This was brought home to him rather sharply when Deutch had been not five minutes gone. On the exit of that gentleman Herrick's first thought had been for Miss Hope's photograph. Although an actress seems less a woman than a type, yet, since, to any stray gossip, she was recognizable as a real person, she mustn't, at this critical time, be left hanging on his wall to excite comment. He had scarcely laid the photograph on his desk to compare it with a cut in one of the newspapers when information that he was "wanted on the 'phone" made him drop the paper atop of his dethroned Heroine and hurry into the hall. And the place to which the telephone invited him was the Ingham publishing house.
The message was from old Gideon Corey, the prop and counselor of the House of Ingham, father and son. It told Herrick that Ingham senior had just arrived in New York and had not yet gone to an hotel; he had turned instinctively to his office, where he besought Herrick, whose name he had recognized, to come to him and tell him what there was to tell. It was only the piteous human longing to be brought nearer, by some detail, by some vision later than our own, to those to whom we shall never be near again. Herrick flinched from the task, but there could be no question of his obedience; and he came out from that interview humbly, softened by the gentleness of such a grief. It seemed to him that he had never seen so tender a dignity of reserve; that beautiful old gentleman who had wished to question him had also wished to spare him; wished, too,—and taken the loyalest precautions—to spare some one else.
"I don't know if you are aware, Mr. Herrick," Ingham's father had said to him, "that my son was engaged to be married?"
"I had just heard—"
"Then you will understand how especially painful it is that there should be any mention of a—another lady—Miss Hope is a sweet girl," said the old gentleman, "a sweet, good girl—" He paused, as if he were feeling for words delicate enough for what he had to say; and then a little breath that was like a cry broke from him. "My son was a wild boy, Mr. Herrick, but he loved her—he loved her! Will it be necessary to add to her grief by telling her that, at the very last, he was entertaining—? I wanted her for my daughter! May she not keep even the memory of my son?"
Herrick could have groaned aloud. "Only tell me," he said, "what can I do?"
"Mr. Ingham means to ask"—Corey interposed—"whether, at the—the inquest, it will be necessary to lay so much emphasis on that shadow you observed?"
Thus, for the second time that day, from what different mouths and under what different circumstances, came the same request! And there passed over Herrick that little shiver of the skin which takes place, the country people tell you, when some one steps over your grave.
"Could you not assume that you might have been mistaken? That it might have been a man's shadow—?"
"I was not mistaken—Why, look here!" he continued, eagerly. "Can't you see that it would be the worst kind of a mistake for me to change now? They'd think I'd heard who the woman was, and was trying to shield her! And, besides," he added to Corey, "it's your only clue." It occurred to him, as he spoke, that Ingham's family might be concerned for his reputation rather than for vengeance; this continued to seem probable even while they assured him that it was not the police, but Miss Hope alone, from whom they wished to keep the circumstance; they were thinking of what would have been the dead man's dearest wish. What she read in the papers they could perhaps deny; but what she heard at the inquest—