CHAPTER III
SEARCH-LIGHTS FLASHED IN THE EYES: KANE'S STORY
"Well, for one thing," Kane said, "no mortal creature ever looked atthat girl and thought her a quitter." He was standing at Ingham's table,wrinkling his eyebrows at the storied blind. "I've come within thefascinations of that young person myself, but I don't think it'sinfatuation which makes me say that she didn't drop down in a dead faintyesterday afternoon, just to pass the time. When those clear eyes ofhers looked at that lock of hair she learned something that astonishedand horrified her. From that moment she made up her mind to go somewhereand, at the appointed hour, go she did. Devil take her for not confidingin Mrs. Deutch! She meant, I daresay, to return. But she must have beengreeted with the news of the moving picture advertisement and thoughtherself very well off where she was. Eventually, she'll pull some stringfrom there."
He began putting out all lights but the table-lamp.
"I fancied, at first, the mother had followed, for she lied about goingto Europe. We've had every steamship and railway line watched since longbefore she left, so she's not beyond the scope of trolleys. But she'donly be a nuisance to the girl, nor is she one to pursue risks--morelikely, she just skipped out early to avoid the rush. All sorts ofintimidating things have happened lately; then, last night, Christinathreatened her with some exposure, this morning she was frightened by anItalian, and the climax has been capped by whatever it was Deutch toldher--Don't jump! No, I'm no mind-reader. But I had, of course, theDeutch apartment, as well as yours, wired for a dictograph. Useful thinga dictograph--especially when there are ladies about!"
With a happy indifference to the effect of this statement upon Herrickhe cast about the room, appearing to sniff up its suggestions and tocompare them with a vision in his mind's eye. Absorbed, elate, on edge,tingling with some suspended energy, as he raised the blind and peeredout he radiated a good humor somehow inhuman.
"That wasn't a taxi? I'm expecting a couple of my boys and," he grinned,"poor Ten Euyck!" He disappeared, bent on examining the bedroom.
Herrick still stood, dumb and raging, with his back against the door. Inhis impotent rebellion against Kane's inferences he had been almostindifferent to the fateful setting of the new scene in that night'shurrying kinetoscope. But slowly this had begun to assume its naturalimaginative sway. There were the dim blue walls framed in their outlineof smooth, black wood. There before him was the long white blind; to hisleft the piano where Ingham had sat playing; by stretching out his righthand he could touch the portieres of the room in which they had foundIngham's body. It was all in order now. The cushions of the couch hadbeen smoothed and set up. The chair that had lain overturned beside thetable had been stood in its proper place, at the edge of the portieres,near the door. The newspapers and ashes, the siphon and half-empty glasshad been cleared away. The little puddle by the piano stool, too, wasgone. All was in order; Ingham's hand might have been about to drawthose portieres, he might have stepped between them to tell--what? What,the poor fellow persisted, was there to tell? He knew the secret of theshadow on the blind, the secret of the shot in Ingham's breast. Onlythe one thing was unknown--Who had contrived to bolt the door? That hehad always felt the puzzle's essence and its answer; there stole throughhim again that sense of a skeleton still locked within those walls to bediscovered with some recognizing shock; once more his fancy began tosearch through those hollow rooms in desperate hope, driven by thatsuperstition, by the obstinate unreason with which a starving handcontinues to fumble in an empty pocket. Futilest of occupations! Thesense of shamed stupidity, of failure in Christina's cause, warned himwith a squelching sneer that he was the merest pawn in Kane's hand andthat the room would yield its secret, if it had one, to Kane and not tohim. At any rate, how could that secret find Christina? And, if he werenot looking for Christina, what was he doing there?
As he turned to go it was Kane who came back through the portieres andsaid, "Sit down, for heaven's sake! Don't stand there glaring at me asif I were Ingham's corpse!"
The sharpness of his entrance suggested something.
Herrick answered with his hand on the knob, "I'm virtually a prisoner, Isuppose?"
"Oh, don't you care to sit out the show?"
"If I left here should I be arrested?"
"Arrested's an exaggeration."
"I should be shadowed, then?"
"Well, my dear fellow, there've been so many disappearances! And you'reso near the storm-center--you make such a sensitive barometer!"
Herrick dropped on to the couch as a mouse might give itself up to a catand leaned forward, frowning, motionless.
"It's a great game, this, of 'Vanishing Lady'! But I don't mind tellingyou that it's the Italian background to the vanishings that interestsus. An obscure young girl--but a great friend of Christina Hope's--isthe first to vanish. She sends an appeal for aid to Christina Hope,through the Arm of Justice.
"A publisher--betrothed to Christina Hope--receives blackmailing lettersfrom the Arm of Justice, and is murdered.
"A young author--also betrothed to Christina Hope--is attacked. But, asa victim, proves a failure.
"An actor--also--well, also an old friend of Christina Hope, and said tohave been recently in love with the vanished Nancy Cornish is arrestedfor Ingham's murder. And what happens? S-s-z-boum! A cluster ofrespectable and comfortable persons scatter for the ends of the earth.While, ahead of them all, pop goes the beauty! In a white and silverdress. So she didn't go farther than the embrace held wide open toreceive her."
"You mean, of course, the Arm of Justice?"
"Of course."
"What are you trying to do with me?" Herrick snarled.
Kane answered with great deliberation, "I'm trying to save you, youyoung fool!"
"Spare yourself wasted time. What does all this matter to me? What doesa lot of gab matter? I've heard enough of it to-night, God knows! Butdoes it tell me anything? You're all full of suggestions, but where isshe? Do something if you know how--find her, find her! She's in danger,that's all that matters! Where is she? Where is she?"
"You talk about danger! And you want _me_ to find her?"
"Has Denny retained you, then?"
"Oh, you poor kid!--Now, Herrick, I know your place in life. I studied,one term, under your father. I breathe familiarly the air of Brainerd,Connecticut. Corey and old Ingham are friends of mine. This mussof--Paah! Come out of it, Herrick, it isn't good enough! She in herrotten world and you--Oh, all right!"
Kane rose and went again to the window. "Rain's held up." He looked athis watch. Strolling back to his chair he fixed his eyes on Herrick,across his interwoven knuckles.
"But you've listened so willingly to Wheeler and to Mrs. Deutch, why notlisten to me? I've something of a confession to make, myself. Do youknow what it is to be possessed by a mania?"
A man with a mania!
"I heard Ten Euyck call you that, the first time I ever saw you."
"Good! A man with a mania, a prosecutor with a pet criminal! But hedidn't mention the criminal? Allow me--the Arm of Justice!"
Herrick's pulse gave a mad leap and he slowly raised his head.
"You've taken that business, all along, as just a mask for somedesperate amateur. Then, too, you were all thrown off the track--andsmall wonder!--by those literate, unbusinesslike letters in idiomaticEnglish. A lady's letters, in fact!--My dear fellow, a very real anddefinite 'Arm of Justice,' a low-lived little gang that sunny Italy knewhow to get rid of, has made its living at blackmailing certain guttersof ours for a generation. What nobody but your humble servant hasbelieved is that this more stylish business, using our language anddwelling very evidently in our midst, has any connection with theoriginal A. of J. beyond borrowing its title from the police reports.Not for the first time! See here! The Arm of Justice started life as thehumblest little blackguard gang, extorting money from low-classItalians. It was like all its class, strictly minding its own businessin its own nationality and considered worth nobody's while to catch. B
utto my mind about four years ago this violet by a mossy stone burst outlike a sunflower. To my mind, it was this very same Arm of Justicewhich abandoned every precedent by entering, with one bound, intoAmerican life."
His look seemed to ring with triumph, but his voice kept a cold edge.
"No Italian gang, real or bogie, big or little, had ever thrown itsshadow there. But the Arm of Justice flew high, carried the newterritory at a rush, and struck at the very proudest families in NewYork, the most powerful individuals!"
"But how? How?"
"Ah, if I knew! What's its source of information? How does it get holdof those unhappy secrets that its owners guard like Koh-i-noors? Well,men will tell a good deal to a woman--and those were a woman's letters,Herrick! Once it gets its secret it starts a correspondence. How oftenit has succeeded, grabbed its hush-money and retreated, of course Idon't know. But when its advances are rejected it abandons itstypewriter and calmly prints a scant edition of a dirty little ragcalling itself _The Voice of Justice_ and telling the blackmailingstory. It then mails marked copies through various New York post officesto the family, friends and enemies of its victims--the three beforeIngham were all of Knickerbocker standing. What a revenge! What aprestige for next time such a threat gave it! The desire of my life isto smash that printing-press!"
"But it followed up the Ingham business with letters alone?"
"There you are--the whole Ingham business is a departure! Observe thatuntil Ingham's death the English-speaking branch of the business nevercommitted itself to violence; it caused four tragedies in four years,but it simply pressed the button of exposure and its vengeance came offautomatically. The first time a young girl went crazy. The second therewas a divorce and the wife shot herself. And the third time a badstumble, lived down for twenty years by a fine old friend of mine, ajudge of the highest standing who had made himself an honorablecharacter, was exposed to such relentless political foes that thisoffice had to prosecute. Well, Mrs. Deutch's father isn't the onlygentle soul who's died in jail!"
Kane's voice had risen in hot anger. "Perhaps you think I ought to begrateful--thank them for doing my work! Am I to do theirs, then? Executetheir orders, their sentences? Make my office the tool of cowards andcriminals worse than those I convict? Ah, my boy, that did turn me intoa monomaniac! Is there anything I wouldn't give to break that particularbone in the Arm of Justice?--to lay hands on the real villain of thatlittle evening party in these rooms that night--not the one who firedthe shot but who prompted it! Believe me, the death of Ingham was aslip, an accident, bitterly repented. Some last new element got in thistime and got in wrong. The Arm was using a new tool and pushed itfarther than it dreamed the tool would go. The English-speaking branch,always so careful not to commit murder--I could almost be thankful forthis time--it's put a definite, popular crime into my hand! And now thepoor fools've lost their heads! They that were so cautious, they'refollowing one sensation with another. They've tried anything,everything, to get clear! They've only floundered further and furtherin! And now they're wild as rats in a trap!"
"Like rats in a trap!" There it was again! "The wages of sin is moresinning!" Good heavens, what was his novel to him, now?
"Still people don't believe me. They can't credit that a single criminalgang has its feet in the slums, its hand in the pocket of Fifth Avenue,and its head--well, for instance, on Broadway. Naturally, it wants aconnecting thread. I was so keen after that, even before I came intooffice, that they used to call me The Blackhander and say I ought towrite a comic opera. Well, Italy's an operatic nation! And this greatbrat of a city, that thinks there's nothing doing in the world butAnglo-Saxon temperaments, embezzling and baseball games, doesn't knowwhat it may get up against! I'm sure if I can nab either end of theskein it will carry conviction. But unfortunately even the Eastsidersnever gave us a map of their whereabouts. There are about seven hundredItalians in New York who might be called professional gangsters and verylikely a cozy, private little affair like the A. of J. but murmurs, 'Weare seven.' So I've never been able to put the slightest Italian accenton those illustrious letters till I saw the body of your gunman fromCentral Park. Encouraging though not overwhelming evidence! But theknife that stuck in Denny's arm is a bigger business."
He might well congratulate himself, Herrick inwardly groaned, over thecolor and the emphasis liberally supplied him in the story of Mrs.Deutch.
"Of course, you understood what had happened? The farmer had refusedtoll to the brigands who governed the south so capably in those days.They killed his child, leaving their mark on it as a warning that tollmust be paid. The poor wine-merchant attempted to set the authorities onthat sign. The authorities were too weak to take up the gage, and, ofcourse, a stranger and a Jew made an easy scape-goat. But the brotherdidn't take warning from the father's fate. Then the mark on him warnedthe countryside that the family was taboo. They became simply lepers.Not, this time, because the people were religious bigots nor socialasses but because they were scared stiff. Every one connected with thetabooed strangers must have dreaded some brigand dictum. Every Gabriellimay have squirmed under that thumb for many a year. Whatever sheromantically believes, her fiance's family simply dared not, for theirlives, receive Henrietta. Nobody dared, except, apparently, our littlefriend, Hermann Deutch. Hats off--I salute Hermann! Really, for anexcited man--! But how's that for the nationality of the three-corneredknife? The nation's pitched it out, over there; and now, to-day, in thecity of New York, in the city's jail, in broad daylight, some descendantof this agreeable Sicilian clan uses the same weapon to silence a wirygentleman who turns out a bit too much for him--being a little on theSicilian order himself! But isn't that a sign of something doing betweenthe slums and Broadway? For what were they afraid Denny would tell? Whydid they wish to silence him except for what he could tell of a certainlady?"
Herrick rose, lighted a cigar and flicked out the match with steadyfingers. "And you picture Miss Hope as The Queen of the Black Hand?"
This pleasantry was delivered with such a raucous and guttural attemptat quiet satire that Kane returned to earth and smiled.
"Put in that way it's comic opera, indeed. But it's the tune that makesthe song. I know how crass the thing seems. Good heavens, says commonsense, in what century are we living? And who believes in comic opera?What's the clue? What's the connecting thread that can reach from thelowest dives of the East Side, out of another country and another race,and mix with the grandeurs of so extremely well-known and high-flying ayoung lady, on the very day that she becomes a world-celebrity? What'sthe answer?"
The extreme nonchalance of Herrick's voice shook a little as heremarked, "That's up to you, isn't it?"
"It's bound to lie in some dangerous indiscretion of her youth. She'shad hard struggling years, in which her temper was still luxurious--ayouth that's ambitious is never too scrupulous--if she had a friendunscrupulous by profession--And yet I was so sure they had got hold ofher by some secret of her mother's! The Hope honeymoon took place inItaly--but, in that day, so did everybody's! After all, perhaps they hada closer clutch. What do we inevitably find in the pasts of all veryyoung, very beautiful and very successful actresses? We find a dark andearly husband. Italians whose humbler connections still sojourn intenements are often highly ornamental and blackmailers aren't branded,you know, to keep them out of matrimony. Well, whatever the start,whether she was coaxed in or threatened or married, forced by poverty orblackmail, she's made them a wonderful--Do you know the thieves' slangof Naples? And the term 'basista'?"
"A basista's a sort of fence, isn't he? A confederate on the outside?"
"A good deal more. A basista, without being a member of the gang, is theinvaluable unsuspected spy in the camp of the victims, who lootsprofitable news and sends it in. He or she is sometimes the brilliantamateur director, the educated person with an outlook, the AdviserPlenipotentiary. A dramatic-minded young lady with extravagant tastesand some kind of righteous grudge against society might hardly realizeat first what she was doi
ng--and oh, how she has struggled to be rid ofit, since! Naturally, she's become worth double to them. And she'srecently furnished them with such a hold that, so far from gettingclear, I fancy she was pushed to furnish them with another victim; thatif it hadn't been for the moving-picture another person would soon havereceived an Arm of Justice letter, and that person Cuyler Ten Euyck.What do you think of my thread?"
"Pretty thin, isn't it?"
"Wait, encouraging youth! You'll be grateful some day! Come, I'll showyou my hand! Ever since the inquest it has been perfectly clear to theunprejudiced mind that Christina Hope was in that room when Ingham wasshot. It was perfectly evident that she was shielding somebody. We say,now, that she was shielding Denny. When we began to suspect Denny we hadto run down his friend, Christina Hope, who left behind her a scarfbordered with the color in which, through his craze for her, Ingham'sapartment was decorated--a color which up to the time of the murder shewore so constantly that it was like a part of her personal effect, andwhich she has never worn since."
The color was all about them--blue-gray. What could that have to do withthe shimmer of a dummy pistol, scratched upon whose golden surfaceHerrick once more confronted the initial "C"? But he did not put thisquestion to the District-Attorney. And it was Kane who continued. "ShallI treat you to a bit of ancient history; shall I reconstruct for you themovements of Miss Hope on the night of the fourth of August?"
"As you please."
"She testified to have dined at home. So she did; but with so poor anappetite that the maids said to each other that she had really dinedearly somewhere else. She testified to being ill and out of sorts; soshe was. But she was incited by this being out of sorts to somethingvery different from the languor to which she testified. Far from havingbade Ingham farewell forever she called him up at the Van Dam on anaverage of every half hour, as well as at his club, and at tworestaurants which he frequented. Failing to find him, at eleven o'clockshe did, indeed, go to the post-box and mail a letter; but at twentyminutes past eleven she was waiting in a taxi outside the theater whereDenny was rehearsing and sent in a message, without any concealment ofher name, that she wished to speak to him. He sent out word that he wasengaged. An hour later she was there again, and not believing the backdoorman who told her that he had left, she stopped Wheeler, who hadbeen inside, and besought him to get Denny to speak to her. He repliedthat Denny was gone, whereupon she called out to her chauffeur, withevery adjuration to hurry, the name of the Van Dam apartmenthouse--where, say at a quarter after one, you, Herrick, saw her shadowon the blind. According to Joe Patrick she was the first on thespot.--Was she the last there, too?"
Herrick paused in a long stride; with his bones slowly freezing in himhe turned and faced the District-Attorney.
"If Denny loved her and went there on her account did he shoot downIngham before her eyes? Or did she run out, as she suggested at theinquest, and Denny shoot Ingham as he turned to follow her? There's yourchance, Herrick, prove that! Mr. Bird tells us when our prisoner camein. But, before all and everything, when did he come out?"
He had a way for which Herrick could have slain him, of driving pointshome with a smile.
"But suppose, now, she did most of the loving on her own account.Ingham, to a certainty, had found out her connection with the Arm ofJustice, when it tried to blackmail him through her. From the row youheard between them he's likely to have been threatening her withexposure. Suppose Denny's story is straight and when he found her therewith Ingham he just turned and walked off. Was Ingham a man to refrainfrom threatening to send his revelations, first of all, to a man who hadtreated him so cavalierly? Is she a girl to stop short of the desperatein preventing him? Isn't she one to avenge herself in advance? It maynot have been wholly in revenge. Ingham was himself a wild revengefulfellow who sometimes had too much to drink. He may have provoked hereven to bodily fear. If he guessed such a thing do you think Denny wouldnot keep silence? I see it strikes you."
It seemed to him as if it struck the life out of his heart over whichhe folded his arms. "Try somebody else," he said, in defiance of thelittle clasps of proof which he could hear snapping into each other,"next time you accuse her."
"Yes, I'll try Deutch. I gave her every doubt till I heard of hissecret. Is it possible you don't know what he found? And is it possiblethat you don't see a preparation for emergency in her taking such painsto establish--well, not an alibi, but a substitute?--A mysteriousunknown lady with the most conspicuous physical attributes, in whoseperson this admirable actress appears before Joe Patrick as thered-headed murderess of the drama on the front stairs, before, on theback stairs, with which she appears to be so familiar, she resumesherself and turns to see what can be done with Ingham! That's the worstpoint in the story of a distracted girl, pushed to the wall, driven pasther last stand, maddened by a suddenly enlightened and too cruel Ingham,hounded by her friends, the Arm of Justice, to their work; herself nomore--as I was once no more!--than a trigger pulled by their hand! Nowonder they've had a firmer hold on her than ever since that night, andshield her, now, with all their care because in doing so they shieldthemselves!"
"That's what you think, is it?"
"It's what I fear--and it's what you fear! Or--what's aDistrict-Attorney to a lover?--you'd have knocked me down longago!--There's not a man of you, knowing the girl, in whose mind, inwhose pulse, it hasn't been from the first hour! Yet there's not one ofyou who hasn't sacrificed Denny to her without a scruple. One man in theend won't do it. I mean Denny himself. He, too, is prepared to goextraordinary lengths not to betray her. He will deny, of course, thatit was she who was there that night. But I rely on one thing. He knowsthat in the State of New York he can not plead guilty to murder in thefirst degree. And he won't send himself up for anything less. He's notafraid of death, but he's mortally afraid of prison--it gets on everyone of his nerves. And he seems to have a great many of them. If theyare ground on the idea of jail so that they break they may break quitecontrary to poor Deutch's--they may set him talking! Ah, if he andDeutch could happen to meet; those two temperamental persons!--Here, inthis room, in the night, now when neither of them are quite themselves,what a start they might get! What mightn't it shake out ofthem?--There's one final thing the person who shot Ingham, the personwho was last with him in this room, alone, can tell me--How came thatdoor bolted? Whatever Denny guesses, you'll find he won't guess methat!--Come in!"
He conferred with some one on the threshold. "Ask Inspector Ten Euyck tocome up." Turning back to take his place at the library table hemotioned Herrick to a seat. "Pity the sorrows of a poor policeman whoselegal sense is too strong to let him ask a single question of an accusedman, yet who was born to be the head of the Inquisition and looks at theprisoner with a deep desire quite simply to tear him open! The prisoneris well held together with surgeon's plaster, but the poor Inspector'spride in his profession is suffering horribly from the inadequateconduct of his city's jail to-day and of our detectives' search.--Herewe are!"
A group of young men appeared in the doorway, with Ten Euyck loominglike a damaged monument in their wake. Civility and self-control forcedthemselves on Herrick. He and Ten Euyck sniffed each other, wary asstrange dogs, their spines beginning to rise. "Inspector," said Kane,"cheer up!" And indeed the funereal quality in that gentleman'sappearance had greatly increased. He sat down, as directed, but when helooked at Herrick he had to turn his growl into a cough and when helooked at Kane he winced. It was evidently not alone the errors of theTombs and the police department which had bowed his head. It was theknowledge of last night. His magnificent storm coat could not hide hisriddled dignity. Only by the sight of Christina in his grasp could heget his dignity back again.
"Ten Euyck, I sent for you because this is so largely your affair, butyou are not going to be asked to do anything immoral. I am about toexamine a witness, but with no illegal questions nor shall I force himto testify against himself. He is only going to be asked about another,a missing witness. Your legal mind doesn't quarrel w
ith his being hardpushed in that direction? I thought not!"
Ten Euyck exclaimed, eagerly, "But Deutch can't talk yet!"
"Deutch? Did you think I meant Deutch? There is some one dearer toChristina Hope than her dear Deutches and still nearer to the habits ofher life. I mean a gentleman who can talk but won't. Ah, brighten up TenEuyck--he shall be got to! He may be ignorant of certain amiableItalians as criminal characters, it's inconceivable he can be ignorantof them as Christina Hope's familiar friends. He mayn't be able to tellme the secret of their lives. But he can give me their address. And hewill."
They were all grouped about the long table: Kane at its center, facingthe window; Ten Euyck and Herrick bearing with each other at one end;Holt, an assistant of Kane's, between him and Ten Euyck; to his right, astenographer with a short-hand pad. The end of the table was stillvacant. Kane's own doorman stood on the threshold.
"Wade, have you got Mrs. Deutch? Please step into the bedroom, Mrs.Deutch. Sit down comfortably, keep silent and listen to everything.--Iwant to remind you all that, wise as our witness is, there are somethings he doesn't know. So far as we know he has never connected theCornish girl's disappearance with the blackmailers. He's not supposed toknow there are any blackmailers. And, for certain, he's seen no papersnor been allowed to talk with any one. He doesn't know that ChristinaHope has disappeared! He doesn't know that New York has seen amoving-picture!" Turning to the man at the door Kane said, "Bring inWilliam Denny."