JOE PATRICK ARRIVES
If the young actress and Ten Euyck, now at his best as the coroner, had, as Corey had suggested, any previous knowledge of each other, neither of them stooped to signify it now.
"Your name, if you please?"
"Christina Hope."
"Occupation?"
"Actress."
"May one ask a lady's age?"
"Twenty-two years."
She said she was single, and resided with her mother at No. — West 93rd Street. The girl spoke very low, but clearly, and of these dry preliminaries in her case not a syllable was lost. Her audience, leaning forward with thumbs down, still took eagerly all that she could give them. On being offered a chair, she said that she would stand—"Unless, of course, you would rather I did not."
The coroner replied to this biddable appeal—"I shan't keep you a moment longer than is necessary, Miss Hope. I have only to ask you a very few questions. Believe me, I regret fixing your mind upon a painful subject; and nothing that I have hitherto said has been what I may call personally intended. I question in the interests of justice and I hope you will answer as fully as possible in the same cause."
"Oh, certainly."
"You were engaged to be married to Mr. Ingham, Miss Hope?"
"Yes."
"When did this engagement take place?"
"About a year ago."
"And your understanding with him remained unimpaired up to his death?"
"Yes."
"When did you last see him alive?"
"On the day before he—died. He drove to our house from the ship."
"Ah! Very natural, very natural and proper. But surely you dined together? Or met again during the next twenty-four hours?"
"No."
"No? What were you doing on the evening of the fourth of August—the evening of his death?"
"My mother and I dined alone, at home. We were neither of us in good spirits. I had had a bad day at rehearsal—everything had gone wrong. My head ached and my mother was worn out with trying to get our house in order; it was a new house, we were just moving in."
"You rented a new house just as you were going to be married?"
"Yes, that was why. I was determined not to be married out of a flat."
A smile of sympathy stirred through her audience. It might be stupidity which kept her from showing any resentment toward a man who had practically accused her of murder. Or, it might be guilt. But she was so young, so docile, so demure! Her voice was so low and it came in such shy breaths—there was something so immature in the little rushes and hesitations of it. She seemed such a sweet young lady! After all, they didn't want to feed her to the tigers yet awhile!
And the coroner was instantly aware of this. "Then your mother," he said, "is the only person who can corroborate your story of how you passed that evening?"
"Yes."
"How did you pass it?"
"I worked on my part until after eleven, but I couldn't get it. Then I took a letter of my mother's out to the post-box."
"At that hour! Alone!"
"Yes. I am an actress; I am not afraid. And I wanted the air."
"You came straight home?"
"Yes."
"While you were out did any neighbor see you? Did you speak to any one?"
"On the way to the post-box I saw Mrs. Johnson, who lives two doors below and who had told us about the house being for rent. She is the only person whom I know in the neighborhood. On the way back I met no one."
"Then no one saw you re-enter the house?"
"I think not."
"Did the maid let you in?"
"No, I had my key. The maids had gone to bed."
"But it was a very hot night. People sat up late, with all their windows open, and caretakers in particular must have been sitting on the steps, some one must have seen you return."
"Perhaps they did."
"Did you, yourself, notice no one whom we can summon as a witness to your return?"
"No one."
"What did you do when you came in?"
"I went to bed."
"You do not sleep in the same room with your mother?"
"No."
"On the same floor?"
"Yes."
"Do you lock your door?"
"No."
"But she would not be apt to come into your room during the night?"
"Not unless something had happened; no."
"Could you pass her door without her hearing you?"
"I should suppose so. I never tried."
"So that you really have no witness but your mother, Miss Hope, that you returned to the house, and no witness whatever that you remained in it?"
"No," Christina breathed.
"Well, now I'm extremely sorry to recall a painful experience, but when and how did you first hear of Mr. Ingham's death?"
"In the morning, early, the telephone began to ring and ring. I could hear my mother and the maids hurrying about the house, but I felt so ill I did not try to get up. I knew I had a hard day's work ahead of me, and I wanted to keep quiet. But, at last, just as I was thinking it must be time, my mother came in and told me to lie still; that she would bring up my breakfast herself. I said I must go to rehearsal at any rate; and she said, 'No, you are not to go to rehearsal to-day; something has happened.'"
The naïveté of Christina's phrases sank to an awed whisper; her eyes were very fixed, like those of a child hypnotized by its own vision.
"I saw then that she was trying not to tremble and that she had been crying. She couldn't deny it, and so she told me that Mr. Ingham was very, very ill, and she let me get up and helped me to dress. But then, when I must see other people—she told me—she told me—"
Christina's throat swelled and her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
The coroner, cursing the sympathy of the situation, forced himself to a commiserating, "Did she say how he died?"
"She told me it was an accident. I said, 'What kind of an accident?' And she said he was shot. 'But,' I said, 'how could he be shot by an accident? He didn't have any pistol? You know he didn't own such a thing.'" A slight sensation traversed the court. "Then it came out—that no one knew—that people were saying it was—murder—"
"Do you believe that, Miss Hope?"
"I don't know what to believe."
"Did Mr. Ingham have any enemies?"
"I knew of none."
"From your intimate knowledge of Mr. Ingham's affairs you know of no one, either with a grudge to satisfy or a profit to be made, by his death?"
"No. No one at all."
"So that you have really no theory as to how this terrible thing happened?"
"No, really, I haven't."
"Well, then, I suppose we may excuse you, Miss Hope."
The girl, with her tranquil but slightly timid dignity, inclined her head, and heaving a deep sigh of relief, turned away.—
—"Oh, by the way, Miss Hope,—" And suddenly, with a violent change of manner, he began to beat her down by the tactics which he had used with Deutch. But with how different a result! Nothing could make that pale, tall girl ridiculous. Scarcely speaking above a breath, she answered question after question and patiently turned aside insult after insult. He found no opposition, no confusion, no reticence; nothing but that soft yielding, that plaintive ingenuousness. The crudest jokes, the cruelest thrusts still left her anxiously endeavoring to convey desired information. He took her back over her relations with Ingham, their interview upon his return, the events of the last evening, with an instance and a repetition that wearied even the auditors to distraction; he would let her run on a little in her answers and then bring her up with a round turn; twenty times he took with her that journey to and from the post-box and examined every step, and still her replies ran like sand through his fingers and left no trace behind. But, at last, she put out a hand toward the chair she had rejected, and sank slowly into it. Then indeed it became plain that she was profoundly exhausted.
And because her exhaustion was so natural and so pitiable, the coroner, watching its effect, said, "Well, I can think of nothing more to ask you, Miss Hope. I suppose it would be useless to inquire whether, being familiar with the apartment, you could suggest any way in which, the door being bolted, the murderer could have escaped?"
Christina looked up at him with a very faint smile and with her humble sweetness that had become almost stupidity, she said, "Perhaps the murderer wasn't in the apartment at all!"
The whole roomful of tired people sat up. "Not in the apartment! And where, then, pray?"
"Well," said Christina, softly, "he could have been shot through an open window, I suppose. Of course, I'm only a woman, and I shouldn't like to suggest anything. Because, of course, I'm not clever, as a lawyer is. But—"
"Well, we're waiting for this suggestion!"
"Oh!—Well, it seems to me that when this lady, whose shadow excited the young gentleman so much, disappeared as if it went forward, perhaps it did go forward, perhaps she ran out of the room. You can see—if you don't mind stopping to think about it—that she must have been standing right opposite the door. If she had been quarreling with Mr. Ingham, he may have bolted the door after her. I don't know if you've looked—but the button for the lights is right there—in the panel of the wall between the door and the bedroom arch. Mr. Ingham was a very nervous, emotional person. If there had been a scene, he might very well have meant to switch the lights out after her, too. If he had his finger on the button when the bullet struck him, he might very well, in the shock, have pressed it. And then the lights would have gone out, almost as if the bullet had put them out, just as the young man says. But, of course, if this were what had happened, you would have thought of it for yourself." And she looked up meekly at him, with her sweet smile.
The coroner smiled, too, with compressed lips, and putting his hands in his pockets, threw back his head. "And how do you think, then, that—if he was killed instantly, as the doctors have testified,—the corpse walked into the bedroom, where it was found?"
"Ah!" said Christina, "I can't account for everything! I'm not an observer, like you! But there has never been, has there, a doctor who was ever wrong? Of course, I don't pretend to know."
"Well, it's a pretty theory, my dear young lady, and I'm sure you mean to work it out for us all you can. So give us a hint where this bullet, coming through an open window, was fired from."
"It could have been fired from the apartment opposite. Across the entrance-court. You remember, the policeman who went in there found that the windows exactly—do you call it 'tallied'?"
"Very good, Miss Hope. If it were an unoccupied apartment. But it is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Willing, and Mrs. Willing was in the apartment the entire evening."
"Yes," said Christina, turning and looking pleasantly at the lady mentioned, "alone." Then she was silent.
After a staggered instant, the coroner asked, "And what became of this lady who ran out into the hall?"
"Well, of course," said Christina, sweetly, "if it was Mrs. Willing—"
The Willings leaped to their feet. "This is ridiculous! This is an outrage! Why!" cried the husband, "his blind opposite our sitting-room was down all the time. There isn't even a hole through it where a shot would have passed!"
"Oh, isn't there?" asked Christina. "You see, it wasn't I who knew that!"
"What do you mean, you wicked girl! How dare you! Why, you heard the policeman say that it was only when he looked through our bedroom that he could see into Mr. Ingham's apartment—"
"And wasn't it in the bedroom that the body was found?"
"Miss Hope!" said the coroner, sternly, "I must ask you not to perpetrate jokes. You know perfectly well that your implied charge against Mrs. Willing is perfectly ridiculous—"
"Is it?" Christina interrupted, "she implied it about me!"
And for the first time she lifted to his a glance alight with the faintest mockery of malice; a wintry gleam, within the white exhaustion of her face. Then,—if all the time she had been playing a part—then, if ever, she was off her guard.
And she could not see what Herrick, from his angle, could see very well; that the coroner had been quietly slipping something from his desk into his hand, and was now dangling it behind his back.
This something was the scarf found on Ingham's table—that white scarf with its silky border, cloudy, watery, of blue glimmering into gray. How the tender, misty coloring recalled that room of Ingham's!
"Don't you know very well, Miss Hope," the coroner went on, "that Mrs. Willing had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Ingham's death?"
"How can I? You see, I wasn't there!"
"So that, by no possibility," said the coroner, "could this be yours?"
He launched the scarf, like a soft, white serpent, almost in her face. And the girl shrank from it, with a low cry. She might as well have knotted it about her neck.
And in the horrible stillness that followed her cry, the coroner said, "Your nerves seem quite shattered, Miss Hope. I was only going to ask you if you didn't think that ornament, in case it was not yours, might have been left on Mr. Ingham's table by the young lady who called on him that afternoon."
With a brave attempt at her former mild innocence, Christina responded, "I don't know."
"Neither can you tell us, I suppose,—it would straighten matters out greatly—who that caller was?"
"No, I can't. I'm sorry."
"Think again, Miss Hope. Are there so many smartly dressed and pretty young ladies of your acquaintance, with curly red hair and, as Mr. Dodd informs us, with cute little feet?"
Christina was silent.
"What? And yet she knows you well enough to say to your fiancé—'I don't wish to get Christina into trouble'!" Whose was the smile of malice, now! "Come, come, Miss Hope, you're trifling with us! Tell us the address of this lady, and you'll make us your debtors!"
The girl opened her pale lips to breathe forth, "I can't tell you! I don't know!"
"Let us assist your memory, Miss Hope, by recalling to you the lady's name. Her name is Ann Cornish."
Herrick's nerves leaped like a frightened horse. And then he saw Christina start from her chair, and, casting round her a wild glance that seemed to cry for help, drop back again and put her hands over her face. A dozen people sprang to their feet.
Mrs. Hope ran to her daughter's side, closely followed by Mrs. Deutch. The two women, crying forth indignation and comfort, and exclaiming that the girl was worn out and ought to be in bed, rubbed Christina's head, and began to chafe her hands. She was half fainting; but when a glass of whiskey had appeared from somewhere and Mrs. Deutch had forced a few drops between her lips, Christina, unlike the heroine of romance whose faints always refuse stimulants, lifted her head and drank a mouthful greedily. She sat there then, breathing through open lips, with a trace of color mounting in her face.
Then the coroner, once more commanding attention, held up a slip of pasteboard. "This visiting-card," he said, "is engraved with Miss Cornish's name, but with no address. It was found leaning against a candlestick on Mr. Ingham's piano, as though he wished to keep it certainly in mind. As a still further reminder, Mr. Ingham himself had written on it in pencil—'At four.'"
Christina, with the gentlest authority, put back her friends. She rose, slowly and weakly, to her feet. "Mr. Coroner," she said, "I wish to correct a false impression; may I?"
