"Yes, and the cabman was discharged this morning for drunkenness! Stan's to 'phone if they've found him. Oh, but look here—take it slow! She 'phoned Ten Euyck's house at eight this morning and left a message, openly, with her name! The servant who took the message describes exactly that trailing voice of hers—'tell him he may come for his necklace to-night!'"
"Come! Come where?"
"Search me! Or Ten Euyck, either, from the foam on his mouth!—Well, doesn't that put it up that wherever she 'phoned from they got on to the diamond necklace. So, where was she? You and I, we know old Chris—we know, after all, that she just went somewhere for the night on account of her quarrel with her mother. But, oh, lord, Herrick, who else is going to believe it? The whole braying pack of this intelligent world—all it can think of's dirt—the devilish gay sensation of the whole business! Christina Hope! D'you think there's a bank clerk or a submissive wife that won't recognize her proper atmosphere at a glance? You and I and little Stan—a poor author, a profane actor and a brat! In a few hours that's what her kingdom's crumbled to—'that was so wondrous sweet and fair!' Police and all, there's the spirit in which they're going to look for her, and that's going to be one of the worst things in our way. Well, I'm not a rich man and our precious kid's just about ruined me this night! But I've done for her what may bust me sky-high and worth it—I've offered ten thousand for her—safe, you understand! It ought to be in to-night's late editions, so by now, in one spirit or the other, this town's out after her like a hound!—Eh? All right! It's Stan, now!"
Herrick sat there staring into the street. A newsboy ran past with the last extra of the evening. Two of the interested smokers had just left the restaurant and now stopped in the rain to buy a paper, opening and scanning the flapping sheets against the wind. Ah, yes, of course! He, too, sent for a paper. Yes, there, on the first page—scare headings, but in itself the meagerest fact. Scarcely even insinuations yet—"friends fear some serious accident," "friends deny suicide," "suspicious circumstance—Ten Euyck necklace"—Wheeler's reward, and news three hours old. When he looked up the square seemed full of newsboys; several people as they came into the restaurant had papers in their hands. She was just news, now; disreputable news! "The town's out after her like a hound!"—Wheeler's hand was on his shoulder. "No cabman yet. But they want you, Herrick, on the 'phone."
Stanley's voice told him only to hold the wire. Then a crisper tone asked pleasantly, "Mr. Herrick? This is Henry Kane. I just wanted to ask you—you had an appointment with Miss Hope for noon to-day. If you didn't know she was not at home, why didn't you keep it?"
How sharply the trap bit!
"You've had no communication with her since last evening? Nothing happened to arouse your anxiety? Nor distrust? No, nothing? And yet, just as it began to rain, you started for a walk in a light suit—or" (the telephone itself seemed to give forth a dry smile) "what I am told was once a light suit, and walked about all day in an equinoctial storm! Taking yourself to the theater at night without changing, without shaving, without dining, but still carrying on your person a good deal of the surface of the earth and of the waters under the earth! Well, sorry to have disturbed you. Only my dear sir, don't trouble yourself to conceal too much. Don't fancy yourself the only man in New York who has been to a moving-picture show." Kane hung up the receiver.
That stunned, sick, silent curse of the man on the wrong side of the law! This attorney fellow was like a hound after her, too! He, then, since he was so clever, in God's name let him find her and find her—soon! It was all he asked!—As Herrick stepped out of the booth into the corridor of mirrors that ran through the building to the next street a page boy came briskly up the gilded lane, pattering out a phrase that washed across Herrick's mind in a wave of sound dimly familiar; he saw the boy turn into the orangerie and through the glass-screen he vaguely watched him wend his way between the little green tables with their golden lamps, lifting his flatted tones into the orange-scented air so that its mechanical legend was caught by trailing vines and mingled with the plashing of a little fountain. His mind aimlessly followled the boy's cry till it was lost in the music of a mezzanine orchestra hidden in the foliage of a tame tropical jungle! This was what they called civilization—this trash which had achieved no mechanism to find her, to protect her! But which could know that she had been struck out of its midst and yet sit there in its futile nonsense, stuffing—A voice rose from the velvet lounge beside him in the toneless delivery of one who reads aloud. It was reading the extra's account of a gesture in a moving picture show. "The police say that boys began reporting it before noon, and, the attention of the theater having been called to the film, its patrons are now offered a thrill of realism by the piano in the orchestra accompanying the gesture with the march from Faust. This time, it will be remembered..."
Oh, no doubt it would be remembered! Its exultant shout sounded like the hunter's cry after her now, winged by Wheeler's offer of ten thousand dollars! Doubtless the film would be repeated on the morrow, that all the world might steel its heart as it watched with its own eyes Christina Hope moving with that motion to that time!
Oh, for something to do! Some untried search, some shrewder question! Something to do, to suffer, to dare—some clue—some suggestion—Denny! Had they tried Denny? He who knew so much at the least would set them right, would know and would tell them that she had never deserted his cause of her own free will, that he who knew her believed in her—Wheeler came out into the lobby and took him by the arm. He, too, had bought a paper and now he held it under Herrick's eyes. "This is why I couldn't see him, then!" In the Tombs that afternoon, Denny had again attempted suicide.