GLEAMS IN THE RAIN: WHEELER'S STORY
Herrick made no outcry at Wheeler's words. He simply stood looking out into the wet and windy spaces of Times Square, where the great splashes of colored lights wavered and shone in manifold reflections on the gleaming pavement. And a tremendous and ultimate change arose like new life in his heart.
There is a common human fallacy, touching and perhaps profounder than we know, by which we instinctively assume any person in danger to be an innocent person. To both men the missing girl was now in danger. It occurred no more to Herrick than to Wheeler that Christina, by any possibility whatever, could have voluntarily deserted a performance. Something had happened. Inevitably, Herrick remembered the once laughed at Arm of Justice. Had it known, all along, what the shadow on the screen had told him to-day? A hundred references of hers, a hundred inconsistencies, were solved at a stroke. Alone with that insensate malignity which he had himself encountered, had she now tried to break some blackmailing game and—lost?—He remembered with a horrid shock that once let her be identified with the shadow on the blind and in the eyes of the law she became the perjured witness of a murder, accessory before and after!—Threatened, thus, on every side, Christina's face seemed to flower for him there, on the night sky; as once, upon a foggy afternoon just as the wind began to rise, it had shone on him in the rainy street—when Christina had first held out her hand to him and said, "Try to believe that perhaps she was in distress, after all!"
In what hectic hot-house had he been stifling?—It was as though, in this wild hour of sweeping rain and blowing air, of lights that flashed and changed in the surrounding darkness, of isolation amid the myriad noises of the theater traffic and the clanging trolleys, he heard, of a sudden, Christina's cry for help; as though, running out into the freedom of the storm, he gained her side of the road and took her hand. It might be the hand of an outlaw, it was empty, forever, of any love or hope for him; but he could feel it, now, in his and he did not care against what world, whether his own or hers, he held it. For their personal relation was no longer the great thing. The great thing could be only that somewhere beyond him in the darkness, desperately needing help, she was. And the next thing was to find her.
"Well," he heard himself say to Wheeler in a commonplace voice, "let's hear about it."
"I want to eat something beside trouble!" Wheeler groaned. "Come in across the way. Stan's to 'phone there at nine."
Instinctively they chose a table by a window, as though in the great street she had loved so much and won so lately, they might see her hurrying by. The restaurant was almost empty, but the news was already there. It peered out of the cigar-smoke of the men to whom Wheeler curtly nodded; it questioned them from the waiter's face. "Where'll I begin?" asked Wheeler. "Well, this afternoon they wouldn't let me see Denny. But I met Stan, and he told me Chris had jumped her appointment with Kane, never brought her witness! Partly, I could have choked the girl—and, partly, I couldn't believe it of her. I called up her house and I've been jumping ever since." And he poured out a story of haste and confusion, of friends interrogated, detectives summoned, of a mother more ignorant than any one and more prostrated.—"God, Herrick, I'm sick! The girl's such a monkey, up to the last minute I hoped she'd show up! About seven Kane got me over the coals. Wonder what he's hit the trail so hard for? He'd had his suspicions of the Park,—the little Cornish girl was last seen, you remember, going that way—but the police have searched every bush for hours. The Inghams are all stewed up with him and Stanley's wished on to him like a burr. The first thing he said to me was, 'At what time did Mrs. Hope inform you of her daughter's absence? Don't hesitate—I can remind you. She never informed you at all!' Was he trying to see if I'd lie to him? What does he think I've done with her? But funny thing—Mrs. Hope and the Deutches had been worrying round looking for that girl all day and yet she'd never consulted me! Look here, it's not possible—No, what cause would she have to harm herself?—Mrs. Hope blames herself because last night when Christina didn't come home—You didn't know that? Well, she didn't. Her mother thought she was at the Deutches, out of temper. You knew she quarreled with her mother about Ten Euyck? They nearly knifed each other!"
"For God's sake," said Herrick, "tell me whatever you know!" Across his shoulder the zest of Broadway seemed to peer and listen. But it was too late to consider that.
"You see, last night's supper has been delicate ground from the beginning. Before I knew what the Inghams had planned I asked Christina to come to supper with me—to bring her mother and any one she liked. She seemed to be down on Denny since he and that Cornish girl disagreed and, as a particular bait, I mentioned you. I knew she was interested in you. And when she isn't interested, the Lord help her host! Well, she preferred my scheme to the Inghams'—she seems to have shown all along the most ungodly resistance to their help or countenance in any way! But I could see, as well as her mother, which was best for my leading-woman, and she finally gave in. It's remarkable how entirely one thinks of Christina as the head of the house, and yet how often she does give in—what an influence her mother has over her when she has any at all!" He drained his long glass with a sigh. "But last night, right after the performance, Mrs. Hope comes running into my dressing-room, well—as I may say, at death's door. Christina was going off to supper with Ten Euyck. You can understand that I didn't listen to her then as I should now. She wanted me, as the only person Christina would be likely to take a word from, to reason with her. I said, 'Yes, yes. By-and-by.' I only wanted to shut her up, you understand. For just then, in the first flush of Christina's triumph, I didn't any more think of interfering with her than with the sun in heaven! I won't say I'd been rehearsing an angel unawares, but the girl had grown, in that one night, way out of my sphere. I thought probably Ten Euyck had just prostrated himself and she'd gone a little off her head, and no wonder! It didn't seem necessarily so terrible to me. But the old lady is a great stickler for the proprieties—yes, and for all her talk, Christina has her own eye on social splendor! It's one thing not to receive people and it's quite another not to have them call!—When I'd got rid of my friends and had given Christina time to get rid of hers, I went round to thank her and congratulate her and at the same time to ask her if she didn't think she was doing the Inghams a pretty dirty trick. There stood my young lady dressed out—I was going to say 'to kill'—why, to make Solomon in all his glory turn pale and fade away! Great Scott!—She looked like the kingdoms of the earth and the wonders thereof! Christina is always bewailing the money she owes but you may have noticed that, for a poor working-girl, she does herself rather well in frocks. Mrs. Hope was sitting quiet in a corner, quashed, and Christina was humming—'Auld acquaintance,' if you please!—to herself in front of the glass. 'Auld acquaintance,' indeed! I thought of Denny, and how he'd stood by this radiant image through thick and thin—in a way, you might say, made her! And though you'll forgive a good deal to a first night like that, I began to agree with the people who say she hasn't any heart. And then I saw—"
"Yes—"
"I saw she had a long string of diamonds twisted round her neck. 'Great God, girl!' I said, 'where did those come from?'"
"And she answered?"
Wheeler had been speaking slower and slower and now, for a long time, it seemed as if he were not going to speak at all. Then "She answered, 'They have come from Cuyler Ten Euyck. But don't breathe it. It has just killed dear mamma.'"
"Well, go on."
"Her mother got up at that and started to go. But Christina stopped her at the door and took hold of her arm. 'Mother,' she said, 'what does it matter? Oh, my poor mother, can't you see that whatever happens we have done with respectability? It's inevitable, it must be done. And to-night or to-morrow, what does it matter? Twenty-four hours, one way or the other, and then—mud to the right of us, mud to the left of us, and unto dust we shall return!' I thought they were the strangest words that ever came out of a girl's mouth on the night of what you might call her coronation!"
"And Mrs. Hope?"
"Mrs. Hope just took her daughter's hand off her arm and walked out of the door and out of the theater.—Well," said Wheeler, with a deep sigh, "it wasn't for me to do that. I'm a pretty long way from a Puritan! All the same, this thing made me sick. 'Chris,' said I, 'don't go with him! Take off those damned diamonds and tell him to go to hell! You can soon make diamonds for yourself, old girl!' She looked up, singing, in my face. And that's the last I saw of her."
"Go on!"
"My boy, you need a drink!"
"And Ten Euyck says—?"
"Oh, poor Ten Euyck—his dignity can't bend, so it's all cracked. He took her to supper at the Palisades and she left early." The Palisades was a new roadhouse up the river and the rage of that summer. "The zealous creature has even run to Kane and disgorged the names of his guests. So it leaks out that, once the poor soul had unbent so far as to be seen with an actress, he couldn't be devilish by halves. It seems miss was annoyed at the character of said guests, as well as at finding supper served in a private room. So with the offended majesty of an injured queen, she withdrew to no less public a spot than the entrance porch. There she sat, swathed in her cloak and with her skirts drawn about her, till the arrival of the cab she had insisted upon." Wheeler broke into a laugh. "That girl," he said, "is the devil himself!"
"And that—was that the very—last—?"
"Exactly. There she is, togged out in a white, silky crepe-y, trail-y dress, embroidered in silver, and a white lace opera cloak. In these useful and inconspicuous garments, she vanishes." His grim grin soured. "You know what they'll all say! Kane tells the Inghams she couldn't catch Ten Euyck so surely as with an irritant. She took, of all ways, the way to hold him. Why, she left him in public—him, the invulnerable corrector of women! He'll never rest until she is seen, in public, hanging on his arm! And then the man values his diamonds at forty thousand dollars!"
"She drove off alone, at midnight, in a taxicab, with forty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds round her neck—"
"Yes, and the cabman was discharged this morning for drunkenness! Stan's to 'phone if they've found him. Oh, but look here—take it slow! She 'phoned Ten Euyck's house at eight this morning and left a message, openly, with her name! The servant who took the message describes exactly that trailing voice of hers—'tell him he may come for his necklace to-night!'"
"Come! Come where?"
"Search me! Or Ten Euyck, either, from the foam on his mouth!—Well, doesn't that put it up that wherever she 'phoned from they got on to the diamond necklace. So, where was she? You and I, we know old Chris—we know, after all, that she just went somewhere for the night on account of her quarrel with her mother. But, oh, lord, Herrick, who else is going to believe it? The whole braying pack of this intelligent world—all it can think of's dirt—the devilish gay sensation of the whole business! Christina Hope! D'you think there's a bank clerk or a submissive wife that won't recognize her proper atmosphere at a glance? You and I and little Stan—a poor author, a profane actor and a brat! In a few hours that's what her kingdom's crumbled to—'that was so wondrous sweet and fair!' Police and all, there's the spirit in which they're going to look for her, and that's going to be one of the worst things in our way. Well, I'm not a rich man and our precious kid's just about ruined me this night! But I've done for her what may bust me sky-high and worth it—I've offered ten thousand for her—safe, you understand! It ought to be in to-night's late editions, so by now, in one spirit or the other, this town's out after her like a hound!—Eh? All right! It's Stan, now!"
Herrick sat there staring into the street. A newsboy ran past with the last extra of the evening. Two of the interested smokers had just left the restaurant and now stopped in the rain to buy a paper, opening and scanning the flapping sheets against the wind. Ah, yes, of course! He, too, sent for a paper. Yes, there, on the first page—scare headings, but in itself the meagerest fact. Scarcely even insinuations yet—"friends fear some serious accident," "friends deny suicide," "suspicious circumstance—Ten Euyck necklace"—Wheeler's reward, and news three hours old. When he looked up the square seemed full of newsboys; several people as they came into the restaurant had papers in their hands. She was just news, now; disreputable news! "The town's out after her like a hound!"—Wheeler's hand was on his shoulder. "No cabman yet. But they want you, Herrick, on the 'phone."
Stanley's voice told him only to hold the wire. Then a crisper tone asked pleasantly, "Mr. Herrick? This is Henry Kane. I just wanted to ask you—you had an appointment with Miss Hope for noon to-day. If you didn't know she was not at home, why didn't you keep it?"
How sharply the trap bit!
"You've had no communication with her since last evening? Nothing happened to arouse your anxiety? Nor distrust? No, nothing? And yet, just as it began to rain, you started for a walk in a light suit—or" (the telephone itself seemed to give forth a dry smile) "what I am told was once a light suit, and walked about all day in an equinoctial storm! Taking yourself to the theater at night without changing, without shaving, without dining, but still carrying on your person a good deal of the surface of the earth and of the waters under the earth! Well, sorry to have disturbed you. Only my dear sir, don't trouble yourself to conceal too much. Don't fancy yourself the only man in New York who has been to a moving-picture show." Kane hung up the receiver.
That stunned, sick, silent curse of the man on the wrong side of the law! This attorney fellow was like a hound after her, too! He, then, since he was so clever, in God's name let him find her and find her—soon! It was all he asked!—As Herrick stepped out of the booth into the corridor of mirrors that ran through the building to the next street a page boy came briskly up the gilded lane, pattering out a phrase that washed across Herrick's mind in a wave of sound dimly familiar; he saw the boy turn into the orangerie and through the glass-screen he vaguely watched him wend his way between the little green tables with their golden lamps, lifting his flatted tones into the orange-scented air so that its mechanical legend was caught by trailing vines and mingled with the plashing of a little fountain. His mind aimlessly followled the boy's cry till it was lost in the music of a mezzanine orchestra hidden in the foliage of a tame tropical jungle! This was what they called civilization—this trash which had achieved no mechanism to find her, to protect her! But which could know that she had been struck out of its midst and yet sit there in its futile nonsense, stuffing—A voice rose from the velvet lounge beside him in the toneless delivery of one who reads aloud. It was reading the extra's account of a gesture in a moving picture show. "The police say that boys began reporting it before noon, and, the attention of the theater having been called to the film, its patrons are now offered a thrill of realism by the piano in the orchestra accompanying the gesture with the march from Faust. This time, it will be remembered..."
Oh, no doubt it would be remembered! Its exultant shout sounded like the hunter's cry after her now, winged by Wheeler's offer of ten thousand dollars! Doubtless the film would be repeated on the morrow, that all the world might steel its heart as it watched with its own eyes Christina Hope moving with that motion to that time!
Oh, for something to do! Some untried search, some shrewder question! Something to do, to suffer, to dare—some clue—some suggestion—Denny! Had they tried Denny? He who knew so much at the least would set them right, would know and would tell them that she had never deserted his cause of her own free will, that he who knew her believed in her—Wheeler came out into the lobby and took him by the arm. He, too, had bought a paper and now he held it under Herrick's eyes. "This is why I couldn't see him, then!" In the Tombs that afternoon, Denny had again attempted suicide.
So that was how he proclaimed his confidence! He had somehow got hold of a knife, but the blow aimed at his heart had been averted by a watchful guard and he had received only fleshwounds—one in the left shoulder, one in the left forearm. A little ludicrous, a little sickening that a man so expert in killing another should always bungle about killing himself! But he had been prompt enough and successful enough in setting upon the girl who had failed him the brand of his despair! Who would credit, now, that he did not believe in her flight? Herrick felt a thickness in his throat; with a longing for fresh, dark spaces he pushed open a door of the lobby and was confronted by the city, glittering in wet gold. There, up Long Acre, lay the heart of her world.
And from down where the bronze workmen struck the hours in Herald Square up past where the gathering streets parted again under a new electric girl, high in the sky, who winked a knowing colossal eye over a rainbow cocktail, what faith did it keep with her? Her flight, her shadow on the screen, they burned in a newer sky-sign, they flashed a fearful but a more stirring legend! This swept up the thoroughfare that never colors itself more like Harlequin than in its mirrors of wet asphalt and sped down every side street starred with theaters where, between the acts, men gathered and returned with news, and it became clear to thrilling audiences that so long as there had been nothing against this Christina Hope she had meant to tell some tale to Kane in Denny's behalf—it would have been a pretty piece of acting—but the mute witness of the shadow had broken her down. She had fled from that writing on the screen—even in the dressing-rooms they would say that! And later, in all these hot, bright jardins de danse that yesterday were cabarets, these cabarets that were restaurants yesterday, among the pellucid proprieties of slit skirts, tango turns, and trotting music it would be said that all along Denny had kept at least the half of his silence for Christina's sake. Oh, street of a thousand feverish tongues, how she loved you! And why did she leave you? Where is she, and where is she? How near, how far? "Where is she? And how doth she?" There lay her theater; what stroke could be so heavy as to drive her from that? "The Victors!" Leave "The Victors!" There were great blurs of light before the billboards. But the wind tore through them at the boards, struggling to wrench the signs away. Fierce as it was it was still rising and it ran like a crazy newsboy whooping through the world, senseless as the cry of the page that came nearer and nearer. So that Wheeler said, "Good lord, man, don't you know your own name?"
Yes, that was what the boy had been saying all along—"Herr—ick! Herr—ick! Mr. Bry—us Herrick!"
"No card, sir. Forty-fifth Street entrance. In a taxi, sir. A lady wants to speak to you."