"He won't help me, Bryce," Christina said. "He won't tell me anything, he won't say anything. He won't even tell me what lawyer he wants."
Denny stood with his eyes fixed on his visitors but in an abstraction which seemed to take no note of them; and Christina went on to Herrick, as to a more sympathetic audience. "I tell him he shall have the best lawyers in the world! He shan't be tormented any longer; he shall have the law to look out for him! He'll be all right, won't he, Bryce, won't he? If he'll only help himself! If he'll only say something!" Her voice rose desperately and broke. "Tell him you're simply for him, as I am—that's what I brought you here for! Tell him we're with him, both of us, all the world to nothing, and that we urge him to anything he can say or do to help himself! And that it will never make any difference to—either of us!" When Herrick had made out to say that Christina's friends were his friends, she went up to Denny and took him by the shoulders. "Don't you understand? I want to speak not only for myself, but for all those dear to me!"
Denny broke into a nervous laugh, but he said nothing.
Herrick guessed that his denial of his guilt had taken Christina wholly by surprise; that she had relied greatly on the story of his provocation and that now she did not know what to do. That it is not seemly for young ladies to display such extreme emotion over gentlemen to whom they are not related and who have had the misfortune to be imprisoned for murder did not cross her mind. She was now reduced to a sort of hysterical practicality in which, for lack of the treacherous valet, she enlisted Herrick to discuss with a surprised Inspector what clothes and furnishings of Denny's she would be allowed to have packed up and sent to the Tombs—"What ought I to do to make them like me there? Oh, yes, Bryce, it makes a difference everywhere! I mustn't wear a veil; and I must get them plenty of passes. It's a pity we can't pretend to be engaged—it would interest every one so!—How about money, Will?"
"I've plenty, thanks."
"Most ladies don't think beyond flowers!" contrasted the Inspector, in amused admiration.
Exasperated beyond endurance, Herrick heard himself launch the sickly pleasantry, "Any use for flowers, Mr. Denny?"
"Not before the funeral," Denny said.
She shook him a little in her eagerness. "Books. And tobacco. And things to drink. And the best food. And magazines. And all the newspapers." Christina clung to the items like a child trying to comfort itself. "Or—perhaps—not the newspapers—"
Denny flung restlessly out of her hands. "Oh, yes," he said, "the newspapers, please! Let me at least know how I am admired." He went back to staring out of the window; he seemed so little interested in his visitors that it was as though he had left them alone.