He took a tolerant pity on their restiveness, relaxing to an urbane smile as though his machinery were eased by the oil which always flowed when his prosecuting talent raised its head. "When that disgraceful laxity occurred at the Tombs and a prisoner was attacked there, we took a leaf from the criminals' book and put in among the guards some men of our own. One of these, a man named Firenzi, a very capable fellow, informed himself in no time of a marvelously well-paid plan for the prisoner's escape. Yes, by the very tribe who tried to kill him. Anything, you see, to get him out of the way. The idea is the old one of passing him out as a guard, leaving the true-false guard quite overcome in his cell;—a slim chap who's let wear a black beard on account of asthma or some such nonsense. They naturally suppose that an actor will look less conspicuous than most criminals in a bit of make-up! Does our consistent hero refuse to go? Filled with the bright hope of a hanging judge he does have to be coaxed a little, but not much. He is not lured by being told that he is to be sent to the safety of foreign lands, a far-off country and, I believe, a tropical climate, suited to his complexion. Firenzi reports him as demanding what they suppose there is in this foreign country to interest him. 'The lady who throws a shadow that you know.' 'It's enough!' says Denny, through his teeth, I am informed. I don't mind telling you that it's enough for us, too! They will be sure to take him to their nest to transfer him to the escort of their gang and his visit—before a Sampson shorn of his new beard and having still further done for himself with Fletcher, is returned to a jail somewhat less porous than he imagines to-night—his visit will be well watched!"
They had reached Thirty-fourth Street and turned toward Broadway where Stanley had an errand. The two puppets in Ten Euyck's hands had nothing to say. Neither of them could bring himself to utter his excitement in that now potent presence and Herrick wondered if he were really trembling. A far-off country! The phrase chilled and hardened him, as premeditated safety always does. He was scarcely even grateful for the strength and fleetness of her wings. Never had Ten Euyck's inspectorship seemed less absurd or more really a fact. Of to-night and to-morrow he was now the master. And yet, beside the news of a far-off country, what news could he wring from the Arm of Justice to-morrow for which Herrick need care so much? They stopped on the corner of Long Acre and as Stanley plunged into a drug-store, a certain embarrassment fell upon the two men left together. "It's remarkable how warm it is!" Ten Euyck said.
Herrick refrained from the flippancy of replying, "Wonderful weather for the time of year!" On closer inspection Ten Euyck proved a good deal worked up. His excitement was like a sort of dry paste and as he now grew pastier and pastier something that was almost a tremor seemed about to crack it; in fact the dry mask of his face was suffering from a lockjaw which was his form of hysteria. He took off his hat and, cold as he looked, produced an extremely superior handkerchief and wiped his brow. He said something about the last hot spell of the year and his lips clicked on the words as though they were rather a compromising statement; was it the coming crisis that creaked in his throat? It occurred to Herrick that Ten Euyck might be suffering from a sense that his vanity of achievement and his taste for torture, in leading him to disclose to-morrow's program, had led him injudiciously far. At any rate he studied, as if for sympathy, the irreproachable excellence of his hat-lining and a little pink line came out about his nose.
Herrick looked uneasily at the doorway beyond which Stanley still loitered; he saw no reprieve. And as he made sure of this Ten Euyck again fortified himself with the interior of his hat and spoke. "On your honor, now, Herrick, you wouldn't keep it from me? You've no idea where she is?" And he followed this extraordinary question with a piteous, a blenching glance.
Herrick did not speak; and Ten Euyck moistened his lips. The whole outline of his face seemed to take on a certain sharpness, and famine and fever thrust themselves, for a moment, into the windows of his eyes. In the silence which Herrick could not break, he murmured, "I'm not like this about women! You know that! Only she—" His voice cracked and then snapped off short, but with a hundred quiverings, like the string of a banjo breaking.
Herrick seemed to himself to look through a door, in a house of revelations. Was this what covered Ten Euyck's complacent coldness to the other sex? Did those neat and formal lips often stifle an outcry like this? True, Christina's own story had revealed to him that Ten Euyck's coldness was all hot ice and very swarthy snow. But he had presumed that incident to be a deliberate brutality; Ten Euyck had always appeared to govern his instincts masterfully or to walk on them, indeed, with heels of iron. To see him bared and shaken like this was to put a new value on the force that had betrayed him; but Herrick was too young and too much in love to endure this lusting and trembling breath when it blew upon Christina.
"On the whole," said he, deliberately, "keep your confidences to yourself, can't you? They make me sick."
The pinkness spread over Ten Euyck's face:
"Oh, I had forgotten your happiness!" he managed to cry, with a fierce shaking laugh. "Do let me know the date of the wedding!" He lifted his hat and strode from a neighborhood dangerous to dignity. But as he flung over his shoulder the ejaculation, "I hope you thought my diamonds became her!" Stanley's return arrested him.
"These infernal papers!" the boy cried.