Persons Unknown Part 52

"Give me some wine!" she said. "I am tired!"

He looked at her and said, yes, she was right; and she would better have something to eat.

The wine brought back her brightness; it was she who lighted the wick, heated the supper, and set the smoking chafing-dish before him. Till it came to the serving she would not let him stir and he could only lean forward on the table, looking and looking at her. During this she said little enough, except that he must be sure to praise her cooking, for she had always boasted she could be a good wife to a poor man! But once she was seated she poured out a stream of chatter which he sometimes answered and sometimes not, being intent upon but one thing, and that was to drink deeper and deeper of her presence.

Now through much of this Herrick lost sight of them, for he had come upon an interest of his own. He had discovered in one of the bal.u.s.ters against which he lay the jutting head of a nail. Never was an object, not in itself alluring, more dearly welcomed. For he saw that his legs were bound with only the soft cord that had once looped back the curtains between the inner and the outer balcony; there must have been two of these cords, and if his arms were but fastened with the other the edge of the nailhead might make, in the course of time, some impression upon it. He sat up and found the nail of a good height to saw back and forth upon, and if it did not convincingly appear that any effect would be made upon the cord, at least it provided him with a violent, if furtive, exercise. This was better than to lie there and let those below saw upon his heart instead.

But he must stop at last from pure exhaustion; and at that moment there was the sound of a chair pushed back. "I thank you for your hospitality," said Christina's voice. "But, now to business. I have played in too many melodramas to sign a contract without reading it. The yacht sails at sunrise?"

"Or when you will."

"And takes with her Allegra and Mrs. Pascoe and whatever of their tribe they choose?"

"Safely and secretly to Brazil! They have chosen their own crew. They must be aboard of her already."

At such words as these Herrick may well be said to have picked up his ears. He heard Ten Euyck go on:

"She is yours, Christina; and theirs if you choose to make her so!"

"You are very generous!" said Christina dryly. "But there is only one way I can be sure of the end of all this. You know what is most important to me." Herrick, leaning against the banisters had got his eye to the opening in the valance again, and he could now see Christina with her hands in her lap facing Ten Euyck. "Have you got that letter?" she said.

Ten Euyck gave his breast a smart rap so that Christina, being so near, must have heard the paper crackle there.

"Very well," said she; "so much for the District-Attorney's mail!"

He stood up, and his voice croaked with triumph as he talked.

"Christina," he said, "I have brought you that letter--it's the price of my professional, my political honor; it's bought with my disgrace, with my career! But I have brought it. I'm ridiculous to you, Christina, but who got it for you? Your friends, the Inghams? your admirer, Wheeler?

your poor fool of a Herrick? your cherished jail-bird, Denny?--No, I did! This letter that I have here Ann Cornish fell ill guarding, for her vengeance. You stole and lost it. Your enterprising family broke into a post-office to get it back. But the despised policeman brings it to you."

"You got it by accident, you say," commented Christina. "Don't forget that!"

"Forget! I shall never forget the triumph of catching that gang, although I renounce it at your bidding. I shall never forget your message when the letter was barely in my hands!--

"'I know now that I am come of a family of criminals. My pride is in the dust, as deep as you could wish it. If you do not help us, if it must come out that I am tied to blackmailers whom you will catch and send to prison, I shall die of it!' Christina, can I forget that?"

"No," said Christina, "I never thought you could."

"And you will remember my answer, my dear! That I had the proof, the letter in my hand, to publish or to destroy, as you should choose. You haven't forgotten that?"

"No," said Christina again. "But the destroying, that's the thing!

You'll burn it?"

"Yes."

"Before my eyes?"

"Of course."

"To-night?"

"To-morrow!"

She seemed, for a moment, to take counsel with herself. "Very well."

An extraordinary limp helplessness, a kind of dejection of acquiescence, seemed to melt her with la.s.situde at the words. It was enough to sicken the heart of any lover, and even Ten Euyck cried out, as if to justify himself, "Ah, remember--you gave me the slip once before!" And at the memory he seemed to lose all control of himself, falling suddenly forward, clinging to her knees and hiding his face in her skirts.

She sat for a moment motionless. Then, with fastidious deliberation, as if they were bones which a dog had dropped in her lap, she plucked up his wrists in the extreme tips of her fingers, and slowly pushed him off. "Quietly!" she said. "You are one who would always do well to be quiet!"

He sat on his heels, the picture of misery, already ashamed and almost frightened at himself. And suddenly, "Christina," he whispered, while another flash branded itself across his face, "whose kisses were you thinking of?"

She did not, at first, understand; and then, remembering--"I will take a page from your book. I will tell you to-morrow."

"Was it Denny?" he snapped.

"Denny?" said she, abstractedly. "Will? G.o.d bless me, no!"

He sighed with a kind of vacancy. "You could easily tell me so!"

"Well, then," said Christina, with considerable temper, "I will tell you something else. When I came here to-night, that I might not die of my own contempt I promised myself one thing. I swore to that girl I used to be, who carried so high a head she could not breathe the same air with you and never thought to stand you miawling and whimpering here about her feet, that at least I should tell no lies of love. There shall never come one out of my mouth to you and may G.o.d hear me. So if I do not tell you the man I thought of, it is only because I can not bear to speak his name in this place!--But rest easy! I am very capricious. Things will be different to-morrow. To-morrow, if you still think it interesting, you shall know."

"Know!" he cried. And catching her arm, looked at her with a baleful face. "Yes, there's my trouble! What do I know of you at all! I met you once four years ago--well, I forget myself, I know it! But did I?--Were you even then--? Well, at the inquest, at that reception, in the station, holding to Denny, the night of your performance, and now, to-night! There's my knowledge of you! You dazzle, you befool, you drive me crazy, and you leave me empty--why should I throw my life away for that! After all, where were you when all New York was looking for you?

Nearly a week! Where were you?"

"Where was I!" Christina cried. "Well, it's rather long. But does not the favorite slave always tell stories to her master? Listen to Scheherezade."

Then, for the first time, Herrick heard the story of Christina's visit to the yellow house; how she had determined that Allegra must tell the authorities, in Denny's behalf, the story of his provocation against Ingham; how then, hidden in Nancy's, she had found Allegra's hair and guessed everything. "Then it seemed that the first thing was to get Nancy away, quietly, without warning, so that there should be no danger to her. I thought that then I could manage Allegra." She had had Allegra come into town for her performance, and go straight from it to the Amsterdam, up to Christina's apartment in Christina's name; following her there she had slept on the couch, and slipped off early in the morning. Suspecting the ident.i.ty of the motor, she had telephoned for it as though to meet them both, and now she went on to tell Ten Euyck of her attempt to deceive Mrs. Pascoe, as though she had come from Allegra, and of her imprisonment in the closet.

"Ah, that wretched necklace! I said to myself, 'If it comes to a fight, they may find it and take it from me.' And then I should really have been in your power! I buried it in the flower-pot, thinking to come back with reinforcements!" She told of the flight in the rain, and of the farmers who wouldn't wake up. Both men listened, absorbed, staring. And Christina said, "I was afraid to go toward Waybrook, in case those men followed me. I ran toward Benning's Point. I feared the main road, too, and I thought I could follow the short cut. It is very hilly and broken and I had never seen it before in the dark; the sheets of rain were like the heavens falling, and the wind beat out my last strength; I was mud up to my knees and I had on heavy clothes, too large for me, all dragging down with wet. Perhaps it all made me stupid; at any rate, I lost my way. Oh!" said Christina, "that was hard!" and she put her hand over her heart. "I don't know--it must have been hours--I ran and staggered and stumbled and climbed! You are to remember I had had no food all day, and little enough the day before. And by and by I fell. I got up and on again for a little, but I had hurt myself in falling, and I fell again. And this time I lay there."

Ten Euyck lifted the border of her golden dress and put it to his lips.

The moisture of self-pity swam in Christina's eyes. "Nancy!" she said.

"That was worst to think of!" In her own lip she set her teeth and soon she went on--"While I was still unconscious, a man came along with a motor. Somehow, he didn't run over me; he found me. And he recognized me! He wanted the reward. He took me to his sister's; to that Riley's.

They gave me all sorts of hot drinks and things; I think they saved my life. But when I tried to thank them, something very comic had happened--I had lost my voice." Christina closed her eyes.

"Well?" said Ten Euyck.

"Well, that woman said I needed sleep, so she sent her brother out of the room--but she didn't send her husband. When she found I could not speak, she pulled down the blinds of her room for fear some one should see in, and said I needn't make a fuss, trying to get away, for she knew as well as any one I was mixed up with murder and trying to clear out.

She said she was not going to hold any poor girl that was in trouble, not for the few hundreds he would give her out of that reward. She was going to let me go. 'But first,' said she, 'I'll thank you to hand over that diamond necklace!'"

Both Ten Euyck and the unseen Herrick started and stared.

"She wouldn't believe me. If I didn't have it, I had hidden it since I got in the house. 'Very well, if you won't do anything for me, I think there's a gentleman who will. I think the party for me to send for is Mr. Ten Euyck.' I wasn't ready for you, then, nor did I mean to be handed over to you, like a thief done up in a bundle! But what was I to do? I was still weak and she was between me and the locked door! I'm grand at screaming," said Christina, "but I couldn't even speak! And then, out of the stones of the courtyard, heaven raised up a miracle for me!"

"It was you, then?"

"The shadow? yes. But how could I dream a friend would be going by? It was just a desperate game, a wild chance! She had been telling me what an outcry there was, how I would be recognized anywhere, and about the moving-picture, and how they played the march from Faust, now, at that film--and I thought of the reward and how there must be many looking for it. There was a piano in that room and I went to it, put my foot on the loud pedal and began to play. 'Oh,' I thought, 'will some one glance up?

Will some one guess?' And then I threw the shadow on the blind! Before she could do much more than drag me away, my unsuspected friend was in the room. She didn't dare to try to keep me. He put a hat and cloak on me from her closet--oh, I'm sure he sent them back!--and s.n.a.t.c.hed me off!"