CHAPTER XIV

Despite all that money and influence could do to aid in the search of the missing girl, no trace of Sunny had been found since the day she passed through the door of the studio apartment and disappeared into the seething throngs under the Sixth Avenue elevated.

Every policeman in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx; every private detective in the country, and the police and authorities throughout the country, aided in that search, keen to earn the enormous rewards offered by her friends. Jerry's entire fortune was at the disposal of the department. Jinx had instructed them to "go the limit" as far as he was concerned. Bobs, his newspaper instinct keyed up to the highest tension, saw in every clue a promise of a solution, and "covered" the disappearance day and night. Young Monty, changed from the cheeriest interne at Bellevue to the most pessimistic and gloomy, developed a weird passion for the morgue, and spent hours hovering about that ghastly part of the hospital.

The four young men met each night at Jerry's studio and cast up their barren results. Jinx unashamedly and even noisily wept, the big tears splashing down his no longer ruddy cheeks. Jinx had honestly loved Sunny, and her loss was the first serious grief of his life.

Monty hugged his head and ruminated over the darkest possibilities. He had suggested to the police that they drag certain parts of the Hudson River, and was indignant when they pointed out the impracticability of such a thing. In the spring the great river was swollen to its highest, and flowing along at a great speed, it would have been impossible to find what Monty suggested.

Jerry, of all her friends, had himself the least under command. He was still nearly crazed by the catastrophe, and unable to sleep or rest, taking little or no nourishment, frantically going from place to place, he returned to his studio to pace up and down, as if half demented.

Despite the fact that her son seemed scarcely conscious of her existence, and practically ignored her, Mrs. Hammond continued to remain in the apartment. Overwhelmed by remorse and anxiety for her son's health and sanity she could not bring herself to leave, even though she knew at this time her act had driven her son far away from her. A great change was visible in the mother of Jerry. For the first time, possibly, she acquired a vague idea of what her son's work and life meant to him, and her conscience smote her when she realised how he had gone ahead with no encouragement or sympathy from home. On the contrary, she and his father had thrown every obstacle in his way. Like many self-made men, Jerry's father cherished the ambition to perpetuate the business he had successfully built up from what he always called "a shoestring." "I started with just a shoestring," Jerry's father was wont to say, "and what's more, _I_ didn't have any education to speak of, yet I beat in the race most of the college bred bunch." However, his parents had had great faith in the change that would come to Jerry after matrimony, and Miss Falconer, being a daughter of Hammond, Sr.'s, partner, the prospects up to this time had not been without hope.

Now, Jerry's mother, away from the somewhat overpowering influence of his father, was seeing a new light. Many a tear she dropped upon Jerry's sketch books, and she suffered the pang of one who has had the opportunity to help one she loved, and who has withheld that sorely needed sympathy. For the first time, too, Jerry's mother appreciated his right to choose his own love. In their anxiety to select for their son a suitable wife, they had overlooked his own wishes in the matter. Now Mrs. Hammond became poignantly aware of his deep love for this strange girl from Japan. She began to feel an unconscious tenderness toward the absent Sunny, and gradually became acquainted with the girl's nature through the medium of the left behind treasures and friends. Sunny's little mongrel dog, the canaries, the gold fish, the nailed up hole where she had fed the mice, her friend the "janitor gentleman," the black elevator boy, the butcher gentleman, the policeman on the beat who had never failed to return Sunny's smiling greeting with a cheery "Top o' the morning to yourself, miss," Hatton--all these revealed more plainly than words could have told that hers was a sensitive and rare nature. In Hatton's case, Mrs. Hammond found a problem upon her hands. The unfortunate valet blamed himself bitterly for Sunny's going. He claimed that he had given his solemn word of honour to Sunny, and had broken that word, when he should have been there: "Like a man, ma'am, hin the place of Mr. 'Ammond, ma'am, to take care of Miss Sunny."

Far from reproving the man, the conscience-stricken Mrs. Hammond wept with him, and asked timid questions about the absent one.

"Miss Sunny was not an hordinary young lady, begging your pardon, ma'am. She was what the French would call distankey. She was sweet and hinnercent as a baby lamb, hutterly hunconscious of her hown beauty hand charm. You wouldn't 'ave believed such hinnocence possible in the present day, ma'am, but Miss Sunny come from a race that's a bit hignorant, ma'am, hand it wasn't her fault that she didn't hunderstan' many of the proper conventions of life. But she was perfectly hinnocent and pure as a lily. Hanyone who looked or spoke to 'er once would've seen that, ma'am. It shone right hout of Miss Sunny's heyes."

"I saw it myself," said Mrs. Hammond, in a low voice.

After a long, sniffling pause, Hatton said:

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, I'm thinking that I don't deserve to work for Mr. 'Ammond any longer, but I 'avent the 'eart to speak to 'im at this time, and if you'll be so kind to hexplain things to 'im, I'll betake myself to some hother abode."

"My good man, I am sure that even Mr. Jerry would not blame you. I am the sole one at fault. I take the full blame. I acknowledge it. I would not have you or anyone else share my guilt, and, Hatton, I _want_ to be punished. Your conscience, I am sure, is clear, but it would make us all very happy, and I am sure it would make--Sunny." She spoke the word hesitatingly--"happy, too, if--if--well, if, my good Hatton, you were to turn over a new leaf, and sign the pledge. Drink, I feel sure, is your worst enemy. You must overcome it, Hatton, or it will overcome you."

"Hi will, ma'am. Hi'll do that. If you'll pardon me now, Hi'll step right out and sign the pledge. I know just where to go, if you'll pardon me."

Hatton did know just where to go. He crossed the park to the east side and came to the brightly lighted Salvation Army barracks. A meeting was in progress, and a fiery tongued young woman was exhorting all the sinners of the world to come to glory. Hatton was fascinated by the groans and loud Amens that came from that chorus of human wreckage. Pushing nearer to the front, he came under the penetrating eye of the Salvation captain. She hailed him as a "brother," and there was something so unswervingly pure in her direct gaze that it had the effect of magnetising Hatton.

"Brother," said the Salvation captain, "are you saved?"

"No, ma'am," said the unhappy Hatton, "but begging your pardon, if it haren't hout of horder, Hi'd like to be taking the pledge, ma'am."

"Nothing is out of order where a human soul is at stake," said the woman, smiling in an exalted way. "Lift up your hand, my brother."

Hatton lifted his shaking hand, and, word for word, he repeated the pledge after the Salvation captain. Nor was there one in that room who found aught to laugh at in the words of Hatton.

"Hi promise, with God's 'elp," said Hatton, "to habstain from the use of halcoholic liquors as a beverage, from chewing tobaccer or speaking profane and himpure languidge."

Having thus spoken, Hatton felt a glow of relief and a sense of transfiguration. He experienced, in fact, that hysterical exhilaration that "converts" feel, as if suddenly he were reborn, and had come out of the mud into the clean air. At such moments martyrs, heroes and saints are made. Hatton, the automaton-like valet of the duplex studio, with his "yuman 'ankerings" was afire with a true spiritual fervour. We leave him then marching forth from the barracks with the Salvation Army, his head thrown up, and singing loudly of glory.

* * * * *

On the third day after the disappearance of Sunny, Professor Timothy Barrowes arrived in New York City with the dinornis skeleton of the quaternary period, dug up from the clay of the Red Deer cliffs of Canada. This precious find was duly transported to the Museum of Natural History, where it was set up by the skilled hands of college workmen, who were zealots even as the little man who nagged and adjured them as he had the excavators on the Red Deer River. So absorbed, in fact, was Professor Barrowes by his fascinating employment, that he left his beloved fossil only when the pressing necessity of further funds from his friend and financial agent (Jerry had raised the money to finance the dinornis) necessitated his calling upon Jerry Hammond, who had made no response to his latter telegrams and letters.

Accordingly Professor Barrowes wended his way from the museum to Jerry's studio. Here, enthused and happy over the success of his trip, he failed to notice the abnormal condition of Jerry, whose listless hot hand dropped from his, and whose eye went roving absently above the head of his volubly chattering friend. It was only after the restless and continued pacing of the miserable Jerry and the failure to respond to questions put to him continued for some time, that Professor Barrowes was suddenly apprized that all was not well with his friend. He stopped midway in a long speech in which words like Mesozoic, Triassic and Jurassic prevailed and snapped his glasses suddenly upon his nose. Through these he scrutinised the perturbed and oblivious Jerry scientifically. The glasses were blinked off. Professor Barrowes seized the young man by the arm and stopped him as he started to cross the room for possibly the fiftieth time.

"Come! Come! What is it? What is the trouble, lad?"

Jerry turned his bloodshot eyes upon his old teacher. His unshaven, haggard face, twitching from the effects of his acute nearness to nervous prostration, startled Professor Barrowes. Lack of sleep, refusal of nourishment, the ceaseless search, the agonising fear and anguished longing took their full toll from the unhappy Jerry, but as his glance met the firm one of his friend, a tortured cry broke from his lips.

"Oh, for God's sake, Professor Barrowes, why did you not come when I asked you to? Sunny--_Oh, my God!_"

Professor Barrowes had Jerry's hand gripped closely in his own, and the disjointed story came out at last.

Sunny had come! Sunny had gone! He loved Sunny! He could not live without Sunny--but Sunny had gone! They had turned her out into the streets--his own mother and Miss Falconer.

For the first time, it may be said, since his discovery of the famous fossil of the Red Deer River, Professor Barrowes's mind left his beloved dinornis. He came back solidly to earth, shot back by the calling need of Jerry. Now the man of science was wide awake, and an upheaval was taking place within him. The words of his first telegram to Jerry rattled through his head just then: "The dinornis more important than Sunny." Now as he looked down on the bowed head of the boy for whom he cherished almost a father's love, Professor Barrowes knew that all the dried-up fossils of all the ages were as a handful of worthless dust as compared with this single living girl.

By main force Professor Barrowes made Jerry lie down on that couch, and himself served him the food humbly prepared by his heartbroken mother, who told Jerry's friend with a quivering lip that she felt sure he would not wish to take it from his mother's hands.

There was no going out for Jerry on that night. His protestations fell on deaf ears, and as a further precaution, Professor Barrowes secured possession of the key of the apartment. Only when the professor pointed out to him the fact that a breakdown on his part would mean the cessation of his search would Jerry finally submit to the older man taking his place temporarily. And so, at the telephone, which rang constantly all of that evening, Professor Barrowes took command. A thousand clues were everlastingly turning up. These were turned over to Jinx and Bobs, the former flying from one part of the city and country to another in his big car, and the latter, with an army of newspaper men helping him, and given full license by his paper, influenced by the elder Hammond and Potter. Finally, Professor Barrowes, having given certain instructions to turn telephone calls over to Monty in Bobs' apartment, sat down to Jerry's disordered work table, and, glasses perched on the end of his nose, he sorted out the mail. The afternoon letters still lay unopened, tossed down in despair by Jerry, when he failed to find that characteristic writing that he knew was Sunny's.

But now Professor Barrowes' head had suddenly jerked forward. His chin came out curiously, and his eyes blinked in amazement behind his glasses. He set them on firmer, fiercely, and slowly reread that two-line epistle. The hand holding the paper shook, but the eyes behind the glasses were bright.

"Jerry--come hither, young man!" he growled, his dry old face quivering up with something that looked comically like a smile glaring through threatened tears. "Read that."

Across the table Jerry reached over and took the letter from the famous steel magnate of New York. He read it slowly, dully, and then with a sense as of something breaking in his head and heart. Every word of those two lines sank like balm into his comprehension and consciousness. Then it seemed that a surge of blood rushed through his being, blinding him. The world rocked for Jerry Hammond. He saw a single star gleaming in a firmament that was all black. Down into immeasurable depths of space sank Jerry Hammond.