CHAPTER XI
KEEPING CHRISTINA OUT OF IT
Daylight was in the streets when Herrick got to bed, sure he should not close his eyes; then he was wakened only by the cries of the newsboys underneath his windows, calling, as if it had been an extra—"Ingham Murderer Arrested! Murderer Arrested! Popular Actor Arrested in the Ingham Murder!"
Herrick tumbled into his clothes and bought a paper on his way to a very late breakfast at the Pilgrims', where he had a card. In the account of the arrest he himself figured as something between a police decoy and an accomplice in crime, but Christina's midnight sally remained unknown and he breathed freer. Now that she was to be kept out of it, he could but admire the quiet good sense with which the police had gone about their business. While those more closely concerned had dashed and bewildered themselves against their own points of view like blind, flying beetles, the police had simply made haste to ascertain if Nancy Cornish had a lover. She had been engaged to Denny; a recent coolness between them had been common gossip; and, since Nancy's disappearance, their common friend, Christina Hope, had kept aloof from Denny, as though embracing her friend's quarrel or suspecting her friend's sweetheart. It now transpired for the first time that the police had dug further into that evidence of Mrs. Willing's which Ten Euyck's eagerness to turn it against Christina had left undeveloped. Mrs. Willing had heard a man's voice which she did not think to be Ingham's, call out loudly and very clearly, "Ask—" somebody or something the name of which was unfamiliar to her, and which she had forgotten until later events had violently recalled it—"Ask Nancy Cornish."
Herrick did not read any further till he was seated and had given his order to a friendly waiter. There were some men at a table near him; it seemed to him that everybody in the room was talking of the arrest and as a matter of fact most of them were talking of it. He had an uneasy desire to know how Christina appeared in her own world's version. But she remained there the friend of Denny, and of the girl over whom Ingham and Denny must have quarreled. When he looked at the paper again, he read that on the night in question by no less a person than Theodore Bird, Denny had been seen to enter Ingham's apartment!
Yes, the tremulous Theodore, despite his wife's particular instructions that he should keep out of it, had called at headquarters and delivered up the fact that at one o'clock or thereabouts, when he was just on the point of retiring, he had heard what sounded like a ring at his door-bell. But he had opened the door only a crack because the wires between his apartment and Ingham's were apt to get crossed, and, indeed, this was what had happened in the present case. He had seen a man standing there, at Ingham's door; and Theodore, safe behind his crack, his constitution being not entirely devoid of rubber, had taken a good look; had seen Ingham fling wide his door, and the stranger enter. On being asked if he could identify this stranger, he said he was certain of it. Confronted with photographs of a dozen men he had unhesitatingly selected Denny's.
The police had delayed Denny's arrest in the hope of finding him in correspondence with Nancy Cornish. Sure of their man, they had given him rope to hang himself. But Joe Patrick's recognition, which, at any moment, he might reveal to the suspected man, had forced their hand. They did not add that until yesterday they had never connected Denny or Nancy with the blackmailing letters, but Herrick now added it for them; and he saw how Nancy's message, with its suggestion of the girl's peril, had forced it, too.
He deduced that, by the summer-house, they had not been able to overhear anything until Denny had gone to the doorway and Herrick had raised his voice. He read, finally, how, while Denny was changing for the street, after the performance, his dresser had managed to unload and reload the revolver. The number of the cartridge used in it was the same as that of the bullet taken from Ingham's body.
Up to the last line of the article Herrick kept a hope that Denny had given some clue of Nancy's whereabouts but the police were obliged to admit that the young man had proved a mighty tough customer. "He has undergone six hours of as stiff an examination as Inspector Corrigan has ever put a prisoner through and nothing whatever save the barest denial has been got out of him. However, the Inspector is confident that in the near future—" There was something in this last statement which made Herrick slightly sick. He hoped Christina had not seen it.
He understood well enough the weakness and blankness of Denny's account of himself. The young man denied the murder much more definitely than he had troubled himself to deny it to Herrick, but with the same listless lack of hope and even of conviction. He made no secret of his having gone to Ingham's room with the intention of shooting him, though he asserted that Ingham had proved false the story which had occasioned their quarrel and he had gone away again—that was all. Expect to be believed? Of course he didn't expect to be believed! On the reason of their quarrel he remained mute. To all further questions, such as what other visitors Ingham had that night, he opposed the blankest, smoothest ignorance. And Herrick, filling out the blanks, was still impatient of the reticence which left it possible for any woman of the men's mutual acquaintance to be taken for the woman of the shadow. No effort for the good name of another woman justified to him the suspicion and the suffering that Christina had already been allowed to endure. Denny's guilt he did not and he could not doubt, but he might have respected a guilt which, after so strong a provocation, had instantly given itself up. Such an avowal might have kept further silence with the highest dignity and Herrick wondered why an actor, of all people, could not see that that would have been even the popular course. Then he heard another actor, a much handsomer and more stalwart person, remark, "I always said, poor chap, that he hadn't the physique for a hero!"