"Oh, God help me!" Christina cried. "How am I to go through with it!"
"Why," said Denny, quickly, "do it for me! Don't let me wreck everything I touch!" He looked at Herrick as though to say, "Be good to her—she's only a girl! You needn't fear she can help me!" And aloud he continued, "Look here, Christina, you mustn't fail. You're my friend, to pull me through and make friends for me, isn't that so? Well, then, you mustn't be a nobody! If you're going to get me out of here, you've got to be a celebrity, and move worlds. Well, you've got nothing but to-night to do it with. People like us, my dear, we've nothing but ourselves to fight with, just ourselves! Come, get yourself together and pull it off to-night! For me!" Over her head his miserable eyes besought Herrick to take her away while she could believe this. But the girl, straightening up, held out her hand. Denny took it and "All right," she said, "I will!" As they stood thus, a door from within the building opened and there was admitted no less a person than Cuyler Ten Euyck.
Christina was standing between him and Denny. The eyes of the two men met and slashed like whips. Herrick never needed to be told whose was the hand that long ago, for Christina's sake, had struck Ten Euyck. Now Denny said in a quick undertone, "Don't fret, old girl!" And the guard took him away.
The newcomer looked rather more frozen than usual; he was surprised and he did not take kindly to surprises. "It seems to be my fate to interrupt! Mr. Herrick, don't you feel de trop?"
He indulged himself in this discomforting question while his byplay of glances was really saying to Inspector Corrigan, "What are all these people doing here?" and Corrigan's was replying, "None of your business!" There was evidently no love lost between the types, particularly when the first glance persisted, "You got nothing out of him?" And the second was obliged to admit, "Nothing!"—"But I implore your toleration," Ten Euyck continued to Christina, "I can perhaps do you some service for the prisoner with Inspector Corrigan."
"The prisoner thanks you, as I do. But we have played in melodrama and we are acquainted with the practice of poisoned bouquets. Inspector Corrigan and I are doing very well as we are!"
"You are unkind and, believe me, you are unwise. I really wish to please you—do you find that so unnatural?—and to justify myself in your regard. I want to begin by advising you not to let your friend's melodramatic silence suggest to the public that he is going to hide behind some story of a woman—"
"He is very foolishly trying to keep a woman's name out of his story," Christina clearly and boldly declared.
"Nonsense! There is no such person!"
"Why not?"