PERSONS UNKNOWN
The revulsion of feeling in Christina's favor was so immense that it became a kind of panic. It practically engulfed the rest of the inquest. The taking of testimony from her mother and Mrs. Deutch was the emptiest of formalities; the notion of holding her under surveillance until Ingham's cabman and Ann Cornish could be produced confessed itself ridiculous. Another woman, a strange woman, an aggressive, sarcastic woman forcing her way in upon Ingham a couple of hours before his death, and not coming down again! Well!
As for the coroner, he suffered less a defeat than a rout. Even his instant leap upon Joe Patrick was only a plucky spurt. He was struggling now against the tide, and he knew it; the strength of his attack was sucked down. Even the remainder of Joe's own evidence did not receive its due consideration. The public fancy fastened upon that figure of a smiling woman, "awful pretty, but with something scaring about her," leaning over the baluster to laugh, "I won't hurt him!" It worked out the rest for itself.
"Yes, sir," Joe persisted, "my mother misunderstood me, all right. I said I took her for Miss Hope at the door, and so I did. But she wasn't."
"Did she look so much like Miss Hope?"
"No, sir; not when she came near. That was the thing made me feel so queer. I can't understand it. First she was Miss Hope, and then she wasn't. She gave me a funny feeling when I seen her standing there in the door an' says to myself, 'There's Miss Hope.' 'Twas kind of's if I seen her ghost. An' then all of a sudden there she was, right on top o' me. An' not like Miss Hope a bit. An' that gimme a funny feeling, too!"
"Well, never mind your sensations. If she didn't resemble Miss Hope, at least how did she differ from her?"
"Why, I guess she was a good deal handsomer for one thing. At least I expect most people would think so, though I prefer Miss Hope's style, myself. She was dressier, for one thing, in white lace like, with a big hat, an' she was pretty near as slim, but yet she had, as you might say, more figger. An' she had red hair."
Joe had made another sensation.
"Red hair! Curly?"
"Well, it was combed standin' out fluffy like one o' these here halos, up into her hat. It wasn't anyways common red, you know, sir, it was elegant, stylish red, like the goldy part in flames."
"Don't get poetic, Joe. Was she a very young lady?"
"I don't think so, sir.—Oh, I guess she wouldn't hardly see twenty-five again! Her feet, sir? I didn't notice. But she didn't walk kind o' waddlin', either, nor else kind o' pinchin', the way ladies mostly do; she just swum right along, like Miss Hope does."
"But she didn't swim downstairs again, without your seeing her?"
"No, sir."
"Now look here, Joe Patrick, how do you know she didn't? When Mr. Bird went to the 'phone after the shooting he was a long time getting connected, and Mr. Herrick found you asleep at the desk."
"I couldn't have fell asleep again until after one o'clock, sir, for I had a clock right on the desk and at one I noticed the time. I was watchin' for her, she was such a queer one, an' only one man came in all that time, that I had to carry upstairs. He only went to the fourth floor, just where she was, an' I rushed him up an' dropped right down again. She couldn't ha' walked down in that time. I could hear the piano goin' all the while, the front doors bein' open. But after one I must ha' dropped off. Because it was about twenty minutes past when Mr. Herrick shook me up. Then I knew I'd been kind o' comin' to, the last few minutes, hearin' Mr. Bird ringin'. When Mr. Herrick grabbed my elevator I called up Mr. Deutch, an' he was quite a minute, too. I says to him, 'Say, Mr. Deutch, somepun's happened,' an' I switched him onto Mr. Bird."
"Well, we're very much obliged to you, Mr. Patrick, for an exceedingly full account. What apartment did the gentleman have whom you took up to the fourth floor? Perhaps he may have heard something."
"I don't know, sir."
"What?"
"He just stepped into the elevator, like he lived there, an' he says to me, 'Fourth!' I never thought nothing about him."
"You didn't know him?"
"No, sir."
"You'd never seen him before?"
"No, sir."
"Nor since?"
"No, sir."
"You took a man upstairs in the middle of the night, without announcing him, whom you knew to be a stranger?"
"Why no, I thought he was a new tenant. We got a few furnished apartments in the building, goes by the month. And then there's always a good deal o' sublettin' in the summer. He was so quiet an' never asked any questions nor anything, goin' right along about his business, I never give him a thought."
"Well, give him a thought now, my boy. When you let him out of the elevator, which way did he turn?"
The boy started and his eyes jumped open. "Oh, good Lord! sir," he cried, "why, he turned down toward 4-B."
His start was reproduced in the persons of all present. Only the coroner controlled himself.
"What time was this?"
"It hadn't quite struck one, sir."
"And during all this talk about Mr. Ingham's murder, at one-fifteen, it never occurred to you that at just before one, you had taken up to his floor a man whom you had never seen, whom you never saw again, and who turned toward his apartment?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I never thought of it till this minute."
"Think hard, now. Give us a good description of this man."
"A description of him?"
"Yes, yes. What did he look like?"
"Why, I don't hardly know, sir."
"Try and remember. He at least, I presume, did not remind you of Miss Hope?"
"No, sir; he didn't remind me of anything."
"He looked so unlike other people?"
"No, sir. He looked just like all gentlemen."
"I see, Joseph, that you don't observe your own sex with the passionate attention which you reserve for ladies. Well, had he a beard or a mustache?"
"No, sir, he hadn't any beard, I'm sure."
"Come, that's something! And no mustache?"
"Well, I don't think so, sir. But I wouldn't hardly like to say."
"Was he light or dark?"
"I never noticed, sir."
"Was he tall?"
"Well, sir, I should say he was about middle height."
"About how old?"
"Oh, maybe thirty, sir. Or forty, maybe. Or maybe not so old."
"Stout?"
"No, sir."
"Ah! He was slender, then?"
"Well, I shouldn't say he was either way particular, sir."
"How was he dressed, then?"
"Well, as far as I can remember; he had on a suit, and a straw hat."
"Was the suit light or dark?"
"About medium, sir."
"Not white, then? Nor rose color, I presume? Nor baby blue?"
"No, sir."
"Black?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"Well, was it brown, gray, navy-blue?"
"Well, it seems like it might have been a gray, the way I think of it. But then, again, when I think of it, it seems like it might ha' been a blue."
"Thank you, Joe. Your description is most accurate. It's a pity you're not a detective."
"There's no use getting mad at me, Mister," Joe protested. "I'm doing the best I know."
"I'm sure you are. If Mr. Ingham's second anonymous visitor had only been a lady, what revelations we should have had! But this unfortunate and insignificant male, Mr. Patrick. Should you know him again if you saw him?"
"I think so, sir. I wouldn't hardly like to say."
"Well, to get back to more congenial topics!—The lady who was not Miss Hope—you would know her, I presume?"
"Oh, yes, sir!"—Joe hesitated.
"Out with it!" commanded the coroner.
"Why, it's only—why, anybody'd know her, sir. They couldn't help it. She had—" He paused, blushing.
"She had—what?"
"I couldn't hardly believe it myself, sir. She had—I'm afraid you'll laugh."
"Oh, not at you, Joe! Impossible!"
"Well, she had a blue eye, sir."
"A blue eye! You don't mean she was a Cyclops?"
"Sir?"
"She had more than the one eye, hadn't she?"
"Oh, yes, sir. She had the two o' them all right."
"Well, then, I don't see anything remarkable in her having a blue one."
"No, sir. Not if they was both blue. But the other one was brown!"
The anticipated laughter swept the room. After a pallid glare even the coroner laughed.
"Well, Joe, I'm afraid you must have been very sleepy indeed! I don't wonder the lady gave you such a turn! But if only you had been awake, Joe, your friend would have had one invaluable quality—she would be easily identified!"
Thus, almost gaily, the inquest ended. With Mr. Ingham closeted just before his death with an unaccounted-for woman and, presumably, with an unaccounted-for man, there was but one verdict for the jury to bring in, and they brought it. James Ingham had come to a violent death by shooting at the hands of a person or persons unknown.
Christina was surrounded by congratulating admirers. But Herrick had not gone far in the free air of the rainy street when, hearing his name called, he turned and saw her coming toward him. She had, in Joe Patrick's phrase, swum right along. She came to him exactly as she had come along the sea-beach in his dream, the wet wind in her skirts and in her hair, the fog behind her, and the cool light of clearing in her eyes. And she said to him,
"You're the man, I think, who thought a woman was in distress and went to help her?"
He replied, awkwardly enough, "I didn't see what else I could do!"
"You haven't been long in New York, Mr. Herrick," she replied. "I wonder, will you shake hands?"
He had her hand in his, stripped of her long glove, her soft but electric vitality at once cool and vibrant in his clasp.
"And try to believe, will you?" said Christina, "that perhaps, whoever she was and whatever she did, perhaps she was in distress, after all."