Persons Unknown Part 33

"It's all right!" Herrick said, "It's all right! They're wrong, that's all! They're wrong!"

He moved up and down the room with long, excited strides. False lights of misery--horrible corpse candles, leading their lying way toward that which was bitterer than a new-made grave!--"Why, Denny did it! We all know that! You've just said so, yourself!"

"Ah, yes, truly. Surely! But--yet--"

"What could Deutch have seen that we didn't see? We were all there--he only went in with us. He may guess something--he can't know. What are we all afraid of?"

"And yet," said Mrs. Deutch, "we are all afraid!"

There was a brisk knock on the door. The newcomer smiled grimly at them from under a dripping hat brim. "I hope I'm welcome," he said. It was the District Attorney.

He seemed to take his own appearance quite naturally and perhaps he was not averse to their being stunned by it. Standing with his back against the door he removed his hat and rubbed his hand over the wet mark across his forehead. "Mrs. Deutch? As soon as my a.s.sistants get here I want to try an experiment in the Ingham apartment. You're rather an exceptional--janitress, madam! I think I'm going to ask you at once if there isn't some story connected with your marriage to Hermann Deutch.

It looks as though there must have been scandal of some sort to account for it."

The wife's glow of indignation maintained in silence an unruffled dignity. After awhile she said very slowly, "It is true. There was a scandal. It did make our marriage."

Herrick's defensive frown faltered over a sense of something coming true. He knew, now, that he had always felt in that rich simplicity of Henrietta Deutch a superiority somehow mysterious. Yes, he had always seen that figure of domestic tranquillity as not wholly detached from a dense background, somehow somber and mysterious.

"Before you commit yourself on that point, just tell me who or what enforces obedience with a triangular knife?--Let her alone!"

For Mrs. Deutch had uttered a dreadful cry. It was low, but full of incredible pain.

Kane grinned triumphantly at Herrick. "Great heaven!" Herrick begged.

"What is it? What do you know?"

"Here! Let's sit down and get at this! Mrs. Deutch, this is nearer than you think to our young lady. Best help me!"

"Wait! A moment! No, what I know it is far from Christina. It happened before she was born. But I will tell it. You shall judge."

A long painful breath labored from her bosom. Then she spoke.

"The scandal was this. My father died in prison. He was imprisoned for his life. He was accused that he had killed a child."

"Yes. Well, go on."

"It begins long before, with my home in Germany. My father was a merchant of wines there, and he had in business relations with a Neapolitan family named Gabrielli. Their son, Emile, was my brother's friend.----Emile Gabrielli, Herrick's Italian lawyer, who had suggested his novel!"

"I had but the one brother; for my mother was never strong and of her children only two grew up. We were very old fashioned; we lived in comfort but we had neither the new thoughts nor the new manners. Only my brother was very advanced. He was so modern that when he looked upon us, even, it gave him exasperation. His friend was not of his faith. But that was so old-fashioned a thought it could not be at all mentioned before him. Well, then, I--too--for one thing perhaps we are all enough advanced! I came to love Emile. He loved me, too. And no one was pleased--not even my brother! But, after a long time, when they began to think I, too, was falling ill like all the rest who died, we were betrothed. And my father sold his business out and bought a vineyard in Sicily, near to the estate of Emile's father, taking there my mother, whose health failed." Yes, with the bewildered indifference of his own emotion, Herrick remembered the miniature of which the parents of that sentimental gentleman had not been able to deprive him and recognized the changed original in Henrietta Deutch.

"And one morning, walking far before breakfast, my father came upon a dead little boy under a bush among some rocks. He brought it to our home in his arms; it was the baby of a poor farmer. It had been stabbed between the little shoulders. And there was a strange, three-cornered wound."

She stopped and her hands stirred in her lap. But she clasped them and went on. "My father was accused. Witnesses appeared against him with strange tales. How could we make ourselves believed. I have told you how he fared.

"Do you think my brother could rest? He left his law in Germany; he came to Sicily to fight, to hunt, to turn every stone. He was found like the child. There was the same three-cornered mark."

Kane gave a low whistle.

"My mother and I, we were all alone." She smoothed out a little fold in her dress. "We had but the one message from the family of my betrothed--that they withdrew the word of their son."

Kane looked up quickly. "Yes?" he urged. "And then?"

"Then came to us Hermann Deutch, who in the old days sold our wine. He gave us escort to Naples, for my mother could go no farther, and returned to attend our property. It was all in a ruin. The house had burned. The cattle were gone. The laborers, too, nor would any return.

The land none would buy. It was a place accursed. Our money was soon all gone." She paused, struggling with a sudden sob. "Hermann Deutch, to stay on he had lost his position, and he took one that was poor but in Naples, to be near me. He was all that came near us, who had word or dealing with us, while my mother grew too weak to live. When she, too, died, I married him. There was the scandal, sir, to account for my marriage."

She looked with deep, mild scorn at Kane. He remained imperturbable, while Herrick blushed for him.

"There was one thing more. Mr. Deutch had spent much for us and before he could take me from Naples he must save something from what work he had. One month came upon another in that terrible city and we had not gone. So the time came when I, like other women, thought to have a child. One night there were fire-works at the seash.o.r.e and, to liven my mind, he made me go. As we came home there was a lonely bit of beach, though toward the cars. Out of the dark a voice called some words at us and something fell--it rang on a stone at our feet. They had thrown a kind of dagger. Sirs," said Mrs. Deutch, "it was a triangular knife."

Kane gave a cry with a strange note of satisfaction.

But the tears were running down Mrs. Deutch's face. "The shock and the fear, they were too much for me. I never bore my child. G.o.d has never given me a child to love except Christina. Tell me what all this can be to her?"

"Do you know what aphasia is, Mrs. Deutch? And doesn't Mr. Deutch suffer, occasionally, from a confusion of words?"

"Not so much that it could be called by a name. Except that one time.

Mr. Deutch has been all his life an excited man. And when that knife fell at my feet he was like one crazed. Then he forgot language, sir, and could not speak well for days. English and German he ran together, and what of French he knows with what Italian. Though he knew well what he wished to say. And there is yet a smear in his brain where the words may sometimes a little mix together. But--Christina?"

"Mrs. Deutch, what did all this suggest to you? Of what did you think you were the victims?"

"Imagine yourselves that it was in a time of one of those outcries against Jewish people which come like stupid fever as though nations, ignorantly, have eaten too much in strong sun. They needed to blame some one and, just then, in blaming us they could blame as they would."

"H'm!--Do either of you know what happened at the Tombs this afternoon?"

"The papers say that Mr. Denny has tried to kill himself."

"Well, and very obliging of them. But, for a desperate man, he gave himself rather queer wounds--scratches in the shoulder and arm. The guard ran for the doctor and seems to be running yet. But where was our suicide really cut to the bone? On the insides of his hands!"

He had produced his sensation.

"The guard was one of the new Italian contingent. And the blow aimed by an Italian, then, at the prisoner's heart and caught by his arm, was given with a triangular knife!"

They were all three on their feet.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Deutch, for my opening gallery play with you. I didn't know the tragedy I was running into. And our friend Herrick, here, and the excellent Wheeler both tried to hoodwink me to-night when I asked them straight questions. You're going to tell me the truth, I know, for now I'm telling it to you. We got hold of your husband at the Pennsylvania Station. Our intelligent police tried to frighten him with the stab of Denny's triangular p.r.i.c.k and they succeeded in putting him clean out of the game with aphasia--sensory aphasia. Word blindness--speech or writing--heavens, what a gag! But don't be alarmed; fortunately it goes with a perfectly clear mind and it's only temporary.

Only--time's everything! Well, it gave me the cue to come up here and dig for some three-cornered mystery, blackmailing if procurable, in Deutch's life. Every District-Attorney his own detective! Yes--when it's this District-Attorney and this crime--Amen! Amen!--What is it?"

"Oh, sir, the Italian!"

"Yes?"

"All morning one hung about the house of Mrs. Hope. Not coming near, but watching, watching. A little, slim, soft, pretty man, in gentleman's clothes. And it made her afraid."

"Ah!"

"Look here, the fellow in the park--the one with the message--he was an Italian! They all were!"

"Exactly! Now--Mrs. Deutch, what was that old secret in the life of the Hopes which turned the daughter into a cynic and a hater of social conventions? Ah, come, please!"