Chapter 16

Verelst, a hand on Jones' elbow, propelled him toward the lawyer, who gratified them with the look, very baleful and equally famous, with which he was said to reverse the Bench.

But Verelst, afraid of nothing except damp sheets, stretched a hand. "You know Ten Eyck Jones. He has something very important to tell you."

"Yes," said Jones. "In March, on the eighth or ninth, I have forgotten which, but it must be in the 'Law Journal,' a decision was rendered----"

He got no farther. Other members, crowding about, were questioning, surmising, eager for a detail, a prediction, an obiter dictum, for anything they could take away and repeat concerning the murder, in which all knew that the great man was to appear.

But Dunwoodie was making himself heard, and not gently either. It was as though already he was at the district attorney's throat.

"Where is the evidence? Where is it? Where is the evidence? There is not a shred, not a scintilla. On the absence of facts adduced, I shall maintain what I assert until the last armed Court of Appeals expires. Hum! Ha!"

Fiercely he turned on Jones. "What were you saying, sir?"

Before Jones could reply, Verelst cut in. "The stiletto is his. He has the opera-ticket. He----"

"Imbeciles tell each other that great men think alike," Jones, interrupting, remarked at Dunwoodie. "I merely happened to be forestalling your views, when a recent decision occurred to me and----"

Jones' remarks were lost, drowned by others, by questions, exclamations, the drivel that amazement creates.

"But, I say----" "Tell me this----" "No evidence!" "The stiletto his!" "How did Lennox get it?" "Then what about----"

Dunwoodie, fastening on Jones, roared at him. "You tell me the instrument is yours?"

Jones patted his chin. "I did not, but I will."

"How do you know, sir?"

"It has a little love message on it."

"Hum! Ha!" Dunwoodie barked. "Come to my office to-morrow. Come before ten."

Dreamily Jones tilted his hat. "I am not up before ten. Where do you live? In the Roaring Forties?"

But, in the mounting clamour, the answer, if answer there were, was submerged. Jones went out to the street, entered a taxi, gave an address and sailed away, up and across the Park, along the Riverside and into the longest thoroughfare--caravan routes excepted--on the planet.

On a corner was a drug-shop, where anything was to be had, even to umbrellas and, from a sign that hung there, apparently a notary public also. Opposite was a saloon, the Ladies Entrance horribly hospitable. Jones' trained eye--the eye of a novelist--gathered these things which it dropped in that bag which the subconscious is. Meanwhile the car, scattering children, tooted, turned and stopped before a leprous door.

In the hall, a girl of twelve, with the face of a seraph, and the voice of a fiend, was shrieking at a switchboard. Jones fearing, if he addressed her, that she might curse him, went on and up, higher, still higher, and began to feel quite birdlike. On the successive landings were doors and he wondered what tragedies, what comedies, what aims, lofty, mean or merely diabolic, they concealed. They were all labelled with names, Hun or Hebrew, usually both. But one name differed. It caressed.

There he rang.

When it opened, a strawberry mouth opened also. "Oh!" Cassy's blue eyes were red. There was fright in them. "It is horrible! Tell me, do you think it was he?"

Jones removed his hat. "I know it was not."

That mouth opened again, opened for breath, opened with relief. Gasping, she stared. "Thank God! I was afraid----But are you sure? It was I who told him--I thought it my fault. It was killing me. Tell me. Are you really sure?"

Jones motioned. "His lawyer is. I have just seen him."

"He is! Thank God then! Thank God! And my father! It has made him ill. He liked him so! I am going for medicine now. Will you go in and speak to him?"

She turned and called. "It is Mr. Jones--a friend of Mr. Lennox." She turned again. "I will be back in a minute."

Beyond, in the room with the piano and the painted warrior, the musician lay on a sofa, bundled in a rug. There was not much space on the sofa, yet, as Jones entered, he seemed to recede. Then, cavernously, he spoke.

"Forgive me for not rising. This business has been too much for me. Sit down."

Jones put his hat on the table and drew a chair. "I am sorry it has upset you. It amounts to nothing."

Perplexedly the musician repeated it. "Nothing?"

"I was referring to our friend Lennox."

"You call his arrest nothing?"

"Well, everything is relative. It may seem unusual to be held without bail and yet, if we all were, it would be commonplace."

The musician plucked at the rug. "I suppose everybody thinks he did it?"

"Everybody, no. I don't think so and I am sure your daughter doesn't."

"I wish she would hurry."

"Nor do you."

"No, I don't think so."

"I doubt if the police do either."

"After jailing him!"

Jones, who had been taking in the room, the piano, the portrait, the table, sketched a gesture.

"We are all in jail. The opinion of the world is a prison, our own ideas are another. We are doubly jailed, and very justly. We are depraved animals. We think, or think we think, and what we think others have thought for us and, as a rule, erroneously."

From a phonograph somewhere, in some adjacent den, there floated a tenor aria, the _Bella figlia del amore_, pierced suddenly and beautifully by a contralto's rich voice.

Jones turned. "That's Caruso. I don't know who the Maddelena is. Do you remember Campanini?"

"Yes, I remember him. He was a better actor than Caruso."

"And so ugly that he was good-looking. Caruso is becoming uneven."

Vaguely the musician considered the novelist. "You think so?"

"It rather looked that way last night."

Angelo Cara plucked again at the rug.

"But," Jones continued, "in the 'Terra addio' he made up for it. What an enchantment that duo is!"

The musician's hand moved from the rug to his face. "You were there then?"

I was this morning, thought Jones, but he said: "How sinful Rigoletto is by comparison to Aïda--by comparison I mean to the last act."

The other duo now had become a quartette. The voices of Gilda and Rigoletto were fusing with those of the figlia and the duke.

The musician appeared to be listening. His sunken eyes were lifted. Slowly he turned them on Jones.

"You didn't see anything, did you?"

"Last night? I did not see Lennox, if that is what you mean, or Paliser--except for a moment, during the crypt scene."

Chokingly the musician drew breath. In the effort he gasped. "Then you know."

"Yes, I know."

The rug rose and fell. It was as though there were a wave beneath it.

With an air of detachment, Jones added: "Paliser turned to see who was there. A sword-cane told him."

The musician's lips twitched, his face had contracted, his hand now was on his breast. "I wish Cassy would hurry. She's gone for amyl."

"Is it far?"

"The corner. Are you going to do anything?"

Jones shook his head. "I don't need to."

The sunken eyes were upon him. "Why do you say that?"

"You are an honest man."

The sunken eyes wavered. "At least I never supposed they would arrest Lennox. How could I?"

"No one could have supposed it. Besides, in your own conscience you were justified, were you not?"

"You know about that, too?"

"Yes, I know about that."

The Rigoletto disc now had been replaced by another, one from which a voice brayed, a voice nasal, jocular, felonious.

"That beast ought to be shot," Jones added.

The musician raised himself a little. "You don't misjudge her, do you?"

Jones, annoyed at the swill tossed about, had turned from him. He turned back. "Believe me, Mr. Cara, there is no one for whom I have a higher respect."

A spasm seized the musician. For a moment, save for the effort at breath, he was silent. Then feebly he said: "I wish she would hurry."

"Can I do anything?"

"Yes, tell me. Do you condemn me?"

The novelist hesitated. "There are no human scales for any soul. Though, to be sure----"

"What?"

"It might have been avoided. As it is, they will suspect her."

"Cassy?"

"Naturally. They can't hold Lennox on a paper-cutter--that belongs to me, and a few empty words said in my presence and which, if necessary, I did not hear. They can't hold him on that. But when they learn, as they will, the circumstances of your daughter's misadventure, they will arrest her."

"Merciful God!"

The jeopardy to her, a jeopardy previously undiscerned, but which then shaken at him, instantly took shape, twisted his mouth into the appalling grimace that mediæval art gave to the damned.

"And you don't want that," Jones remotely resumed.

"Want it!" Galvanised by the shock, the musician sat suddenly up. "Last night, after I got back, I slept like a log. This morning, I felt if I had not done it, I would still have it to do and that satisfied me. But afterwards, when I learned about Lennox, it threw me here. Now----My God!"

He fell back.

The poor devil is done for, thought Jones, who, wondering whether he could get it over in time, leaned forward.

"Mr. Cara, don't you think you had best make it plain sailing for everybody, and let me draw up a declaration?"

The disc now had run out. The grunt of the beast was stilled. From beyond came the quick click of a key. Almost at once Cassy appeared.

She hurried to her father. "There were people ahead of me. They took forever. Has Mr. Jones told you? Mr. Lennox did not do it."

Breaking a tube in a handkerchief, she was administering the amyl and Jones wondered whether she could then suspect. But her face was turned from him, he could not read it, and realising that, in any event, she must be spared the next act, he cast about for an excuse to get her away. At once, remembering the notary, he produced him.

"Your father wants me to draw a paper on which his signature should be attested. If I am not asking too much, would you mind going back to the druggist for the notary whose sign I saw there?"

Cassy turned from her father. "A paper? What paper?"

Bravely Jones lied. "A will."

Cassy looked from one to the other. "The poor dear often has these attacks. He will be better soon--now that he knows. Won't you, daddy?"

Angelo Cara's eyes had in them an expression infinitely tender, equally vacant. It was as though, in thinking of her, he was thinking too of something else. Though, as Jones afterward decided, he probably was not thinking at all.

Cassy exclaimed at him. "Besides, what have you--except me?"

"Everybody has to make a will," Jones, lying again, put in. "There has been a new law passed. The eternal revenue collector requires it."

Cassy smoothed the rug, put the handkerchief on the table, opened a drawer, got out some paper, a pen, a bottle of ink.

In a moment she had gone.

Jones seated himself at the table. "Forgive me for asking, but may I assume that you believe in God, a life hereafter and in the rewards and punishments which, we are told, await us?"

The musician closed his eyes.

"Thank you," said Jones, who began to write:

I, Angelo Cara, being in full possession of my senses and conscious of the immanence of death, do solemnly swear to the truth of this my dying declaration, which, I also solemnly swear, is made by me without any collusion with Keith Lennox. First; I firmly believe in God, in a life hereafter, and in future rewards and punishments. Second; I alone am guilty of the murder of Montagu Paliser, Jr., whom I killed without aid or accomplices and without the privity or knowledge of any other person.

Jones, wishing that in his law-school days he had crammed less and studied more, looked up.

"I cannot compliment you on your pen, Mr. Cara. But then, pen and ink always seem so emphatic. Personally, I prefer a pencil. Writing with a pencil is like talking in a whisper."

It was in an effort to deodorise the atmosphere, charged with the ghastly, that he said it. The declarant did not appear to notice. His sunken eyes had been closed. Widely they opened.

"The other side!"

Jones blotted the declaration. "The other side cannot be very different from this side. Not that part of it at least which people, such as you and I, first visit. A bit farther on, I suppose we prepare for our return here. For that matter, it will be very careless of us, if we don't. We relive and redie and redie and relive, endlessly, ad infinitum. The Church does not put it in just that manner, but the allegory of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting amounts, perhaps, to the same thing. 'Never the spirit was born, the spirit shall cease to be never.' That is the way Edwin Arnold expressed it, after the 'Gita' had expressed it for him. But probably you have not frequented the 'Gita,' Mr. Cara. It is an exceedingly----"

"Cassy's lace dress is all torn. It was so pretty."

He is in the astral now, thought Jones, who said: "She will have a much prettier one."

But now again from the hall came that quick click and Cassy appeared, a little fat man behind her.

Jones stood up. "How do you do. You know Mr. Cara. Mr. Cara wants his signature attested."

The little man exhibited his gold teeth. "With a will that is not the way. I told this young lady so but she would have it that I come along."

The young lady, who was taking her hat off, left the room.

Jones fished in a pocket. "It is very good of you. Here, if you please, is your fee. The document is not a will, it is a release."

As the novelist spoke, he put the pen in the musician's hand and, finding it necessary, or thinking that it was, for, as he afterward realised, it was not, he guided it.

"You acknowledge this----" the notary began. But at the moment Cassy returned and, it may be, distracted by her, he mumbled the rest, took the reply for granted, applied the stamp, exhibited his teeth. Then, at once, the hall had him.

Cassy turned to Jones. Her face disclosed as many emotions as an opal has colours. Relief, longing, uncertainty, and distress were there, ringed in beauty.

"Miss Austen ought to know how she has misjudged him. Do you suppose she would let me see her?"

Bully for you! thought Jones, who said: "I cannot imagine any one refusing you anything."

In speaking, he heard something. Cassy turned. She too had heard it. But what?

With a cry she ran to the sofa. "Daddy!"

His face was grey, the grey that dawn has, the grey than which there is nothing greyer and yet in which there is light. That light was there. His upper-lip was just a little raised. It was as though he had seen something that pleased him and of which he was about to tell.

"Daddy!"

Jones followed her. He drew down the rug and bent over. After a moment, he drew the rug up, well up, and, with a forefinger, saluted.

Cassy, tearing the covering back, flung herself there. Jones could not see her tears. He heard them. Her slim body shook.

XXXI

On leaving the walk-up Jones discovered a restaurant that he judged convenient and vile. But the convenience appealed, and the villainy of the place did not extend to the telephone-book, which was the first thing he ordered.

While waiting for it, it occurred to him that in a novel the death he had witnessed would seem very pat. Why is life so artificial? he wonderingly asked.

The query suggested another. It concerned not the decedent but his daughter.

By the Lord Harry, he told himself, her linen shall not be washed in public if I can prevent it, and what is the use in being a novelist if you can't invent?

But now the book was before him. In it he found that Dunwoodie resided near Columbia University. It was ages since he had ventured in that neighbourhood, which, when finally he got there, gave him the agreeable sensation of being in a city other than New York.

Hic Labor, Haec Quies, he saw written on the statue of a tall maiden, and though, in New York, quiet is to be had only in the infrequent cemeteries, deep down, yet with the rest of the inscription he had been engaged all day.

Gravely saluting the maiden, who was but partly false, he passed on to an apartment-house and to Dunwoodie's door, which was opened by Dunwoodie himself. In slippers and a tattered gown, he was Hogarthian.

"I thought it a messenger!" he bitterly exclaimed.

Jones smiled at him. "When a man of your eminence is not wrong, he is invariably right. I am a messenger."

In the voice of an ogre, Dunwoodie took it up. "What is the message, sir?"

Jones pointed at the ceiling. Involuntarily, Dunwoodie looked up and then angrily at the novelist.

"An order of release," the latter announced.

Dunwoodie glared. "I suppose, sir, I must let you in, but allow me to tell you----"

Urbanely Jones gestured. "Pray do not ask my permission, it is a privilege to listen to anything you may say."

Dunwoodie turned. Through a winding hall he led the way to a room in which a lane went from the threshold to a table. The lane was bordered with an underbush of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines. Behind the underbush was a forest of books. Beside the table were an armchair and a stool. From above, hung a light. Otherwise, save for cobwebs, the room was bare and very relaxing.

Dunwoodie taking the chair, indicated the stool. "Now, sir!"

Jones gave him the declaration.

With not more than a glance Dunwoodie possessed himself of the contents. He put it down.

"If I had not known you had studied law, not for a moment would that rigamarole lead me to suspect it."

In a protest which was quite futile, Jones raised a hand. "The notary is unnecessary, I know that. I know also that a dying declaration is not the best evidence, but----"

"Do you at least know that the declarant is dead?"

Jones, who favoured the dramatic, nodded. "He died in my arms."

Dunwoodie took it in and took it out. "It is curious how crime leads to bad taste."

Jones leaned forward. "I may tell you for your information----"

"Spare me, I am overburdened with information as it is."

Jones sat back. He had no intention of taking Dunwoodie then behind the scenes. That would come later. But he did want to try out an invention that had occurred to him. He sighed.

"Don't you care to hear why he did it?"

"Not in the least."

"But----"

Dunwoodie fumbled in a pocket. "The district attorney may be more receptive. I shall go to him in the morning and I will thank you to go with me."

"I am not up in the morning."

"Then don't go to bed."

From the pocket, Dunwoodie extracted an enormous handkerchief. It fascinated Jones. He had never seen one that resembled it.

"You dispose of me admirably. The district attorney, I suppose, will enter a nolle prosequi."

In that handkerchief, Dunwoodie snorted. "You may suppose what you like."

Jones laughed. "It is my business to suppose. I suppose, when the murder was committed, that Lennox was at home. If I am right, he has an alibi which his servant can confirm."

Dunwoodie stared. "Whatever your business may be, it is not to teach me mine."

Jones drew out a cigarette-case. "Let me sit at your feet then. What does Lennox say?"

"How inquisitive you are! But to be rid of you, he----"

"May I smoke?" Jones interrupted.

"Good God, sir! You are not preparing to make a night of it?"

"I have one or two other little matters in hand. But since I may suppose all I like, I take it that Lennox intended to go to the opera, though I fancy also that he had no intention of going to Paliser's box. I suppose that he intended to wait about and go for him hot and heavy when he came out. I suppose also that, while dressing, he changed his mind. And, by the way, isn't there such a writ as a mandamus, or a duces tecum? I would like my paper-cutter returned."

"Confound your paper-cutter! You don't deserve to have me admit it, but Lennox' account of it is that before going on to the opera, he stopped to write a letter to Miss--er--Hum! Ha!"

"Miss Austen?"

"And when he got through it was midnight."

"I'll lay a pippin he didn't send it."

"What, sir?"

"Lennox had a lot to say. It was gagging him. He would have suffocated if he had kept it in. The effect of getting it on black and white was an emetic. He read it over, judged it inadequate, tore it up. I have done the same thing. I daresay you have."

The great man sat back. "His scrap-basket has been visited. The letter was there."

"Well, then, I suppose the short and long of it is, you will have him out to-morrow."

"As I said, you may suppose all you like."

"Without indiscretion then, may I suppose that you live here alone?"

Dunwoodie flourished his handkerchief. It was cotton and big as a towel.

"I am not as young as you are, sir, and whether erroneously or not, I believe myself better informed."

"Ah!" Jones put in. "Your physiognomy corroborates you. I have sometimes thought that it were difficult for the Seven Sages to be as wise as you look--which is the reason, perhaps, why I do not quite follow you."

"I did not imagine that you would. You are a sociable being. Every imbecile is pitiably sociable. But for a thinking man, a man without vices and without virtues, what is there except solitude?"

Appreciatively Jones motioned. "Thank you for descending to my level. As it happens, I also have a cloister where I have the double advantage of being by myself and of not being with others. But now that I am in your hermitage, there is this Matter of Ziegler, concerning which I would like the benefit of your professional advice."

"Hum! Ha! Got yourself mixed up with a woman and want me to pull you out. Well, sir, you will find it expensive. But a hermitage is not an office. I shall expect you at mine to-morrow. I shall expect you before ten."

Dunwoodie stood up. "To-morrow, though, your turpitudes will have to wait. Have you been served?"

Jones laughed. "Not yet."

"Time enough then. You can find the door?"

Through the lane, bordered by rubbish, and on through the winding hall, Jones went out. As Dunwoodie had said, there was time enough. There had been no service--no summons, no complaint. It might be that there would be none. The matter might adjust itself without any. It might be that there was no ground for action. Jones could not tell. After the manner of those who have crammed for a law examination, there had been a moment when he knew, or thought he knew, it all. But also after the manner of those who have not taken the post-graduate course which practice is, the crammed knowledge had gone. Only remnants and misfits remained. It was on these that he had conjectured the suit which, meanwhile, constituted a nut to crack. There was time and to spare though. Besides, for the moment, he had other things to do.

Then, as he went on to attend to them, he wondered why Dunwoodie, who, he thought, must make a hundred thousand a year, lived like a ragpicker.

Before him, the starshell, which imagination projects, burst suddenly.

He said he had no virtues and probably told the truth, Jones decided. In which case he cannot be a miser. But he also said he had no vices and probably lied like a thief. The old scoundrel is a philanthropist. I would wager an orchard of pippins on that, but there is no one to take me up--except this policeman.

"Officer," he resumed aloud. "Behold a stranger in a strange land. By any miracle, is there a taxi-stand nearby?"

Then presently Jones was directing a driver.

"The Tombs!"

XXXII

In a dirty cell Lennox sat on a dirty cot. Through a door, dirty too, but barred, came a shuffle of feet, the sound of the caged at bay and that odour, perhaps unique, which prisons share, the smell of dry-rot, perspiration, disinfectants and poisoned teeth. In addition to the odour there was light, not much, but some. Nearby was a sink. Altogether it was a very nice cell, fit for the Kaiser. Lennox took no pleasure in it. Rage enveloped him. The rage was caused not by the cell but by his opinion of it. That was only human.