'Clara is a good soul,' said Bryan Duval parenthetically and heartily. 'Is she here now?'
'I think so,' said Mrs. Griswold. 'She promised Mrs. Jenkins that she would come early, and I fear that she has been detained. Now that this morning's work is over, you will not object, will you, Thornton,' she said, raising her eyes to him with a look of dependence and submission, from which he shrunk, so full was it of her helplessness and her pain, 'that I should take to her who saw my Alston last? Do you know, Mr. Duval,' she continued, turning to the actor, and producing the same effect upon him by that infinitely pathetic look, 'I have been thinking that the very last person to whom he ever spoke a friendly word must have been Miss Montressor or yourself--I wonder which it was?'
'I don't remember, my dear Mrs. Griswold,' said Bryan, 'but I have no doubt she will; women have fine memories for these small points, which sometimes are of so much importance in their world of feeling. I don't doubt that you will find hers faultless, and I am sure no friend of yours will object to your talking it out now with this kind creature, who feels for you, as I can bear witness, more than I thought it was in her to feel. You have been very good and wonderfully composed hitherto, and I confess I should not be sorry to hear that you had given way to your feelings, and that all this composure was broken up for a while at least. So Carey and I will go and work for you and do our very best, and you must try and put this part of it out of your mind for the present, knowing that you will not be disturbed or called upon again unless it is a very desperate necessity indeed, and Clara Montressor shall come and talk to you about your husband, and go over every word he said to her; and, if I remember her account of it right, there were few of them that were not about yourself.' With these words he raised her hand respectfully to his lips, turned on his heel and left the room, buttoning his tight-fitting frock-coat over the flat manuscript volume which she had confided to him.
He had stood in the corridor little more than a minute when Thornton Carey joined him. They went down-stairs and out of the house without exchanging a word; but when they had reached the street, they fell into close consultation, and walked away towards the telegraph station arm in arm.
From her long interview with Helen Griswold, which came to an end barely in time to enable Miss Montressor to get back to the hotel for dinner, that kind-hearted celebrity returned very deeply affected. The simplicity of Helen's life and mind, the quiet and matter-of-course devotion to her duties, and her great courage and submission in her trouble, affected the actress strangely, giving her glimpses of realities in life and heroism in character to be found in everyday spheres and commonplace actions of which she had entertained no previous conception.
She and Bryan Duval had a long talk that night after the performance at the Varieties about Helen Griswold. In the interval Bryan Duval had peeped into the pages of the manuscript volume which she had confided to him, but which, together with the letters written by Alston Griswold to his wife during his residence in England, it had been arranged was to be formally examined by himself and Thornton Carey on the following day.
Until the arrival of Trenton Warren this was all that could be done, and neither Duval nor Carey cared to meet before the appointed time. The delay was trying them a good deal, and though their expectations of success in ultimately bringing the murderer to justice were not affected by it, they both felt considerable weariness and strong inclination to be alone. This did not, however, interfere with the curiosity with which Bryan Duval heard Miss Montressor's account of the hours which she had passed with Helen Griswold. Bryan Duval was accustomed to reading between the lines; he had read between the lines of Helen's innocent, unsophisticated, and perfectly sincere record of her life under its past and its present aspects, and he had formed a theory of her mind, conduct, and future singularly near the truth, though he believed implicitly that she was entirely unconscious that any such indications as he had extracted from it were contained in the simple annals of her girlhood and her married life, which had been continued in her journal literally up to the day of its unconscious close.
On this point he said not one word to Miss Montressor, nor did he then confide to Thornton Carey even the last of his impressions of Helen's journal when they came to discuss it. He bestowed many words of good-humoured approval upon the actress for her womanly kindness and sympathy with Mrs. Griswold, and when they parted, Miss Montressor carried away with her a not unpleasant impression that Bryan Duval entertained rather a higher opinion of her as an individual than he had previously done; an impression which was perfectly well founded, and had arisen quite as much to the surprise as to the pleasure of Mr. Duval, who entertained but a low estimate of human nature in general, and was much too philosophical to exclude the types with which he was most familiar and most closely allied.
Thornton Carey had gone straight home after the despatch of the telegram, which, as agreed upon, he had couched in most decisive words and supported with the authority of emanation from the police magnates. He strove hard to turn his mind away from the subject of his grave preoccupation during the evening, reading resolutely on one of his old lines of study, and resolved to rest his faculties thoroughly in order to recommence his work upon the morrow with brightness and efficiency.
Most of the visitors to the hotel in which he was staying had breakfasted before he came down to the dining-room, only a few almost as belated as himself were finishing their meal. He stopped in the hall as usual, and bought his morning supply of journalistic literature, and having seated himself and called for his coffee, he turned the pages of the New York Herald with but languid interest, which, however, was changed into vehement excitement by the very first announcement in the long list of latest intelligences which met his eye, stated in the largest capitals, and with all the emblems which indicate the record of a great disaster.