"Who? Oh—that's Will Denny."
Herrick was startled by a hand on his sleeve, and a hoarse, boyish voice said in his ear, "That's him!" He knew the voice for Joe Patrick's. "That's the man I took up in the elevator."
CHAPTER IX
PRESTO CHANGE: "OUT OF THE NIGHT THAT COVERS ME!"
Herrick excused himself to Mrs. Hope and followed Joe Patrick out of the box. "But are you sure, Joe?" he asked. "Could you swear to it?"
"Sure I could! Why couldn't I?"
"And you couldn't tell the coroner that that man was as slim as a whip and as dark as an Indian, about middle height and over thirty, and of a very nervous, wiry, high-strung build."
"Well, now I look at him close again I can see all that. But he didn't strike me anyways particular."
Herrick had an exasperated moment of wondering, if Joe considered Denny commonplace, what was his idea of the salient and the vivid. Was the whole of Joe's testimony as valueless as this? He stood now and watched their man with wonder. Had Denny recognized him? Had he seen Joe Patrick rooted upright there, behind his chair, with staring eyes? If so, after that first flicker of blindness, not an eyelash betrayed him. He was triumphantly at his ease; his part became a thing of swiftness and wit, with the grace of flashing rapiers and of ruffling lace, so that from the moment of his entrance the act quickened and began to glow; the man seemed to take the limp, stuffed play up in his hand, to breathe life in it, to set it afire, to give it wings. And all this so quietly, with merely a light, firm motion, an eloquent tone, a live glance! He had, as Herrick only too well remembered, a singularly winning voice, an utterance of extraordinary distinction, with a kind of fastidious edge to his words that seemed to cut them clear from all duller sounds. But Herrick recalled how, after the first pleasure of hearing him speak, he had disliked a mocking lightness which seemed to blend, now, with the something slightly satanic of the wicked marquis whom Denny played. He remembered Shaw's advice, "Look like a nonentity or you will get cast for villains!" Truly, they didn't cast men like that for heroes! And in the light of that sinister flash, Herrick was aware of vengeance rising in him. He rejoiced to be hot on the trail, and when he and Joe parted it was with the understanding that he was to allay suspicion by returning to the box and Joe was to telephone the police. Rather to his surprise the performance continued without interruption and he somehow missed Joe as he came out.