The Destroying Angel

"That alone, great as it is, wouldn't have brought so many people together to stare at the outside of a theatre. The magnet was something stronger – the morbid curiosity of New York. Those people were waiting, thrilled with expectancy, on tiptoe for – what do you think?"

"I shall think you mad in another moment, if you don't explain yourself," Whitaker told him candidly.

Ember's smile flashed and vanished. "They were waiting for the sensation that presently came to them: the report of Drummond's death."

"What the devil – !"

"Patience!.. It had been discounted: if something of the sort hadn't happened, New York would have gone to bed disappointed. The reason? This is the third time it has happened – the same thing, practically: Sara Law on the verge of leaving the stage to marry, a fatal accident intervening. Did Max by any chance mention the nickname New York has bestowed on Sara Law?"

"Nickname? No!"

"They call her 'The Destroying Angel.'"

"What damnable rot!"

"Yes; but what damnable coincidence. Three men loved her – and one by one they died. And now the fourth. Do you wonder…?"

"Oh, but – 'The Destroying Angel' – !" Whitaker cried indignantly. "How can they blame her?"

"It isn't blame – it's superstition. Listen…"

Ember bent forward, holding Whitaker's gaze with intent, grave eyes. "The first time," he said in a rapid undertone, "was a year or so after her triumph as Joan Thursday. There were then two men openly infatuated with her, a boy named Custer, and a man I believe you knew – William Hamilton."

"I knew them both."

"Custer was making the pace; the announcement of his engagement to Sara Law was confidently anticipated. He died suddenly; the coroner's jury decided that he had misjudged the intentions of a loaded revolver. People whispered of suicide, but it didn't look quite like that to me. However … Hamilton stepped into his place. Presently we heard that Sara Law was to marry him and leave the stage. Hamilton had to go abroad on business; on the return trip – the wedding was set for the day after he landed here – he disappeared, no one knew how. Presumably he fell overboard by accident one night; sane men with everything in the world to live for do such things, you know – according to the newspapers."

"I understand you. Please go on."

"Approximately eighteen months later a man named Thurston – Mitchell Thurston – was considered a dangerous aspirant for the hand of Sara Law. He was exceedingly well fixed in a money way – a sort of dilettantish architect, with offices in the Metropolitan Tower. One day at high noon he left his desk to go to lunch at Martin's; crossing Madison Square, he suddenly fell dead, with a bullet in his brain. It was a rifle bullet, but though the square was crowded, no one had heard the report of the shot, and no one was seen carrying a rifle. The conclusion was that he had been shot down by somebody using a gun with a Maxim silencer, from a window on the south side of the square. There were no clues."

"And now Drummond!" Whitaker exclaimed in horror. "Poor fellow! Poor woman!"

A slightly sardonic expression modified the lines of Ember's mouth. "So far as Mrs. Whitaker is concerned," he said with the somewhat pedantic mode of speech which Whitaker was to learn to associate with his moments of most serious concentration – "I echo the sentiment. But let us suspend judgment on Drummond's case until we know more. It is not as yet an established fact that he is dead."

"You mean there's hope – ?"

"There's doubt," Ember corrected acidly – "doubt, at least, in my mind. You see, I saw Drummond in the flesh, alive and vigorous, a good half hour after he is reported to have leaped to his death."

"Where?"

"Coming up the stairs from the down-town Subway station in front of the Park Avenue Hotel. He wore a hat pulled down over his eyes and an old overcoat buttoned tight up to his chin. He was carrying a satchel bearing the initials C. S. D., but was otherwise pretty thoroughly disguised, and, I fancied, anxious enough to escape recognition."

"You're positive about this?"

"My dear man," said Ember with an air, "I saw his ear distinctly."

"His ear!"

"I never forget an ear; I've made a special study of them. They're the last parts of the human anatomy that criminals ever think to disguise; and, to the trained eye, as infallible a means of identification – nearly – as thumb-prints. The man I saw coming up from the Subway kept as much as possible away from the light; he had successfully hidden most of his face; but he wore the inches, the hand-bag, and the ear of Carter S. Drummond. I don't think I can be mistaken."

"Did you stop him – speak to him?"

Ember shook his head. "No. I doubt if he would have remembered me. Our acquaintance has been of the slightest, limited to a couple of meetings. Besides, I was in a hurry to get to the theatre, and at that time had heard nothing of this reputed suicide."

"Which way did he go?"

"Toward the Pennsylvania station, I fancy; that is, he turned west through Thirty-third Street. I didn't follow – I was getting into a taxi when I caught sight of him."

"But what did you think to see him disguised? Didn't it strike you as curious?"

"Very," said Ember dryly. "At the same time, it was none of my affair – then. Nor did it present itself to me as a matter worth meddling with until, later, my suspicions were aroused by the scene in the theatre – obviously the result of your appearance there – and still later, when I heard the suicide report."

"But – good Lord!" Whitaker passed a hand across his dazed eyes. "What can it mean? Why should he do this thing?"

"There are several possible explanations… How long has Drummond known that you were alive?"

"Since noon to-day."

"Not before?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Still, it's possible. If he has a sensitive nature – I think he hasn't – the shame of being found out, caught trying to marry your wife when he had positive knowledge you still lived, may have driven him to drop out of sight. Again… May I ask, what was the extent of your property in his trust?"

"A couple of hundred-thousands."

"And he believed you dead and was unable to find your widow …"

"Oh, I don't think that!" Whitaker expostulated.

"Nor do I. We're merely considering possible explanations. There's a third …"

"Well?"

"He may have received a strong hint that he was nominated for the fate that overtook young Custer, Hamilton and Thurston; and so planned to give his disappearance the colour of a similar end."

"You don't mean to say you think there was any method in that train of tragedies?"

"I'm not in the least superstitious, my dear man. I don't for an instant believe, as some people claim to, that Sara Law is a destroying angel, hounded by a tragic fate: that her love is equivalent to the death warrant of the man who wins it."

"But what do you think, then?"

"I think," said Ember, slowly, his gaze on the table, "that some one with a very strong interest in keeping the young woman single – and on the stage – "

"Max! Impossible!"

Ember shrugged. "In human nature, no madness is impossible. There's not a shred of evidence against Jules Max. And yet – he's a gambler. All theatrical managers are, of course; but Max is a card-fiend. The tale of his plunging runs like wild-fire up and down Broadway, day by day. A dozen times he's been on the verge of ruin, yet always he has had Sara Law to rely upon; always he's been able to fall back upon that asset, sure that her popularity would stave off bankruptcy. And he's superstitious: he believes she is his mascot. I don't accuse him – I suspect him, knowing him to be capable of many weird extravagances… Furthermore, it's a fact that Max was a fellow-passenger with Billy Hamilton when the latter disappeared in mid-ocean."

Ember paused and sat up, preparatory to rising. "All of which," he concluded, "explains why I have trespassed upon your patience and your privacy. It seemed only right that you should get the straight, undistorted story from an unprejudiced onlooker. May I venture to add a word of advice?"

"By all means."

"Have you told Max of your relations with Sara Law?"

"No."

"Or anybody else?"

"No."

"Then keep the truth to yourself – at least until this coil is straightened out."

Ember got up. "Good night," he said pleasantly.

Whitaker took his hand, staring. "Good night," he echoed blankly. "But – I say – why keep it quiet?"

Ember, turning to go, paused, his glance quietly quizzical. "You don't mean to claim your wife?"

"On the contrary, I expect to offer no defence to her action for divorce."

"Grounds of desertion?"

"I presume so."

"Just the same, keep it as quiet as possible until the divorce is granted. If you live till then … you may possibly continue to live thereafter."

IX
ENTR'ACTE

Dawn of Sunday found Whitaker still awake. Alone in his uncheerful hotel bedchamber, his chair tilted back against the wall, he sat smoking and thinking, reviewing again and again every consideration growing out of his matrimonial entanglement.

He turned in at length to the dreamless slumbers of mental exhaustion.

The morning introduced him to a world of newspapers gone mad and garrulous with accounts of the sensation of the preceding night. What they told him only confirmed the history of his wife's career as detailed by the gratuitous Mr. Ember. There was, however, no suggestion in any report that Drummond had not in fact committed suicide – this, despite the total disappearance of the hypothetical corpse. No doubts seemed to have arisen from the circumstance that there had been, apparently, but a single witness of the felo de se. A man, breathless with excitement, had run up to the nearest policeman with word of what he claimed to have seen. In the subsequent confusion he had vanished. And so thoroughly, it seemed, had the mind of New York been prepared for some fatal accident to this latest lover of Sara Law that no one dreamed of questioning the authenticity of the report.

Several sensational sheets ran exhaustive résumés, elaborately illustrated, of the public life of "The Destroying Angel."

Some remarked the fact that little or nothing was known of the history of Sara Law prior to her appearance, under the management of Jules Max, as Joan Thursday.

Whitaker learned that she had refused herself to the reporters who besieged her residence.

It seemed to be an unanimous assumption that the news of Drummond's suicide had in some manner been conveyed to the woman while on the stage.

No paper mentioned the name of Whitaker…

In the course of the forenoon a note for Whitaker was delivered at the hotel.

The heavy sheet of white paper, stamped with the address in Fifty-seventh Street, bore this message in a strong but nervous hand:

"I rely upon the generosity you promise me. This marriage of ours, that is no marriage, must be dissolved. Please let my attorneys – Landers, Grimshaw & Clark, 149 Broadway – know when and where you will accept service. Forgive me if I seem ungrateful and unfeeling. I am hardly myself. And please do not try to see me now. Some day I hope to see and thank you; to-day – it's impossible. I am going away to forget, if I can.

"Mary Ladislas Whitaker."

Before nightfall Whitaker had satisfied himself that his wife had, in truth, left her town house. The servants there informed all who inquired that they had been told to report and to forward all letters to Messrs. Landers, Grimshaw & Clark.

Whitaker promptly notified those attorneys that he was ready to be served at their convenience. He further desired them to inform their client that her suit would be uncontested. But beyond their brief and business-like acknowledgment, he heard nothing more of the action for divorce.

He sought Max several times without success. When at length run to ground in the roulette room of a Forty-fourth Street gambling-house, the manager was grimly reticent. He professed complete ignorance of his star's welfare and whereabouts. He advised Whitaker to consult the newspapers, if his interest was so insatiable.

Warned by the manager's truculent and suspicious tone that his secret was, after all, buried no more than skin-deep, Whitaker dissembled artfully his anxiety, and abandoned Max to his pet vices.

The newspapers reported Sara Law as being in retirement in several widely separated sections of the country. She was also said to have gone abroad, sailing incognito by a second-class steamship from Philadelphia.

The nine-days' wonder disintegrated naturally. The sobriquet of "The Destroying Angel" disappeared from the newspaper scare-heads. So also the name of Drummond. Hugh Morten Whitaker, the dead man come to life, occupied public interest for a brief half-day. By the time that the executors of Carter Drummond and the attorneys representing his clients began to make sense of his estate and interests, their discoveries failed to command newspaper space.

This phenomenon was chiefly due to the fact that Whitaker didn't care to raise an outcry about his loss. Ember, it seemed, had guessed shrewdly: Drummond had appropriated to his own uses every dollar of the small fortune left in his care by his erstwhile partner. No other client of his had suffered, however. His peculations had been confined wholly to the one quarter whence he had had every reason to anticipate neither protest nor exposure. In Whitaker's too-magnanimous opinion, the man had not been so much a thief as one who yielded to the temptation to convert to his own needs and uses a property against which, it appeared, no other living being cared to enter a claim.

Whether or not he had ever learned or guessed that Sara Law was the wife of Whitaker, remained problematic. Whitaker inclined to believe that Drummond had known – that he had learned the truth from the lips of his betrothed wife. But this could not be determined save through her. And she kept close hidden.

The monetary loss was an inconsiderable thing to a man with an interest in mines in the Owen Stanley country. He said nothing. Drummond's name remained untarnished, save in the knowledge of a few.

Of these, Martin Ember was one. Whitaker made a point of hunting him up. The retired detective received confirmation of his surmise without any amazement.

"You still believe that he's alive?"

"Implicitly," Ember asserted with conviction.

"Could you find him, if necessary?"

"Within a day, I think. Do you wish me to?"

"I don't know…"

Ember permitted Whitaker to consider the matter in silence for some moments. Then, "Do you want advice?" he inquired.

"Well?"

"Hunt him down and put him behind the bars," said Ember instantly.

"What's the good of that?"

"Your personal safety."

"How?"

"Don't you suppose he misses all he's been accustomed to? – living as he does in constant terror of being discovered, the life of a hunted thing, one of the under-world, an enemy of society! Don't you suppose he'd be glad to regain all he's lost – business, social position, the esteem of his friends, the love of a woman who will soon be free to marry him?"

"Well?"

"With you out of the way, he could come back without fear."

"Oh – preposterous!"

"Is it?"

"Drummond's not that sort. He's weak, perhaps, but no criminal."

"A criminal is the creature of a warped judgment. There'd be no criminals if every one were able to attain his desires within the law. Misfortunes breed weird maggots in a man's brain. Drummond's dragging out a wretched existence in a world of false perspectives; he's not to be blamed if he presently begins to see things as they are not."

Ember permitted another pause to lengthen, unbroken by Whitaker.

"Shall I try to find him for you?" he asked quietly, in the end.

"No," Whitaker decided. "No. Let him alone – poor devil!"

Ember disclaimed further responsibility with a movement of his shoulders.

"But my wife? Could you find her as readily?"

"Possibly," the detective admitted cautiously. "But I don't mean to."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't want me to. Do you?"

"No…"

"But principally because she doesn't want me to. Otherwise she'd let you know where to look for her."

"True."

These fragments of dialogue are from a conversation that took place in the month of June, nearly seven weeks after the farewell performance at the Theatre Max. Interim, Whitaker had quietly resumed his place in the life of the town, regaining old friendships, renewing old associations. Save for the fact that he pursued no gainful occupation, all with him was much as it had been: as if the intervening six years of exile had been blotted out, or had never been. The mild excitement occasioned by his reappearance had already subsided; he was again an accepted and substantial factor in the society of his kind.

He had abandoned all thought of returning to New Guinea, entertained, indeed, no inclination whatever to do so. The life he now led was more or less normal to him. Yet he was sensible of a growing restlessness. He had nothing to busy himself with: this was the unguessed secret of his unsettled temper. And the approach of hot weather was narrowing the circle of his acquaintances. People were leaving town daily, for Europe, for the seashore, for the mountains.

He began to receive invitations for week-ends and longer visits out of town. A few of the former he accepted – always, however, returning to New York with a sense of necessity strong upon his spirit. Something held him there, some influence elusive of analysis. He was discontented, but felt that he could not find content elsewhere.

Gradually he began to know more hours of loneliness than suited his tastes. His rooms – the old rooms overlooking Bryant Park, regained and refurnished much as they had been six years before – knew his solitary presence through many a long evening. July came with blistering breath, and he took to the Adirondacks, meaning to be gone a month. Within ten days he was home again, drawn back irresistibly by that strange insatiable craving of unformulated desire. Town bored him, yet he could not seem to rest away from it.

He wandered in and out, up and down, an unquiet, irresolute soul, tremendously perplexed…

There came one dark and sultry night, heavy beneath skies overcast, in August. Whitaker left a roof-garden in the middle of a stupid performance, and walked the streets till long after midnight, courting the fatigue that alone could bestow untroubled sleep. On his return, a sleepy hall-boy with a wilted collar ran the elevator up to his tenth-floor landing and, leaving him fumbling at the lock of his door, dropped clankingly out of sight. Whitaker entered and shut himself in with the pitch-blackness of his private hall.

He groped along the wall for the electric switch, and found only the shank of it – the hard-rubber button having disappeared. And then, while still he was trying to think how this could have happened, he sustained a murderous assault.

A miscalculation on the part of the marauder alone saved him. The black-jack (or whatever the weapon was) missing his head by the narrowest shave, descended upon his left shoulder with numbing force. Notwithstanding his pain and surprise, Whitaker rallied and grappled, thus escaping a second and possibly more deadly blow.

But his shoulder was almost useless, and the pain of it began to sicken him, while the man in his grip fought like a devil unchained. He found himself wedged back into a corner, brutal fingers digging deep into the flesh round his windpipe. He fought desperately to escape strangulation. Eventually he struggled out of the corner and gave ground through the doorway into his sitting-room.

For some minutes the night in that quiet room, high above the city, was rendered wild and violent with the crashes of overthrown furniture and the thud and thump of struggling bodies. Then by some accident little short of miraculous, Whitaker broke free and plunged across the room in what he imagined to be the direction of a dresser in which he kept a revolver. His foot slipped on the hardwood floor, the ankle twisted, and he fell awkwardly, striking his head against a table-leg with such force that he lay half-stunned. An instant later his assailant emptied five chambers of a revolver into the darkness about him, and then, alarmed by a racket of pounding on the hall door, fled successfully by way of the fire-escape to adjoining roofs and neighbouring back-yards.

By the time Whitaker was able to pull himself together and hobble to the door, a brace of intelligent policemen who had been summoned by the hall-boy were threatening to break it down. Admitted, they took his safety into their care and, simultaneously, the revolver which he incautiously admitted possessing. Later they departed, obviously disgruntled by the unprofessional conduct of the "crook" who had left no "clues," with a warning to the house-holder that he might expect to be summoned to court, as soon as he was able to move, to answer for the crime of keeping a weapon of defence.

Whitaker took to his bed in company with a black temper and the aroma of arnica.

He entertained, the next day, several persons: reporters; a physician; a futile, superfluous, unornamental creature misleadingly designated a plain-clothes man; finally his friend (by now their acquaintance had warmed to real friendship) Ember.

The retired investigator found Whitaker getting into his clothes: a ceremony distinguished by some profanity and numerous grunts.

"Afternoon," he said, taking a chair and surveying the sufferer with slightly masked amusement. "Having a good time?"

"You go to thunder!" said Whitaker in disgust.

"Glad to see you're not hurt much," pursued the other, unabashed.

Whitaker withered him with a glare. "I suppose it's nothing to have a shoulder and arm black-and-blue to the elbow! a bump on the side of my head as big as a hard-boiled egg! a bruised throat and an ankle next door to sprained! Oh, no – I'm not much hurt!"

"You're lucky to be alive," observed Ember, exasperatingly philosophic.

"A lot you know about it!"

"I'm a canny little guesser," Ember admitted modestly.

"Where'd you get your information, then?"

Ember waved a non-committal hand. "I hear things…"

"Oh, yes – you know a lot. I suppose you could lay this thug by the heels in a brace of shakes?"

"Just about," Ember admitted placidly. "I wouldn't mind trying."

"Then why don't you?" Whitaker demanded heatedly.

"I had a notion you wouldn't want me to."

Whitaker stared aggressively. "You mean … Drummond?"

The answer was a nod.

"I don't believe it."

"You'll at all events do me the credit to recall that I warned you two months ago."

"All the same, I don't believe it was Drummond."

"You haven't missed any property, I believe?"

"No."

"So presumably the fellow had some motive other than a desire to thieve. Besides, if he'd been on the loot he might much more easily have tried one of the lower floors – and more sensibly."

"It would seem so," Whitaker admitted sulkily.

"And that missing switch-button – "

"What do you know about that?"

"My sources of information… It strikes me that a man who took that much trouble to prevent your turning on the light must have been rather anxious to avoid recognition. I shed the inference for its intrinsic worth, merely."

"Well…" Whitaker temporized.

"And I'd like to know what you mean to do."

"About what?"

"With the understanding that you're content to leave the case of burglary and assault to the mercies of the police: what do you mean to do with yourself?"

"I don't know – hadn't thought."

"Unless you're hell-bent on sticking around here to get your head bashed in – I venture respectfully to suggest that you consign yourself to my competent care."

"Meaning – ?"

"I've got a bungalow down on Long Island – a one-horse sort of a bachelor affair – and I'm going to run down there this evening and stay awhile. There's quiet, no society and good swimming. Will you come along and be my guest until you grow tired of it?"

Whitaker looked his prospective host over with a calculating, suspicious eye.

"I ought to be able to take care of myself," he grumbled childishly.

"Granted."

"But I've a great mind to take you up."

"Sensibly spoken. Can you be ready by three? I'll call with the car then, if you can."

"Done with you!" declared Whitaker with a strong sense of relief.

As a matter of fact, he was far less incredulous of Ember's theory than he chose to admit.