The Destroying Angel

The man galloped on, howling. But Whitaker stood with his gaze riveted in horror. The news item so pointedly offered to his attention was clearly legible in the light of the cab lamps.

LATEST EXTRA

TRAGIC SUICIDE IN HARLEM RIVER

Stopping his automobile in the middle of Washington Bridge at 7.30 P.M., Carter S. Drummond, the lawyer and fiancé of Sara Law the actress, threw himself to his death in the Harlem River. The body has not as yet been recovered.

VIII

A HISTORY

Whitaker returned at once to the Theatre Max, but only to find the front of the house dark, Forty-sixth Street gradually reassuming its normal nocturnal aspect.

At the stage-door he discovered that no one knew what had become of the manager. He might possibly be at home… It appeared that Max occupied exclusive quarters especially designed for him in the theatre building itself: an amiable idiosyncrasy not wholly lacking in advertising value, if one chose to consider it in that light.

His body-servant, a prematurely sour Japanese, suggested grudgingly that his employer might not improbably be found at Rector's or Louis Martin's. But he wasn't; not by Whitaker, at least.

Eventually the latter realized that it wasn't absolutely essential to his peace of mind or material welfare to find Max that night. He had been, as a matter of fact, seeking him in thoughtless humour – moved solely by the gregarious instinct in man, which made him want to discuss the amazing events of the evening with the one who, next to himself and Sara Law, was most vitally concerned with them.

He consulted a telephone book without finding that Drummond had any private residence connection, and then tried at random one of the clubs of which they had been members in common in the days when Hugh Whitaker was a human entity in the knowledge of the town. Here he had better luck – luck, that is, in as far as it put an end to his wanderings for the night; he found a clerk who remembered his face without remembering his name, and who, consequently, was not unwilling to talk. Drummond, it seemed, had lived at the club; he had dined alone, that evening, in his room; had ordered his motor car from the adjacent garage for seven o'clock; and had left at about that hour with a small hand-bag and no companion. Nothing further was known of his actions save the police report. The car had been found stationary on Washington Bridge, and deserted, Drummond's motor coat and cap on the driver's seat. Bystanders averred that a man had been seen to leave the car and precipitate himself from the bridge to the stream below. The body was still unrecovered. The club had notified by telegraph a brother in San Francisco, the only member of Drummond's family of whom it had any record. Friends, fellow-members of the club, were looking after things – doing all that could and properly ought to be done under the circumstances.

Whitaker walked back to his hotel. There was no other place to go: no place, that is, that wooed his humour in that hour. He could call to mind, of course, names of friends and acquaintances of the old days to whom there was no reason why he shouldn't turn, now that he had elected to rediscover himself to the world; but there was none of them all that he really wanted to see before he had regained complete control of his emotions.

He was, indeed, profoundly shocked. He held himself measurably responsible for Drummond's act of desperation. If he had not wilfully sought to evade the burden of his duty to Mary Ladislas, when he found that he was to live rather than die – if he had been honest and generous instead of allowing himself to drift into cowardly defalcation to her trust – Drummond, doubtless, would still be alive. Or even if, having chosen the recreant way, he had had the strength to stick to it, to stay buried…

Next to poor Peter Stark, whom his heart mourned without ceasing, he had cared most for Drummond of all the men he had known and liked in the old life. Now … he felt alone and very lonely, sick of heart and forlorn. There was, of course, Lynch, his partner in the Antipodes; Whitaker was fond of Lynch, but not with the affection that a generous-spirited youth had accorded Peter Stark and Drummond – a blind and unreasoning affection that asked no questions and made nothing of faults. The capacity for such sentiment was dead in him, as dead as Peter Stark, as dead as Drummond…

It was nearly midnight, but the hour found Whitaker in no humour for bed or the emptiness of his room. He strolled into the lounge, sat down at a detached table in a corner, and ordered something to drink. There were not many others in the room, but still enough to mitigate to some extent his temporary horror of utter loneliness.

He felt painfully the heaviness of his debt to the woman he had married. He who had promised her new life and the rich fulfilment thereof had accomplished only its waste and desolation. He had thrust upon her the chance to find happiness, and as rudely had snatched it away from her. Nor could he imagine any way in which he might be able to expiate his breach of trust – his sins of omission and commission, alike deadly and unpardonable!

Unless … He caught eagerly at the thought: he might "die" again – go away once more, and forever; bury himself deep beyond the groping tentacles of civilization; disappear finally, notifying her of his intention, so that she might seek legal freedom from his name. It only needed Max's silence, which could unquestionably be secured, to insure her against the least breath of scandal, the faintest whisper of gossip… Not that Max really knew anything; but the name of Whitaker, as identified with Hugh Morten, might better be permitted to pass unechoed into oblivion…

And with this very thought in mind he became aware of the echo of that name in his hearing.

A page, bearing something on a salver, ambled through the lounge, now and again opening his mouth to bleat, dispassionately: "Mista Whitaker, Mista Whitaker!"

The owner of that name experienced a flush of exasperation. What right had the management to cause him to be advertised in every public room of the establishment?.. But the next instant his resentment evaporated, when he remembered that he remained Mr. Hugh Morten in the managerial comprehension.

He lifted a finger; the boy swerved toward him, tendered a blue envelope, accepted a gratuity and departed.

It was a cable message: very probably an answer to his to Grace Pettit. Whitaker tore the envelope and unfolded the enclosure, glancing first at the signature to verify his surmise. As he did so, he heard his name a second time.

"Pardon me; this is Mr. Whitaker?"

A man stood beside the little table – one whom Whitaker had indifferently noticed on entering as an equally lonely lounger at another table.

Though he frowned involuntarily with annoyance, he couldn't well deny his identity.

"Yes," he said shortly, looking the man up and down with a captious eye.

Yet it was hard to find much fault with this invader of his preoccupation. He had the poise and the dress of a gentleman: dignity without aggressiveness, completeness without ostentation. He had a spare, not ungraceful body, a plain, dark face, a humorous mouth, steady eyes: a man easily forgotten or overlooked unless he willed it otherwise.

"My name is Ember," he said quietly. "If you'll permit me – my card." He offered a slip of pasteboard engraved with the name of Martin Ember. "And I'll sit down, because I want to talk to you for a few minutes."

Accordingly he sat down. Whitaker glanced at the card, and questioningly back at Mr. Ember's face.

"I don't know you, but … What are we to talk about, please?"

The man smiled, not unpleasingly.

"Mrs. Whitaker," he said.

Whitaker stared, frowned, and jumped at a conclusion.

"You represent Mrs. Whitaker?"

Mr. Ember shook his head. "I'm no lawyer, thank God! But I happen to know a good deal it would be to your advantage to know; so I've taken this liberty."

"Mrs. Whitaker didn't send you to me? Then how – ? What the deuce – !"

"I happened to have a seat near your box at the theatre to-night," Mr. Ember explained coolly. "From – what I saw there, I inferred that you must be – yourself. Afterwards I got hold of Max, confirmed my suspicion, and extracted your address from him."

"I see," said Whitaker, slowly – not comprehending the main issue at all. "But I'm not known here by the name of Whitaker."

"So I discovered," said Ember, with his quiet, engaging smile. "If I hadn't remembered that you sometimes registered as Hugh Morten – as, for instance, at the Commercial House six years ago – "

"You were there!"

"A considerable time after the event – yes." The man nodded, his eyes glimmering.

Whitaker shot a quick glance round the room, and was relieved to find they were not within earshot of any of the other occupied tables.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded bluntly.

"I was," said the other slowly, "once, a private detective. Now – I'm a person of no particular employment, of independent means, with a penchant – you're at liberty to assume – for poking my nose into other people's business."

"Oh…"

A word, "blackmail," leapt into Whitaker's consciousness, and served to harden the hostility in his attitude.

"Mrs. George Pettit once employed me to find her sister, Miss Mary Ladislas, who had run away with a chauffeur named Morton," pursued the man, evenly. "That was about the time – shortly after – the death of Thurlow Ladislas; say, two months after the so-called elopement."

"Just a minute," said Whitaker suddenly – "by your leave – "

Ember bowed gravely. For a thought longer Whitaker's gaze bored into his eyes in vain effort to fathom what was going on behind them, the animus undiscovered by his words; then, remembering, he looked down at the cable message in his hand.

"Martin Ember (it ran) private agency 1435 Broadway Grace Pettit."