ominous, menacing and very near, would loom upon him and blind him from the wholesome and habitable world. The daylight reinforced his faith in simpler probabilities. It washed away all but the sweetly humble arrogance of the one fact which all night long had shot in glory through his veins and built itself into the foundations of his life. With the day he remembered only that she loved him.