Persons Unknown Part 35

"You've taken that business, all along, as just a mask for some desperate amateur. Then, too, you were all thrown off the track--and small wonder!--by those literate, unbusinesslike letters in idiomatic English. A lady's letters, in fact!--My dear fellow, a very real and definite 'Arm of Justice,' a low-lived little gang that sunny Italy knew how to get rid of, has made its living at blackmailing certain gutters of ours for a generation. What n.o.body but your humble servant has believed is that this more stylish business, using our language and dwelling very evidently in our midst, has any connection with the original A. of J. beyond borrowing its t.i.tle from the police reports.

Not for the first time! See here! The Arm of Justice started life as the humblest little blackguard gang, extorting money from low-cla.s.s Italians. It was like all its cla.s.s, strictly minding its own business in its own nationality and considered worth n.o.body's while to catch. But to my mind about four years ago this violet by a mossy stone burst out like a sunflower. To my mind, it was this very same Arm of Justice which abandoned every precedent by entering, with one bound, into American life."

His look seemed to ring with triumph, but his voice kept a cold edge.

"No Italian gang, real or bogie, big or little, had ever thrown its shadow there. But the Arm of Justice flew high, carried the new territory at a rush, and struck at the very proudest families in New York, the most powerful individuals!"

"But how? How?"

"Ah, if I knew! What's its source of information? How does it get hold of those unhappy secrets that its owners guard like Koh-i-noors? Well, men will tell a good deal to a woman--and those were a woman's letters, Herrick! Once it gets its secret it starts a correspondence. How often it has succeeded, grabbed its hush-money and retreated, of course I don't know. But when its advances are rejected it abandons its typewriter and calmly prints a scant edition of a dirty little rag calling itself _The Voice of Justice_ and telling the blackmailing story. It then mails marked copies through various New York post offices to the family, friends and enemies of its victims--the three before Ingham were all of Knickerbocker standing. What a revenge! What a prestige for next time such a threat gave it! The desire of my life is to smash that printing-press!"

"But it followed up the Ingham business with letters alone?"

"There you are--the whole Ingham business is a departure! Observe that until Ingham's death the English-speaking branch of the business never committed itself to violence; it caused four tragedies in four years, but it simply pressed the b.u.t.ton of exposure and its vengeance came off automatically. The first time a young girl went crazy. The second there was a divorce and the wife shot herself. And the third time a bad stumble, lived down for twenty years by a fine old friend of mine, a judge of the highest standing who had made himself an honorable character, was exposed to such relentless political foes that this office had to prosecute. Well, Mrs. Deutch's father isn't the only gentle soul who's died in jail!"

Kane's voice had risen in hot anger. "Perhaps you think I ought to be grateful--thank them for doing my work! Am I to do theirs, then? Execute their orders, their sentences? Make my office the tool of cowards and criminals worse than those I convict? Ah, my boy, that did turn me into a monomaniac! Is there anything I wouldn't give to break that particular bone in the Arm of Justice?--to lay hands on the real villain of that little evening party in these rooms that night--not the one who fired the shot but who prompted it! Believe me, the death of Ingham was a slip, an accident, bitterly repented. Some last new element got in this time and got in wrong. The Arm was using a new tool and pushed it farther than it dreamed the tool would go. The English-speaking branch, always so careful not to commit murder--I could almost be thankful for this time--it's put a definite, popular crime into my hand! And now the poor fools've lost their heads! They that were so cautious, they're following one sensation with another. They've tried anything, everything, to get clear! They've only floundered further and further in! And now they're wild as rats in a trap!"

"Like rats in a trap!" There it was again! "The wages of sin is more sinning!" Good heavens, what was his novel to him, now?

"Still people don't believe me. They can't credit that a single criminal gang has its feet in the slums, its hand in the pocket of Fifth Avenue, and its head--well, for instance, on Broadway. Naturally, it wants a connecting thread. I was so keen after that, even before I came into office, that they used to call me The Blackhander and say I ought to write a comic opera. Well, Italy's an operatic nation! And this great brat of a city, that thinks there's nothing doing in the world but Anglo-Saxon temperaments, embezzling and baseball games, doesn't know what it may get up against! I'm sure if I can nab either end of the skein it will carry conviction. But unfortunately even the Eastsiders never gave us a map of their whereabouts. There are about seven hundred Italians in New York who might be called professional gangsters and very likely a cozy, private little affair like the A. of J. but murmurs, 'We are seven.' So I've never been able to put the slightest Italian accent on those ill.u.s.trious letters till I saw the body of your gunman from Central Park. Encouraging though not overwhelming evidence! But the knife that stuck in Denny's arm is a bigger business."

He might well congratulate himself, Herrick inwardly groaned, over the color and the emphasis liberally supplied him in the story of Mrs.

Deutch.

"Of course, you understood what had happened? The farmer had refused toll to the brigands who governed the south so capably in those days.

They killed his child, leaving their mark on it as a warning that toll must be paid. The poor wine-merchant attempted to set the authorities on that sign. The authorities were too weak to take up the gage, and, of course, a stranger and a Jew made an easy scape-goat. But the brother didn't take warning from the father's fate. Then the mark on him warned the countryside that the family was taboo. They became simply lepers.

Not, this time, because the people were religious bigots nor social a.s.ses but because they were scared stiff. Every one connected with the tabooed strangers must have dreaded some brigand dictum. Every Gabrielli may have squirmed under that thumb for many a year. Whatever she romantically believes, her fiance's family simply dared not, for their lives, receive Henrietta. n.o.body dared, except, apparently, our little friend, Hermann Deutch. Hats off--I salute Hermann! Really, for an excited man--! But how's that for the nationality of the three-cornered knife? The nation's pitched it out, over there; and now, to-day, in the city of New York, in the city's jail, in broad daylight, some descendant of this agreeable Sicilian clan uses the same weapon to silence a wiry gentleman who turns out a bit too much for him--being a little on the Sicilian order himself! But isn't that a sign of something doing between the slums and Broadway? For what were they afraid Denny would tell? Why did they wish to silence him except for what he could tell of a certain lady?"

Herrick rose, lighted a cigar and flicked out the match with steady fingers. "And you picture Miss Hope as The Queen of the Black Hand?"

This pleasantry was delivered with such a raucous and guttural attempt at quiet satire that Kane returned to earth and smiled.

"Put in that way it's comic opera, indeed. But it's the tune that makes the song. I know how cra.s.s the thing seems. Good heavens, says common sense, in what century are we living? And who believes in comic opera?

What's the clue? What's the connecting thread that can reach from the lowest dives of the East Side, out of another country and another race, and mix with the grandeurs of so extremely well-known and high-flying a young lady, on the very day that she becomes a world-celebrity? What's the answer?"

The extreme nonchalance of Herrick's voice shook a little as he remarked, "That's up to you, isn't it?"

"It's bound to lie in some dangerous indiscretion of her youth. She's had hard struggling years, in which her temper was still luxurious--a youth that's ambitious is never too scrupulous--if she had a friend unscrupulous by profession--And yet I was so sure they had got hold of her by some secret of her mother's! The Hope honeymoon took place in Italy--but, in that day, so did everybody's! After all, perhaps they had a closer clutch. What do we inevitably find in the pasts of all very young, very beautiful and very successful actresses? We find a dark and early husband. Italians whose humbler connections still sojourn in tenements are often highly ornamental and blackmailers aren't branded, you know, to keep them out of matrimony. Well, whatever the start, whether she was coaxed in or threatened or married, forced by poverty or blackmail, she's made them a wonderful--Do you know the thieves' slang of Naples? And the term 'basista'?"

"A basista's a sort of fence, isn't he? A confederate on the outside?"

"A good deal more. A basista, without being a member of the gang, is the invaluable unsuspected spy in the camp of the victims, who loots profitable news and sends it in. He or she is sometimes the brilliant amateur director, the educated person with an outlook, the Adviser Plenipotentiary. A dramatic-minded young lady with extravagant tastes and some kind of righteous grudge against society might hardly realize at first what she was doing--and oh, how she has struggled to be rid of it, since! Naturally, she's become worth double to them. And she's recently furnished them with such a hold that, so far from getting clear, I fancy she was pushed to furnish them with another victim; that if it hadn't been for the moving-picture another person would soon have received an Arm of Justice letter, and that person Cuyler Ten Euyck.

What do you think of my thread?"

"Pretty thin, isn't it?"

"Wait, encouraging youth! You'll be grateful some day! Come, I'll show you my hand! Ever since the inquest it has been perfectly clear to the unprejudiced mind that Christina Hope was in that room when Ingham was shot. It was perfectly evident that she was shielding somebody. We say, now, that she was shielding Denny. When we began to suspect Denny we had to run down his friend, Christina Hope, who left behind her a scarf bordered with the color in which, through his craze for her, Ingham's apartment was decorated--a color which up to the time of the murder she wore so constantly that it was like a part of her personal effect, and which she has never worn since."

The color was all about them--blue-gray. What could that have to do with the shimmer of a dummy pistol, scratched upon whose golden surface Herrick once more confronted the initial "C"? But he did not put this question to the District-Attorney. And it was Kane who continued. "Shall I treat you to a bit of ancient history; shall I reconstruct for you the movements of Miss Hope on the night of the fourth of August?"

"As you please."

"She testified to have dined at home. So she did; but with so poor an appet.i.te that the maids said to each other that she had really dined early somewhere else. She testified to being ill and out of sorts; so she was. But she was incited by this being out of sorts to something very different from the languor to which she testified. Far from having bade Ingham farewell forever she called him up at the Van Dam on an average of every half hour, as well as at his club, and at two restaurants which he frequented. Failing to find him, at eleven o'clock she did, indeed, go to the post-box and mail a letter; but at twenty minutes past eleven she was waiting in a taxi outside the theater where Denny was rehearsing and sent in a message, without any concealment of her name, that she wished to speak to him. He sent out word that he was engaged. An hour later she was there again, and not believing the back doorman who told her that he had left, she stopped Wheeler, who had been inside, and besought him to get Denny to speak to her. He replied that Denny was gone, whereupon she called out to her chauffeur, with every adjuration to hurry, the name of the Van Dam apartment house--where, say at a quarter after one, you, Herrick, saw her shadow on the blind. According to Joe Patrick she was the first on the spot.--Was she the last there, too?"

Herrick paused in a long stride; with his bones slowly freezing in him he turned and faced the District-Attorney.

"If Denny loved her and went there on her account did he shoot down Ingham before her eyes? Or did she run out, as she suggested at the inquest, and Denny shoot Ingham as he turned to follow her? There's your chance, Herrick, prove that! Mr. Bird tells us when our prisoner came in. But, before all and everything, when did he come out?"

He had a way for which Herrick could have slain him, of driving points home with a smile.

"But suppose, now, she did most of the loving on her own account.

Ingham, to a certainty, had found out her connection with the Arm of Justice, when it tried to blackmail him through her. From the row you heard between them he's likely to have been threatening her with exposure. Suppose Denny's story is straight and when he found her there with Ingham he just turned and walked off. Was Ingham a man to refrain from threatening to send his revelations, first of all, to a man who had treated him so cavalierly? Is she a girl to stop short of the desperate in preventing him? Isn't she one to avenge herself in advance? It may not have been wholly in revenge. Ingham was himself a wild revengeful fellow who sometimes had too much to drink. He may have provoked her even to bodily fear. If he guessed such a thing do you think Denny would not keep silence? I see it strikes you."

It seemed to him as if it struck the life out of his heart over which he folded his arms. "Try somebody else," he said, in defiance of the little clasps of proof which he could hear snapping into each other, "next time you accuse her."

"Yes, I'll try Deutch. I gave her every doubt till I heard of his secret. Is it possible you don't know what he found? And is it possible that you don't see a preparation for emergency in her taking such pains to establish--well, not an alibi, but a subst.i.tute?--A mysterious unknown lady with the most conspicuous physical attributes, in whose person this admirable actress appears before Joe Patrick as the red-headed murderess of the drama on the front stairs, before, on the back stairs, with which she appears to be so familiar, she resumes herself and turns to see what can be done with Ingham! That's the worst point in the story of a distracted girl, pushed to the wall, driven past her last stand, maddened by a suddenly enlightened and too cruel Ingham, hounded by her friends, the Arm of Justice, to their work; herself no more--as I was once no more!--than a trigger pulled by their hand! No wonder they've had a firmer hold on her than ever since that night, and shield her, now, with all their care because in doing so they shield themselves!"

"That's what you think, is it?"

"It's what I fear--and it's what you fear! Or--what's a District-Attorney to a lover?--you'd have knocked me down long ago!--There's not a man of you, knowing the girl, in whose mind, in whose pulse, it hasn't been from the first hour! Yet there's not one of you who hasn't sacrificed Denny to her without a scruple. One man in the end won't do it. I mean Denny himself. He, too, is prepared to go extraordinary lengths not to betray her. He will deny, of course, that it was she who was there that night. But I rely on one thing. He knows that in the State of New York he can not plead guilty to murder in the first degree. And he won't send himself up for anything less. He's not afraid of death, but he's mortally afraid of prison--it gets on every one of his nerves. And he seems to have a great many of them. If they are ground on the idea of jail so that they break they may break quite contrary to poor Deutch's--they may set him talking! Ah, if he and Deutch could happen to meet; those two temperamental persons!--Here, in this room, in the night, now when neither of them are quite themselves, what a start they might get! What mightn't it shake out of them?--There's one final thing the person who shot Ingham, the person who was last with him in this room, alone, can tell me--How came that door bolted? Whatever Denny guesses, you'll find he won't guess me that!--Come in!"

He conferred with some one on the threshold. "Ask Inspector Ten Euyck to come up." Turning back to take his place at the library table he motioned Herrick to a seat. "Pity the sorrows of a poor policeman whose legal sense is too strong to let him ask a single question of an accused man, yet who was born to be the head of the Inquisition and looks at the prisoner with a deep desire quite simply to tear him open! The prisoner is well held together with surgeon's plaster, but the poor Inspector's pride in his profession is suffering horribly from the inadequate conduct of his city's jail to-day and of our detectives' search.--Here we are!"

A group of young men appeared in the doorway, with Ten Euyck looming like a damaged monument in their wake. Civility and self-control forced themselves on Herrick. He and Ten Euyck sniffed each other, wary as strange dogs, their spines beginning to rise. "Inspector," said Kane, "cheer up!" And indeed the funereal quality in that gentleman's appearance had greatly increased. He sat down, as directed, but when he looked at Herrick he had to turn his growl into a cough and when he looked at Kane he winced. It was evidently not alone the errors of the Tombs and the police department which had bowed his head. It was the knowledge of last night. His magnificent storm coat could not hide his riddled dignity. Only by the sight of Christina in his grasp could he get his dignity back again.

"Ten Euyck, I sent for you because this is so largely your affair, but you are not going to be asked to do anything immoral. I am about to examine a witness, but with no illegal questions nor shall I force him to testify against himself. He is only going to be asked about another, a missing witness. Your legal mind doesn't quarrel with his being hard pushed in that direction? I thought not!"

Ten Euyck exclaimed, eagerly, "But Deutch can't talk yet!"

"Deutch? Did you think I meant Deutch? There is some one dearer to Christina Hope than her dear Deutches and still nearer to the habits of her life. I mean a gentleman who can talk but won't. Ah, brighten up Ten Euyck--he shall be got to! He may be ignorant of certain amiable Italians as criminal characters, it's inconceivable he can be ignorant of them as Christina Hope's familiar friends. He mayn't be able to tell me the secret of their lives. But he can give me their address. And he will."

They were all grouped about the long table: Kane at its center, facing the window; Ten Euyck and Herrick bearing with each other at one end; Holt, an a.s.sistant of Kane's, between him and Ten Euyck; to his right, a stenographer with a short-hand pad. The end of the table was still vacant. Kane's own doorman stood on the threshold.

"Wade, have you got Mrs. Deutch? Please step into the bedroom, Mrs.

Deutch. Sit down comfortably, keep silent and listen to everything.--I want to remind you all that, wise as our witness is, there are some things he doesn't know. So far as we know he has never connected the Cornish girl's disappearance with the blackmailers. He's not supposed to know there are any blackmailers. And, for certain, he's seen no papers nor been allowed to talk with any one. He doesn't know that Christina Hope has disappeared! He doesn't know that New York has seen a moving-picture!" Turning to the man at the door Kane said, "Bring in William Denny."

CHAPTER IV

A LIGHT ALONG THE ROAD: DENNY GIVES AN ADDRESS

Herrick felt the strong light of the one lamp like something hypnotic; it reminded him of the glare in some Sardou or Belasco torture chamber.

It seemed to him that the scene wasn't real; it was like a council of wolves and he powerless and quiet with them there, as they hungered to run, baying, on Christina. It was only a nightmare and yet it was more real and keen than life, and only G.o.d knew what would come of it! Then he saw the slight, dark figure pa.s.s the door; every eye, but with what different desires, turned, ravenous as his, for the secret that it carried in its breast.

The doorman brought Denny up to the end of the table and withdrew. The prisoner was very carefully dressed, his black hair brushed as smooth as satin, and against his dark blue coat the black silk handkerchief that supported his arm was scarcely noticeable. He looked a model of rigid decorum until you observed the heavy straps of plaster across his hands.

Only his skin, always dark and pale, seemed really to be drained of blood. He nodded gravely to Kane, and with a sort of still surprise to Herrick. Ten Euyck he pa.s.sed over. He remained standing until Kane told him to sit down. If he then dropped rather wearily into a chair he contrived to sit upright, with a good show of formal manners. As his dark eyes met the keen light ones of the lawyer a faint, derisive smile appeared, and was instantly suppressed, upon both their faces.