So that was how he proclaimed his confidence! He had somehow got hold of a knife, but the blow aimed at his heart had been averted by a watchful guard and he had received only fleshwounds—one in the left shoulder, one in the left forearm. A little ludicrous, a little sickening that a man so expert in killing another should always bungle about killing himself! But he had been prompt enough and successful enough in setting upon the girl who had failed him the brand of his despair! Who would credit, now, that he did not believe in her flight? Herrick felt a thickness in his throat; with a longing for fresh, dark spaces he pushed open a door of the lobby and was confronted by the city, glittering in wet gold. There, up Long Acre, lay the heart of her world.
And from down where the bronze workmen struck the hours in Herald Square up past where the gathering streets parted again under a new electric girl, high in the sky, who winked a knowing colossal eye over a rainbow cocktail, what faith did it keep with her? Her flight, her shadow on the screen, they burned in a newer sky-sign, they flashed a fearful but a more stirring legend! This swept up the thoroughfare that never colors itself more like Harlequin than in its mirrors of wet asphalt and sped down every side street starred with theaters where, between the acts, men gathered and returned with news, and it became clear to thrilling audiences that so long as there had been nothing against this Christina Hope she had meant to tell some tale to Kane in Denny's behalf—it would have been a pretty piece of acting—but the mute witness of the shadow had broken her down. She had fled from that writing on the screen—even in the dressing-rooms they would say that! And later, in all these hot, bright jardins de danse that yesterday were cabarets, these cabarets that were restaurants yesterday, among the pellucid proprieties of slit skirts, tango turns, and trotting music it would be said that all along Denny had kept at least the half of his silence for Christina's sake. Oh, street of a thousand feverish tongues, how she loved you! And why did she leave you? Where is she, and where is she? How near, how far? "Where is she? And how doth she?" There lay her theater; what stroke could be so heavy as to drive her from that? "The Victors!" Leave "The Victors!" There were great blurs of light before the billboards. But the wind tore through them at the boards, struggling to wrench the signs away. Fierce as it was it was still rising and it ran like a crazy newsboy whooping through the world, senseless as the cry of the page that came nearer and nearer. So that Wheeler said, "Good lord, man, don't you know your own name?"
Yes, that was what the boy had been saying all along—"Herr—ick! Herr—ick! Mr. Bry—us Herrick!"
"No card, sir. Forty-fifth Street entrance. In a taxi, sir. A lady wants to speak to you."
CHAPTER II
CORPSE CANDLES IN THE NIGHT: MRS. DEUTCH'S STORY
The monstrous hope died almost in the pang that gave it birth. The lady who leaned out to him from the cab, putting aside her heavy veil, showed him the troubled countenance of Henrietta Deutch.
It came to him even then that he had arrived at the turning of a corner. So that he was surprised when she said to him, "Oh, sir, where have you been? Sir, sir, have you any news?"
She had none, then!