It was not because this reflection was in any way cooling to his love that Herrick did not see again, for some days, the lady of his heart. He was, perhaps, not very self-assured. Yet when his story of the murder and the inquest appeared he became a marked man. He awoke to find himself famous, and to be summoned to another interview at the Ingham publishing house.
There seemed to be no thought of allowing the prestige of "Ingham's" to perish with its brilliant junior partner. Ingham, senior, who for years had been only nominally its head, intended to resume active work once more, at least until the younger son should have finished college and gone into training for his brother's place. Perhaps the real pillar of the house was Corey; and Corey remained, to sustain both father and son. And they had all three agreed not to forsake the new, the yet unborn enterprise of Ingham's Weekly. "Mr. James Ingham was wrapped up in it," Corey told Herrick, whom he had met with the kindest compliments, "and his father can't bear that all his work should be wasted now. Besides, in the whole of the business, it's the thing that most interests young Mr. Stanley, and it seems to me the place where the boy may be most of use. We want the Weekly to be a real force, Mr. Herrick, and in its first number we shall want to give up the usual editorial pages to a memoir of its founder and his ideals for it. Mr. Herrick, if we could induce you to undertake that memoir we should think ourselves extremely fortunate."
Herrick could not believe his ears; it seemed such a strange sequel to a kind of police report, however able, for the Sunday papers. There began to be something uncanny to him about his connection with Ingham's death and how it continued to seem his Open Sesame to fortune. But he was glad enough and grateful enough. He ventured to send Christina a note telling her that her new friend was now being pursued by good not evil fortune and her reply came in the same mail with a letter from his sister to whom he had written for details about Nancy Cornish.
Marion remembered only that Nancy's parents had been killed in a runaway when she was about fourteen and that Nancy had gone out West somewhere,—to Portland, Oregon, Marion thought, to live with an uncle—and had gradually ceased to write. Of this uncle's name or address both Marion and the principal of the school which both girls had attended were amiably ignorant.
"There's only one thing I'm positive about; she was the best little soul alive. Never in this world did she go to that man's rooms to tell tales of her friend. She never told tales. She was a natural born hero-worshiper; the most loyal child I ever saw and the most generous, the bravest, the lovingest, the most devoted. If she went to Mr. Ingham, it wasn't to injure that Christina Hope; it was to help her out of some scrape. She was just the kind of girl to be taken in by a woman like that, whom I must say sounds—"
Herrick dropped this letter to return to that other which it cannot be denied he had read first. It was directed in a penmanship new to him but recognized at once in every nerve, and he had drawn forth Christina's note with that strange thrill which stirs in us at the first sight of the handwriting of the beloved. She thanked him, with a certain shyness, for his news. It was so good one must take it with their breath held! And now she had a favor to ask. Stanley Ingham had gone home to Springfield for the week-end, but he had just telephoned her that he would be back in town on Tuesday morning, by the train which got in to the Grand Central at eleven thirty-five. He had some news for her but she would be at rehearsal; she should not see him until the evening, and she was naturally an impatient person. Would not Mr. Herrick humor a spoiled girl, meet the train and bring her the news at about noon to a certain little tea-room of which she gave him the address. "You may find it a great bore. They are supposed to let us out for an hour, like the shop-girls. But, alas! they don't do it so regularly. They may push us straight through till mid-afternoon. But I know you will have patience with my eagerness to hear any news where it need not trouble my mother. She has had anxiety enough." It may be taken as a measure of Herrick's infatuation that he saw nothing in this letter which was not angelic.
The Grand Central Station, however, is no sylvan spot and Herrick wondered how he should recognize an unknown Stanley Ingham among the hordes swarming in its vast marble labyrinth. But that gentleman proved to be a lively youth of about twenty, who plucked Herrick from the crowd without hesitation and led him to a secluded seat with that air of deferential protection which a really smart chap owes it to himself to show to age. His collar was so high that it was remarkable how powerfully he had established winking terms with the world over the top of it, but he stooped to account for himself at once as an emissary of Christina's.
"She wired me to see you here, and here I am. You know I'm the bearer of some new exhibits for the police. We think we've struck a new trail. After I've handed 'em over I'm dining with Miss Hope, and as she'd have heard all about 'em then, should think she might have waited. Still, you know how women are!
"In the first place," young Mr. Ingham continued, "we want you, we want everybody, to know we're Miss Hope's friends. We want to go on record that the way she's been knocked around in this thing has been simply damnable, and, if poor old Jim were alive—"
He stopped. At the mention of his brother a moisture, which Herrick knew he considered the last word of shame, rose in his eyes; behind his high collar something swelled and impeded his utterance. Then Mr. Stanley Ingham became once more a man of the world.