"Then the proprietress, here, isn't your daughter?"
"Her? Sakes, no! She's my niece-in-law. I brought up my daughter like she was an American girl! It's my son keeps in with these! He's homesick. My daughter's husband got into a little bit o' trouble in the Old Country," said this remarkable little dame, without the least embarrassment, "and her an' me's glad enough to stay here. But the men kind o' mope. Their business worries 'em and as I say, 'tain't the business I ever would have chose, but I s'pose when I married a Dago I might's well made up my mind to it!" She said this with an air inimitably business like, and so continued—"Now I want you should clear out from here, young man! There's all kinds of fellers come here. It may be awful funny to you to think o' gettin' a knife in your back, but I don't want it any round where I am! When they're after Dagoes, it ain't my business. But my own folks is my own folks."
Now it could not be denied that there was something not wholly reassuring as to the pursuits of this respectable old lady's family in this speech, and in lighter-hearted times Herrick might have noted it as a testimonial to that theory of his concerning the matter-of-fact in crime. But now it suggested to him that he might do worse than look for the faces of the blackmailers in such little eating-places as this one. After all, they evidently were Italians, and it was with Italians that they would sojourn. Yes—that was one line to follow! He remembered that this region was in or adjacent to Ten Euyck's district and he wondered if he could bring himself to ask the favor of a list of its Latin haunts. He and Mrs. Hope were on their way to a big Wednesday night opening when this resolution took definite shape, and it was strange, with his mind full of these ideas, to come into the crush and dazzle of the theater lobby.
Mrs. Hope at once began bowing right and left; the theatrical season was still so young that there were actors and actresses everywhere. Herrick, abnormally aware of his new conspicuousness, could only endeavor to look pleasant; and, trailing, like a large helpless child, in her wake, was glad to catch the friendly eye of Joe Patrick; fellow-sufferer in a common cause, whom Christina's recommendation as usher he perceived to have landed him here, instead of at the theater where she was to play. Unfortunately Joe hailed him by name, in an unexpectedly carrying voice; a blush for which Herrick could have kicked himself with rage flamed over him to the roots of his hair, and when he perceived, with horror, that they were entering a box, he clutched Mrs. Hope's cloak and slunk behind the curtains with it like a raw boy.
But even so, there was a continual coming and going of acquaintances, many of whom conveyed a sort of sympathetic flutter over Mrs. Hope's interest in to-night's play; an impression that Christina must feel her own absence simply too hard, and Herrick smiled to think how much more concentrated were Christina's interests than they realized. Not but their expectation of her appearance to-morrow was keen enough. It seemed to Herrick that there was a thrill of it in all the audience, which persistently studied Mrs. Hope's box. Christina's genius was a burning question, and the unknown quantity of her success agitated her profession like a troubled air—through which how many eyes were already ardently directed toward to-morrow night, passionate astronomers, attendant on a new star! Murders come and murders go, but here was a girl who, in a few hours, might throw open the brand-new continent of a new career; who, next season, might be a queen, with powers like life and death fast in her hands. And, with that tremendous absorption in their own point of view which Herrick had not failed to observe in the members of Christina's profession, people asked if it wasn't too dreadful that this business of Ingham's murder and Nancy Cornish's disappearance should happen just at this time, when it might upset Christina for her performance?
Mrs. Hope introduced him to all comers with a liberality which her daughter had been far from displaying, and he could see them studying him and trying to place him in Christina's life. It was clear to him that if he ranked high, they were glad he had not gone and got himself beaten to death in the Park, or it might have upset her still more. He thought of the girl whose wet cheek had pressed his in the firelight. The sweetness of the memory was sharp as a knife, and the rise of the curtain, displaying wicked aristocrats of Louis the Fourteenth, sporting on the lawns of Versailles, could not deaden it.
For if there is one quality essential to the effect of wicked aristocrats it is that of breeding; and of all mortal qualities there is none to which managers are so indifferent. In a costume play more particularly, there is one requisite for men and one only; size. Solemn bulks, with the accents of Harlem, Piccadilly and Pittsburgh, bowed themselves heavily about the stage in conscientiously airy masquerade and, since nothing is so terrible as elegance when she goes with a flat foot, Herrick's eyes roved up and down the darkened house studying the faces of Christina's confreres, there, and endeavoring to contrast them with the faces of the public and the critics to whom, to-morrow, she must entrust her fate.
A burst of applause, recalling his attention to the stage, pointed out to him a real aristocrat. Among the full-calved males in pinks and blues, the entrance of a slender fellow in black satin, not very tall, with an order on his breast and the shine of diamonds among his laces, had created something the effect of the arrival of a high-spirited and thoroughbred racehorse among a drove of caparisoned elephants. Herrick, the ingenuous outsider, supposed this actor the one patrician obtainable by the management; not knowing that it was his hit as the spy in "Garibaldi's Advance" which had opened to him the whole field of foreign villains, and that he could never have been cast for a treacherous marquis of Louis Quatorze this season if he had not succeeded as a treacherous private of Garibaldi the season before.
With a quick, light gesture, which acknowledged and dismissed the welcome of the audience, the newcomer crossed the stage and bowed deeply before his king. The king stood at no great distance from Herrick's box, and when the newcomer lifted his extraordinarily bright, dark eyes they rested full on Herrick's own. Then Herrick found himself looking into the face of the man in the street who had questioned him about the murder on the night of Ingham's death.
Herrick had a strange sensation that for the thousandth part of an instant the man's eyes went perfectly blind. But they never lost their sparkle, and his lips retained the fine light irony that made his quiet face one pale flash of mirth and malice. "Who is that?" Herrick asked Mrs. Hope.