When, however, they reluctantly agreed with him that it was too late for any effectual reticence it was with unabated kindliness that Corey went with him into the hall. "We remain infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Herrick, and—later on—we mustn't lose track of you again—Well, good-morning! Good-morning!"
It was nearly afternoon and Herrick stepped out from the dark, old-fashioned elevator into its sunny heat, which occasional spattering showers had vainly tried to dissipate, with a very highly charged sense of moving among vivid personalities. Concerning two of these there persisted a certain lack of reassurance, and as that of Ingham brightened or darkened the shadow herself now shone as a tigress devouring, now an avenging angel. Sometimes her figure stood out clearly, by itself; sometimes it wavered and changed, and passed, whether Herrick willed it or not, into the figure of Christina Hope. Then, whether for Deutch's or Ingham's sake, or for Evadne's, there was something oppressive in the sunshine.
But the young fellow was not enough of a hypocrite to pretend, even to himself, that all this excitement, all this acquaintance with swift events, with salient people under the influence of strong emotion, all this quick, warm, and strong feeling which had been aroused in himself, were anything but very welcome. Nor were his adventures over yet. His walk brought him, with a thoughtful forehead but all in a breathing glow of interest, to City Hall Park; a spot where he had loitered that summer a score of times, wearying vaguely for a friendly face. To-day, his brisk step had scarcely carried him within its boundaries before he heard his name called and, turning, was accosted by a Record acquaintance of six years ago whose recognition displayed the utmost eagerness.
The spirit of New York City, which had hitherto considered him merely one of her returned failures, had now made up her mind to show what she could do for such a darling as the near-eye-witness of a murder. He found himself hailed into the office of the Record, whence they had been madly telephoning him this long while, and immediately commissioned, at the price of a high, temporary specialist, to report the Ingham inquest, and to write a Sunday special of the murder!
He thought of Ingham's father, and "It isn't a tasty job!" he said to his old chief. But it swept upon him what material it was; it felt, in his empty hand, like the key of success; and then, there is always in our ears at such a time the whisper that it will certainly be done by somebody. "And never, surely," Herrick wrote his sister that night, "so chastely, so justly, with either such dash or such discretion, as by our elegant selves!"
This, at least, was the view which the Ingham office took of it. Corey reported the family as glad to leave it in Herrick's hands; while a tremor at once of regret, pleasure and superstition pricked over Herrick's nerves as Corey followed up this statement with an invitation through the Record phone to meet him at the Pilgrims' Club and talk some things over during lunch!
"To shake the iron hand of Fate" was becoming so much the rule that Herrick was nearly capable of feeling gripped by it even in the somewhat remote circumstances that the Pilgrims' had been founded as a club of actors and, overrun as it was by men of all professions and particularly literary men, it had remained essentially a club of actors—while he, Bryce Herrick, hastening toward it through a smart shower, had at first conceived of his novel as a play and then, in Switzerland, been baffled by the inaccessibility of that world! His novel, of whom the heroine had been so unwittingly Christina Hope!—However, the low, wide portals of the Pilgrims' received him under their great, wrought iron lanterns without excitement and he passed, self-consciously and with a certain shyness, into the cooling twilight of a hallway still perfectly calm and over the lustrous, glinting sweeps of easy and quite indifferent stairs up to an "apartment brown and booklined" that looked out on a green park.
At one of the windows Corey stood talking to a dark, heavy, vigorous man whose face was familiar to Herrick and whom Corey introduced as Robert Wheeler. It was a name of note but Herrick bewilderedly exclaimed "Miss Hope's manager?" Two or three men turned to Wheeler and grinned and he, himself, said with a gruff chuckle, yes, he supposed it had come to that, already! Herrick's embarrassed tactlessness sought refuge in looking out of doors.
The famous square had kept its ancient privacy secure from all the city's noise and hurry. It was still, secluded; self-sufficient with an old-world grace; and the green park shone fresh after the shower, its flower beds and the window boxes of its grave, dark houses gave out a delicate, glimmering sparkle along with their moist and newly piercing sweetness. Nothing could have been more tranquil except the cool spaces, the dusky, sunny, airy, oak-hued shadows of the wide-windowed club—neither could anything have been less like Mrs. Grubey's or even Professor Herrick's idea of what an actors' club would be. The whole place seemed to rebuke its visitor, more graciously than had Hermann Deutch, for the feverish suggestion which Christina's calling had hinted round her name. The blithe young gentlemen in light clothes, fussing over with cigarette smoke and real and unreal English accents, the older men, less saddled and bridled and fit for the fray but still with something at once lazy and boyish in the quick sensibility of their faces, appeared to have no very lurid intensities up their sleeve and amid so much serene and humorous assurance Ingham senior's "sweet, good girl," Hermann Deutch's "Miss Christina" seemed better founded in kind and credible probabilities. She bloomed, indeed, hedged with all proprieties in the sound of Wheeler's voice saying, "But must Miss Hope appear at the inquest?"
"Yes," said Corey, tartly, "since her name will add to its notoriety! Have you forgotten our coroner?" Wheeler lifted his thick brows in annoyance and with the same sourness of inflection Corey added, "Is it possible any corner of the universe can for a moment forget Cuyler Ten Euyck!"