"Persons Unknown". Virginia Tracy

CHAPTER XI

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PERSONS UNKNOWN

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      The revulsion of feeling in Christina's favor was so immense that it became a kind of panic. It practically engulfed the rest of the inquest. The taking of testimony from her mother and Mrs. Deutch was the emptiest of formalities; the notion of holding her under surveillance until Ingham's cabman and Ann Cornish could be produced confessed itself ridiculous. Another woman, a strange woman, an aggressive, sarcastic woman forcing her way in upon Ingham a couple of hours before his death, and not coming down again! Well!

      As for the coroner, he suffered less a defeat than a rout. Even his instant leap upon Joe Patrick was only a plucky spurt. He was struggling now against the tide, and he knew it; the strength of his attack was sucked down. Even the remainder of Joe's own evidence did not receive its due consideration. The public fancy fastened upon that figure of a smiling woman, "awful pretty, but with something scaring about her," leaning over the baluster to laugh, "I won't hurt him!" It worked out the rest for itself.

      "Yes, sir," Joe persisted, "my mother misunderstood me, all right. I said I took her for Miss Hope at the door, and so I did. But she wasn't."

      "Did she look so much like Miss Hope?"

      "No, sir; not when she came near. That was the thing made me feel so queer. I can't understand it. First she was Miss Hope, and then she wasn't. She gave me a funny feeling when I seen her standing there in the door an' says to myself, 'There's Miss Hope.' 'Twas kind of's if I seen her ghost. An' then all of a sudden there she was, right on top o' me. An' not like Miss Hope a bit. An' that gimme a funny feeling, too!"

      "Well, never mind your sensations. If she didn't resemble Miss Hope, at least how did she differ from her?"

      "Why, I guess she was a good deal handsomer for one thing. At least I expect most people would think so, though I prefer Miss Hope's style, myself. She was dressier, for one thing, in white lace like, with a big hat, an' she was pretty near as slim, but yet she had, as you might say, more figger. An' she had red hair."

      Joe had made another sensation.

      "Red hair! Curly?"

      "Well, it was combed standin' out fluffy like one o' these here halos, up into her hat. It wasn't anyways common red, you know, sir, it was elegant, stylish red, like the goldy part in flames."

      "Don't get poetic, Joe. Was she a very young lady?"

      "I don't think so, sir.—Oh, I guess she wouldn't hardly see twenty-five again! Her feet, sir? I didn't notice. But she didn't walk kind o' waddlin', either, nor else kind o' pinchin', the way ladies mostly do; she just swum right along, like Miss Hope does."

      "But she didn't swim downstairs again, without your seeing her?"

      "No, sir."

      "Now look here, Joe Patrick, how do you know she didn't? When Mr. Bird went to the 'phone after the shooting he was a long time getting connected, and Mr. Herrick found you asleep at the desk."

      "I couldn't have fell asleep again until after one o'clock, sir, for I had a clock right on the desk and at one I noticed the time. I was watchin' for her, she was such a queer one, an' only one man came in all that time, that I had to carry upstairs. He only went to the fourth floor, just where she was, an' I rushed him up an' dropped right down again. She couldn't ha' walked down in that time. I could hear the piano goin' all the while, the front doors bein' open. But after one I must ha' dropped off. Because it was about twenty minutes past when Mr. Herrick shook me up. Then I knew I'd been kind o' comin' to, the last few minutes, hearin' Mr. Bird ringin'. When Mr. Herrick grabbed my elevator I called up Mr. Deutch, an' he was quite a minute, too. I says to him, 'Say, Mr. Deutch, somepun's happened,' an' I switched him onto Mr. Bird."

      "Well, we're very much obliged to you, Mr. Patrick, for an exceedingly full account. What apartment did the gentleman have whom you took up to the fourth floor? Perhaps he may have heard something."

      "I don't know, sir."

      "What?"

      "He just stepped into the elevator, like he lived there, an' he says to me, 'Fourth!' I never thought nothing about him."

      "You didn't know him?"

      "No, sir."

      "You'd never seen him before?"

      "No, sir."

      "Nor since?"

      "No, sir."

      "You took a man upstairs in the middle of the night, without announcing him, whom you knew to be a stranger?"

      "Why no, I thought he was a new tenant. We got a few furnished apartments in the building, goes by the month. And then there's always a good deal o' sublettin' in the summer. He was so quiet an' never asked any questions nor anything, goin' right along about his business, I never give him a thought."

      "Well, give him a thought now, my boy. When you let him out of the elevator, which way did he turn?"

      The boy started and his eyes jumped open. "Oh, good Lord! sir," he cried, "why, he turned down toward 4-B."

      His start was reproduced in the persons of all present. Only the coroner controlled himself.

      "What time was this?"

      "It hadn't quite struck one, sir."

      "And during all this talk about Mr. Ingham's murder, at one-fifteen, it never occurred to you that at just before one, you had taken up to his floor a man whom you had never seen, whom you never saw again, and who turned toward his apartment?"

      "I'm sorry, sir. I never thought of it till this minute."

      "Think hard, now. Give us a good description of this man."

      "A description of him?"

      "Yes, yes. What did he look like?"

      "Why, I don't hardly know, sir."

      "Try and remember. He at least, I presume, did not remind you of Miss Hope?"

      "No, sir; he didn't remind me of anything."

      "He looked so unlike other people?"

      "No, sir. He looked just like all gentlemen."

      "I see, Joseph, that you don't observe your own sex with the passionate attention which you reserve for ladies. Well, had he a beard or a mustache?"

      "No, sir, he hadn't any beard, I'm sure."

      "Come, that's something! And no mustache?"

      "Well, I don't think so, sir. But I wouldn't hardly like to say."

      "Was he light or dark?"

      "I never noticed, sir."

      "Was he tall?"

      "Well, sir, I should say he was about middle height."