Curtis had seized the opportunity while Hermione was in her room before dinner to rub the blood-stained sleeve of the overcoat with a wet cloth. He had not, of course, been able to eradicate the ghastly dye wholly from the thick material, but the garment was now wearable, at any rate by night, and he had little fear of attracting attention as he crossed the brilliantly lighted foyer of the hotel.
Passing out by the Fifth Avenue exit, he began the second cigar of the evening, and stood in the porch for a moment to collect his faculties. The time was five minutes of ten, and he had been married about an hour and a half. He had just finished his second dinner, and for the guerdon of companionship with the charming and gracious girl whom fate had figuratively thrown into his arms he would cheerfully have tackled a third meal without any personal qualms as to subsequent indigestion.
But, joking apart, he was married. That was the overwhelming feature of life, a feature which dwarfed every other circumstance much as grimly gigantic Windsor Castle dominates the puny town beneath its walls. The mere tying of the matrimonial knot had not troubled him. He was heart whole and fancy free then—or, not to strain the metaphor, he could have boasted those attributes a little earlier in the evening—and he recked nothing of the really serious legal disabilities incurred by the adventure. But, like every other young man, his thoughts had turned sometimes to a young woman—not any special young woman, but that nebulous entity which is necessarily bound up with the notion that some day, somewhere, somehow, a man will encounter the maid in whose limpid eyes lurks his destiny. He had pictured the desirable one in day-dreams, and, merely because of his violent antipathy towards the Eurasian element in the Far East, the dulcissima had appeared invariably as a tall, slender creature, with the lightest of flaxen hair and the grayest of gray eyes. Now, some alchemy devised by the magician spirit of New York had fashioned his ideal, though slender, not so tall, and she owned a wealth of brown hair, hair that shone and glistened in every changing light, while her eyes were either blue or violet, just as one happened to catch the glint of them. And she had fascinating ways, too, which the lady of his fantasy could never have displayed, or he would not have abandoned the vision so readily. When she smiled, it was with lips and eyes in unison. When she spoke he heard harmonies not framed in mere words, whereas the other fair dame was unquestionably a deaf mute.
Indeed, while his glance was dwelling, to all outward semblance, on the passing traffic of one of New York's busiest thoroughfares, he was admitting to himself that he was deeply, irrevocably, in love, and the knowledge was almost stupefying. To one of Curtis's temperament it seemed to be a wildly fanciful thing that he should have yielded so swiftly. Two hours ago he had not seen Hermione, did not even know her name, whereas now he breathed it with devout reverence, though, with a perverseness seldom attached to such circumstances, the amazing fact that she was his wife formed a stubborn barrier against which the flood of new-born desire must rage in vain. For, above all else, he held dear his plighted word. He knew now that the marriage offered an almost insuperable obstacle to any effort on his part to win the girl's affections. In her despair she had trusted him, and he awoke with a guilty start to consciousness of that winsome face being wrung with a new terror if for one instant she had reason to suspect him of other than the altruistic motives he had professed in giving her the protection of his name.
Perhaps, in time—well, he was done now with moon-madness, and he stepped briskly down the avenue, firm set in purpose to risk everything for his wife's sake, and let the future rest in the lap of the gods.
This, be it noted, was his first stroll in New York. The night was fine and clear, for Rafferty's diagnosis of "a touch of frost in the air" was becoming justified, and no thoroughfare in the world could lend itself more completely to the romance of that walk than the wonderful promenade which leads from Central Park to Madison Square. With few exceptions, the nineteenth century plutocrat has been ousted from that section of Fifth Avenue; a giant democracy has reared its own palaces in the shape of hotels and office buildings which pierce the skies, stores which rival the proudest mansions of Venice in its heyday and Florence under Lorenzo Medici. Never in after life did Curtis forget that intimate glimpse of the grandeur and wealth of his native place. Coming up the harbor by daylight he had been overwhelmed by New York's proud defiance of the limits imposed by nature, but now, partly veiled by the mystery of night, the city displayed a feminine beauty at once entrancing and elusive.
At a cross street he paused for a moment to admire a gem of architecture wrenched bodily from its Cinque Cento setting by Brunelleschi, and transplanted to this new land to serve the opulent need of a vendor of precious stones and metals. In the strip of dark blue firmament visible above the admirably proportioned cornice he caught sight of two planets flaming high in the west, and in close juxtaposition. Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and he had studied Chinese astrology as a pastime. He recognized these lamps of the empyrean as Mars and Venus, and, up-to-date American though he was, drew comfort from that favoring augury. Then, in stepping from the roadway to the sidewalk, he stumbled over a heavy curb, and laughed at the reminder that star-gazing did not reveal pitfalls before unwary feet.
The incident knocked some of the poetry out of him, and it was a quite normal and level-headed young man who walked into the Central Hotel soon after ten o'clock, and found Detective Steingall's gaze resting on him contemplatively from the neighborhood of the cigar counter.
Before rejoining the waiting trio in the office, Steingall was interviewing the youth in charge of the tobacco and current literature department.
Such story as the boy had to tell was hardly in favor of Curtis.
"The gentleman came here to buy some stamps, and he and a man who was reading in the café said something to each other in a foreign lingo," ran the recital. "No, I don't think I would recognize French if I heard it—American is good enough for me—but there was no argument, nothing in the shape of a quarrel. The Englishman spoke twice, and the other fellar three times."
"Mr. Curtis is an American," Steingall explained.
"Well, he doesn't talk like one, anyhow," pronounced young New York—in this instance, of a pronounced Jewish type—which is perhaps the most dogmatic juvenility extant.
Then Curtis entered. He glanced around, and seemed to be gratified by the discovery that the hotel had lost its inquisitive crowd. He did not realize that every newspaper office in New York was alive with conjecture of which he was the chief figure, and that telegraph and telephone were carrying his name and fame across the length and breadth of the country.
"Hello!" he said, hailing Steingall affably, "you here still? Has anything turned up with regard to those scoundrels and their automobile?"
"Not a word—about them," said the detective.
The purveyor of cigars and news was positively awe-stricken. He was aware of Steingall's repute as the "man with the microscopic eye," and he fully expected that the "sleuth's" penetrating organ had already discerned the word "murderer" branded on Curtis's shirt front.
"What time will you want me in the morning?" went on Curtis, looking in the direction of the office. He was really thinking about the mislaid key; not for an instant did he imagine that by that simple gesture he had almost eradicated from Steingall's mind the germ of doubt which events had certainly conspired to plant there.
"I want you now," came the somewhat startling answer.
"Eh, why?"
"Some friends of yours are anxious to see you. They are in the private office over there," and Steingall thrust out his chin in the indicative manner which the Romans used to call annuens.
"Oh, Howard Devar, I suppose. But who else?"
"Come along, Mr. Curtis. You can stand a pleasant surprise, I am sure," and, with that, the detective led the way across the hall, leaving the youthful Jew in a maze of conflicting emotions, for, according to all the rules of the game as played in the dime novel, the tec' should have sprung on his prey like a tiger. Another person whose nervous system received a shock was the super-clerk. He, like the boy, knew of the network of suspicion which had closed on Curtis during the past two hours, and he had watched the cordial meeting between the two men with something akin to stupefaction.
But neither of these onlookers had grasped the really essential fact that Steingall did not say one word as to the hue and cry which resulted from Curtis's strange disappearance. The detective was a master of the art of restraint. In his own way, he applied to his profession the maxim of Horace—Ars est celare artem.
And he had his reward in that cry of dismay, almost of horror, which burst from Curtis's lips when he heard the true name of the murdered man.
Uncle Horace's seemingly maladroit interruption (it raised him to a pinnacle of esteem in Devar's mind from which he was never dislodged subsequently) prevented any striking development until a glad-eyed waiter had entered and taken an order for four highballs. Even Mrs. Curtis admitted the need of a stimulant, but Curtis steadily refused any intoxicant, even the mildest. Steingall endured the delay stoically. He actually held back a sufficient time to allow Horace P. Curtis to empty his glass with one well-sustained effort. Then he came to close quarters with Napoleonic directness.
"I take it you assumed that the dead man was the Jean de Courtois mentioned in the marriage license?" he said.
He gave that question pride of place in pursuance of a queer thought which had leaped into his brain during the enforced interval. But, if he had been thinking hard, so had Curtis, and the latter had outlined a plan of action which was fated to disrupt Steingall's, much as a harmless looking percussion cap may interfere with the smug torpor of a powder magazine.
"Yes," said Curtis, with the judicial nod of a man who states a comparatively obvious fact.
"Have you that license?"
"No."
"Where is it?"
"Reposing in the writing-desk of the Rev. Thomas J. Hughes, a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who lives in 56th Street, near Seventh Avenue."
"And what is it doing there, pray?"
"I used it. I have married Lady Hermione Grandison."
Steingall permitted himself the rare luxury of a semi-hysterical break in his voice.
"What!" he cried. "Is she the daughter of the Earl of Valletort?"
"Precisely, though you astonish me by the ease with which you connect two such widely different names. Such knowledge usually implies a close acquaintance with the amiable foibles of the British aristocracy."
Certainly it was well that Mrs. Horace P. Curtis had partaken of a tonic in the shape of a highball.
"Well!" she gasped.
For once she was practically speechless, but she gave the astounded Devar a pitiless glance which said plainly:
"Wait till I get my breath, young man, and I'll take some of the cocksureness out of you!"
Steingall soon gathered his scattered wits.
"Are you really speaking seriously, Mr. Curtis?" he asked.
"Quite seriously."
"Was this marriage an arranged affair?"
"Oh, yes. The marriage itself was prearranged."
"Candidly, I don't understand you."
"No? I am not surprised. But I do not wish you to remain under any misapprehension as to the true state of affairs. Lady Hermione Grandison meant to marry a French music-master named Jean de Courtois. I thought, thought honestly but mistakenly, that the man was dead, and, as it was of vital importance that her ladyship should get married to-night, I offered my services as Jean de Courtois' substitute, and they were accepted."
"Am I to take that statement as literally true?"
"Absolutely."
"You were not acquainted with the lady earlier?"
"No."
"Never seen or heard of her?"
"No."
"How did you come to engage in this—this freak marriage, then?"
Curtis measured Steingall with a contemplative eye.
"You are called on to assimilate a novel idea, and, in consequence, are choosing your words badly," he said. "It was not a freak marriage. Although I may have broken the laws of the State of New York by using a license issued to some other person, Lady Hermione and I are legally husband and wife, and no power on earth can dissolve the union without the expressed consent of one or both of us."
"Do you mean me to accept the bald theory that you first learnt the lady's name and address from a document discovered in another man's overcoat, that you went to her house, told her the man was dead, and suggested that you should become the bridegroom in his stead?"
"As an adjective, 'bald' is—well, bald. But you've got the affair sized up accurately otherwise."
"Oh, the shameless hussy!" broke in Mrs. Horace vehemently.
Steingall turned on her with a certain heat of manner.
"Do not interrupt, madam, I beg," he exclaimed.
"Better reserve judgment, aunt, until you have met my wife," said Curtis. He spoke gently enough. He had appraised his relatives almost at a glance, and was sufficiently broad-minded to allow for the natural distress of a respectable middle-aged lady who had been whirled, as it were, out of her wonted environment, and rapt into the realms of necromancy and Arabian Nights.
Steingall swept aside this intermission with the emphatic hand of a cross-examining lawyer.
"You say it was 'of vital importance that the lady should be married to-night.' What does that imply?"
"Do you wish me to put it in different language?"
"I want to know what the vitally important reason was. I presume she furnished one?"
"Ah, but how does that concern the New York police, Mr. Steingall?"
"Every element in this business concerns us. The license was in Hunter's possession—was he bringing it to someone named de Courtois? Or was he masquerading under an alias?"
"Answering your second question, I imagine not. I have the best of reasons for believing that Jean de Courtois exists. I wish now I hadn't. Don't you see, Steingall, I am in a deuce of a fix? I married the lady under a misapprehension. She might have really preferred this fellow, de Courtois."
Steingall liked a joke as well as any man in New York, and was not at all averse from chaffing some of his less gifted colleagues when their obtuseness or faithful adherence to the letter of instructions permitted a criminal to befool them; but he resented the levity of Curtis's tone now, though, deep in his heart, he felt that he liked the man.
"You don't seem to realize the peculiarly awkward position in which you stand," he said, with due official gravity.
"On the contrary, I feel it acutely. What am I to say to my wife——?"
"I am not wrung with agony over the lady's sensitiveness," broke in the detective dryly. "A good many people believe that you were concerned in this murder. There are not lacking circumstantial details which warrant that view. I am not saying too much when I tell you that some men, in my shoes, would arrest you forthwith."
Curtis looked at Steingall quizzically, and even laughed with a whole-hearted appreciation of the jest.
"Lucky for me I have fallen into the hands of a sensible person," he said.
"Allow me to remark," put in Uncle Horace solemnly, "that Mr. Steingall has won my unstinted admiration by the way in which he has conducted this inquiry."
Devar was beginning to enjoy himself. He alone was able to estimate Curtis at his true worth; even that astounding marriage was losing some of its bizarre attributes since Curtis had begun to talk about it.
"Good for you, Mr. Curtis, senior," he crowed delightedly. "If Indiana knew what it really wanted it would run you for Governor."
Steingall nearly became angry. Indeed, it is probable that he would have expressed his sentiments in strong language were it not for the presence of Mrs. Curtis.
"Now, sir," he said, with a perceptible stiffening of manner, "let us have done with pretense. You strike me as being sane, yet you ask me to believe that you have acted like a lunatic. Well, let it go at that. Who is this Jean de Courtois, whom Lady Hermione Grandison was to have married to-night?"
"My wife tells me that he is a French music-master whom she hired to marry her in order that she might escape from a pestiferous person named Count Ladislas Vassilan," replied Curtis with cool directness. "She brought the obliging individual with her from Paris for the purpose, and paid him a thousand dollars as a sort of retaining fee. From what little I have seen of her, she impresses me as a charming girl wholly without experience of a world which, though not altogether wicked, is nevertheless callous and self-seeking. Among other drawbacks, she embarked on a fantastic project with a most disingenuous belief in the good faith of a Frenchman. Now, I admire France as a nation, but where women are concerned, I distrust Frenchmen as a race, and I suspect—mind you, I am merely guessing—but I repeat that I suspect the honesty of Monsieur Jean de Courtois in this matter. There was no earthly reason why he should not have married Lady Hermione some weeks ago, but it is clear that he has used every artifice to delay the ceremony until to-night—and, it may be found when we learn the facts, was prepared to put it off once more till to-morrow or next day. Why? In my opinion, the reason is not far to seek. The Earl of Valletort and Count Ladislas Vassilan were crossing the Atlantic hot in pursuit of the unwilling bride. They arrived in New York to-night, and were so well posted in events, both past and prospective, that they headed straight for the flat in which Lady Hermione was living with her maid. Naturally, I am keenly interested in the causes which led up to a peculiarly brutal and uncalled-for murder, and, as my wife's husband, I have the further incentive of hoping to bring to justice certain of her persecutors whom I cannot help connecting indirectly with the crime of which I was, I suppose, one of the most credible and intelligent witnesses. Now, before I was aware that such a winsome creature existed as the present Lady Hermione Curtis, I had estimated the murderers as Hungarians, two of them at any rate, since I am hardly prepared to vouch for the chauffeur. Count Ladislas Vassilan is a Hungarian. The poor fellow who was killed, though his name is American enough, spoke French with a pure accent. One of the Hungarians spoke French, fluently but vilely. Jean de Courtois is admittedly a Frenchman. I am not a detective, Mr. Steingall, but as a plain man of affairs I am forced to the conclusion that there has seldom been a similarly mysterious crime in which certain lines of inquiry thrust themselves more pertinently on the imagination. To sum up, I advise you to find Jean de Courtois—unless, indeed, he, too, has been killed—and you will be in close touch with the origin of the whole ugly business."
"Good egg!" cried the irresistible Devar. "It's a pity you were not with us on the Lusitania, Mr. Steingall, or you would realize that when John D. rears up on his hind legs, and talks like that, there is nothing more to be said."
"Is Lady Hermione a pretty girl?" demanded Mrs. Curtis eagerly. Her democratic soul was rejoicing in the discovery that her nephew's wife did not lose her title because of the marriage. Of course, no one ever before heard of such folly as this matrimonial leap in the dark, but, once taken, there was satisfaction in the thought that the bride was an earl's daughter. Moreover, she had read of such queer goings on among the British Aristocracy that a wedding at sight was a comparatively venial offense.
Curtis assured his aunt that Hermione was the most beautiful and fascinating person he had ever met, and Steingall listened to the eulogy with a grinning rictus of jaw. In the whole course of his professional experience he had never encountered anything on a par with this capricious blend of comedy and tragedy.
Of course, it did not escape his acute brain that Curtis was right in assuming that the clou of the situation lay with Jean de Courtois. Dead or alive, the Frenchman must be found, and found quickly. The extraordinary story told by Curtis, if true—and the detective was persuaded that this curiously constituted young man was not trying to hoodwink him in any particular—pointed a ready way toward investigation. The unfortunate journalist, Hunter, was about to enter the Central Hotel when he was attacked so mercilessly. As a consequence, some knowledge of de Courtois was probably awaiting the first questioner at the inquiry counter. What a whimsical incongruity it would be if he were told that the French music-master around whom the inquiry pivoted was within arm's length all the time! He had actually turned to the door in order to summon the hotel clerk when that worthy himself knocked and entered.
"The Earl of Valletort is here, and wishes to have a word with you, Mr. Steingall," he said.
The detective's present grim conceit ran somewhat to the effect that if he remained long enough in the Central Hotel he would accumulate sufficient evidence to electrocute three criminals, at least, and send others to the penitentiary, but he merely nodded and said:
"Show his lordship right in."
He was conscious of a dramatic pause in the conversation which had broken out between the others. Once again had Mrs. Curtis been rendered dumb by the shock of an unforeseen development. Devar, who was having the night of his life, leaned back against the wainscot, Uncle Horace peered hopelessly into an empty tumbler, but dared not suggest a second highball, while Curtis, after one sharp glance at the detective, whom he credited with having arranged this surprise in some inexplicable way, thrust his hands into his trousers' pockets and awaited the advent of Hermione's father with a calmness that he himself could hardly account for. Hitherto, his adventurous life had been made up of strenuous effort tempered by the Anglo-Saxon phlegm which disregards dangers and difficulties. Prolonged strain of an emotional nature was new to him. He understood, but did not apply the knowledge, that when the human vessel is full to the brim with excitement, the earth may rock and the heavens roll together in fury without the power to add one more drop of gall or distress to the completed measure. At that instant, if the Earl of Valletort had been accompanied by the embodied ghosts of his ancestors, Curtis would have viewed the procession with unconcern.
The Earl, a handsome slightly built, erect man of fifty, hawk-nosed, keen-eyed, with drooping mustache and carefully arranged thin gray hair, glanced at Curtis as he might have regarded any other stranger.
"I have disposed of my friend," he said to Steingall, "and I hurried back here on off-chance that you might still be engaged in——"
"Before your lordship enters into details, allow me to introduce Mr. John D. Curtis," said Steingall, silently thanking the fates which had brought about a meeting so opportune to his own task if embarrassing to its chief actors.
"Mr. John D. Curtis, the—the person who conspired with my daughter to contract an illegal marriage!" barked the Earl, instantly dropping the repose of Vere de Vere.
"John Delancy Curtis, at any rate," said Curtis gravely. "As your son-in-law, may I remark that a few minutes' conversation with a lawyer will enable you to correct two misstatements in the rest of your description? There was no conspiracy, and the ceremony was unquestionably legal."
The Earl gave him one searching and envenomed look, and appealed forthwith to the detective.
"I charge that man with abduction and personation," he cried, and his voice grew husky with wrath. "There can be no gainsaying the facts. My daughter, it is true, had arranged a marriage with a Monsieur Jean de Courtois. It was provisionally fixed to take place this evening at eight o'clock, but, by some means not known to me, the marriage license came into the hands of this admitted law-breaker, and he evidently persuaded a foolish and impetuous girl to accept him instead of de Courtois. I am not an authority on the laws of the State of New York, but I stake my reputation on the belief that a flagrant offense has been committed against the social ordinances of any well regulated community. I now call on you to arrest him, or, if official process is needed, to direct me to the proper authority."
"Have you any proof of the charge?" said Steingall, who had not failed to observe Curtis's air of unconcern under the Earl's fiery denunciation.
"Proof in plenty," came the snarling answer. "I have seen the license and the signed register, and Monsieur de Courtois is known to me personally. Besides, have you not this rascal's own admission?"
"Why omit the equally damning evidence of conspiracy?" demanded Curtis.
"What do you mean, you, you——"
"Interloper. How will that serve? It was you who spoke of conspiring, though I grant you seem to have dropped that item of the indictment. But Mr. Steingall, as representing the law, should hear the full tale of villainy. If your lordship will produce de Courtois's letters, cablegrams, and wireless messages to yourself and your confederate, Count Ladislas Vassilan, he will begin to appreciate the true bearing of a rather intricate inquiry."
It was a chance shot, but it went home. Curtis had not spent ten years in counteracting Manchu scheming and duplicity without arriving at certain basic principles in laying bare the methods of double-dealing, and the Earl of Valletort was manifestly disturbed by this cold analysis of facts which he imagined were known to an exceedingly limited circle in New York.
But he had the presence of mind to waive aside Curtis's allegations as unworthy of discussion.
"I address myself to you," he said to Steingall. "Have I made my request clear, or shall I repeat it?"
"Have you any objection to answering a few questions, my lord?" said the detective.
"None whatsoever."
"When did you and Count Vassilan arrive in New York?"
"At twenty minutes after eight to-night."
"How did you ascertain what was happening with regard to your daughter?"
"By inquiry."
"Of course, but from whom?"
"From the minister who performed an unauthorized ceremony."
"How did you know where to go so promptly to secure information?"
"I was kept informed of my daughter's movements by agents."
"Who were they?"
"Their names will be given at the right time."
"The right time is now."
"You are not a magistrate. I take it you are a police officer."
"Your lordship may feel well assured on that point. It is exactly because I am a police officer that I press for a reply. Your grievance against Mr. John D. Curtis is much more of a matter for a civil than a criminal court. I guess he has broken the law, but the machinery for putting it in motion is not under my control. I am investigating a murder, and every word you have said confirms my belief that your daughter's contemplated marriage was the indirect but none the less certain cause of the crime. Now, Lord Valletort, who were your inquiry agents?"
"Ha!" muttered Uncle Horace.
It was a simple enough ejaculation, but it served to drive home the nail which the detective's outspoken declaration had hammered into the Earl's startled consciousness. Here, in truth, was a new and disturbing phase of the matrimonial problem contrived by Hermione, aided and abetted by that mischievous scoundrel, Curtis. Still, he was not one to be driven easily into a corner.
"You practically refer me to a lawyer for advice; I take you at your word," he said, with a quick return to the self-controlled attitude of an experienced man of the world.
"You decline, then, to answer the only vitally important question I have put to you?" said Steingall.
"I decline to answer that question until I have consulted someone better able—or shall I say, more willing?—to instruct me as to the speediest means of punishing a malefactor."
"The noble lord is disqualified," broke in Devar. "This is the second time since the flag fell that he has refused his fences."
"If you interrupt again I shall turn you out of the room, Mr. Devar," cried Steingall vexedly.
"But, dash it all, Steingall, somebody must see that John D. has fair play. He only swerved once, and then for a single stride, while he——"
"I shall not warn you a second time," and Devar knew that the detective meant what he said, and kept quiet.
"May I ask where the police headquarters are situated?" said the Earl in the frostiest tone he could command at the moment.
"At the corner of Center Street and Grand," said Steingall indifferently. He was about to add the unpleasing fact—unpleasing to Lord Valletort, that is—that the man on duty at the Detective Bureau would certainly refer an inquirer to him, Steingall, when the clerk reappeared.
"A patrolman has brought a note for you," he said, handing Steingall a sealed letter, which the detective opened instantly after glancing at the superscription. It was from the police captain, and ran:
"Count Vassilan has just left the Waldorf-Astoria in a taxi. Clancy is driving."
Steingall's face betrayed no more expression than that of the Sphinx, though inwardly he was consumed with laughter; he himself was chief of the Bureau, and Clancy was his most trusted assistant! Certainly, the gods were contriving a spicy dish for the news-loving inhabitants of New York.
The Earl of Valletort turned on his heel, and went out abruptly. Therefore, he missed Steingall's first words to the hotel clerk, which would have given him furiously to think, while it is reasonable to suppose that he would have paid quite a large sum of money to have heard the clerk's answer.
For the detective said:
"Do you happen to know anything about a Frenchman, name of Jean de Courtois?"
And the clerk replied:
"Why, yes. He's in his room now, I believe."
"In his room—where?"
"Here, of course. He came in about 6.30, took his key and a Marconigram, and has not showed up since."
Uncle Horace could withstand the strain no longer.
"Would you mind sending the waiter again?" he gasped. "If I don't get a pick-me-up of some sort quickly, I'll collapse."
Aunt Louisa would dearly have loved to put in a word, but she knew not what to say. Life at Bloomington supplied no parallel to the rapidity of existence in New York that evening. She was aware of statements being made in language which rang familiarly in her ears, but they had no more coherence in her clogged understanding than the gabble of dementia.
Steingall was the least surprised of the five people who listened to the clerk's words. The notion that de Courtois might be close at hand had dawned on him already; still, he was not prepared to hear that the man was actually a resident in the hotel.
"Has Monsieur de Courtois lived here some time?" he asked, not without a sharp glance at Curtis to see how the suspect was taking this new phase in his adventure.
"About a month," said the clerk.
"Has he received many visitors?"
"A few, mostly foreigners. A Mr. Hunter called here occasionally, and they dined together last evening. I believe Mr. Hunter is connected with the press."
The clerk wondered why he was being catechized about the Frenchman. He had no more notion that de Courtois and Hunter were connected with the tragedy than the man in the moon.
"Take me to Monsieur de Courtois's room," Said Steingall, after a momentary pause.
"May I come with you?" inquired Curtis.
"Why?"
"I am deeply interested in de Courtois, and I may be able to help you in questioning him. I speak French well."
"So do I," said Steingall. "But, come if you like."
"For the love of Heaven, don't leave me out of this, Steingall," pleaded Devar.
The detective was blessed with a sense of humor; he realized that the inquiry had long since passed the bounds of official decorum, and its irregularities had proved so illuminative that he was not anxious to check them yet a while.
"Yes," he said, "you'll do no harm if you keep a still tongue in your head."
"You'll come back to us, John, won't you?" broke in Mrs. Curtis, desperately contributing the first commonplace remark that occurred to her bemused brain.
"Yes, aunt. I'll rejoin you here. Shall I have some supper sent in for both of you?"
"No, my boy," said Uncle Horace, who had revived under the prospect of a long drink. "If any feasting is to be done later it is up to me to arrange it. The night is young. I hope to have the honor of toasting your wife before I go to bed."
Curtis smiled at that, but made no reply, the moment being inopportune for explanations, but Devar murmured, as they crossed the lobby with Steingall and the clerk:
"That uncle of yours is a peach, John D. He points the moral like a Greek chorus."
"I fear he will regard me as a hare-brained nephew," said Curtis. "As for my aunt, poor lady, she must think me the most extraordinary human being she has ever set eyes on. What puzzles me most is——"
"Wow! I know what aunts are capable of," broke in Devar rapidly, for he was doubtful now how his friend would regard the publicity he had not desired. "Mrs. Curtis, senior, is thanking her stars at this minute that she will have a chance of paralyzing Bloomington with full details of her nephew's marriage into the ranks of the British aristocracy. The odd thing is that I'm tickled to death by the notion that I, little Howard, put you in for this night's gorgeous doings. Didn't you wonder why I passed up an introduction to my aunt and my cousins in the Customs shed? Man alive, if Mrs. Morgan Apjohn had made your acquaintance to-day she would have insisted on your dining with the family to-night, and at 7.30 P.M. your feet would have been safely tucked under the mahogany in her home on Riverside Drive instead of leading you into the maze you seem to have found so readily. All I wanted was an excuse to get away soon. Gee whizz! What a fireworks display you've put up in the meantime!"
"Fifth," said the clerk to the elevator attendant, and the four men shot skyward.
As each floor above the street level was a replica of the next higher one, Curtis happened to note that the route followed to the Frenchman's room was similar to that leading to 605.
"What number does Monsieur de Courtois occupy?" he inquired.
"505," said the clerk.
"Then it is directly beneath mine?"
"Yes, sir. He must have heard us breaking open your door."
"I beg your pardon. Heard what?"
"We committed some minor offenses with regard to your property during your absence," said Steingall, "but they were of slight account as compared with your own extravagances. Let me warn you not to say too much before de Courtois. Even taking your version of events, Mr. Curtis, Lord Valletort will probably raise a wasps' nest about your ears in the morning."
"But why break open the door? Surely, there was a pass key——"
"Sh-s-sh! Here we are!"
Steingall tapped lightly on a panel of 505, and the four listened silently for any response. None came—that is, there was nothing which could be recognized as the sound of a voice or of human movement inside the room. Nevertheless, they fancied they heard something, and the detective knocked again, somewhat more insistently. Now they were intent for the slightest noise behind that closed door, and they caught a subdued groan or whine, followed by the metallic creak of a bed-frame.
At that instant a chamber-maid hurried up.
"I was just going to 'phone the office," she said to the clerk. "A little while ago I tried to enter that room, but my key would not turn in the lock."
"Did you hear anyone stirring within?" asked the clerk.
"No, sir. I knocked, and there was no answer."
"Listen now, then."
A third time did Steingall rap on the door, and the strange whine was repeated, while there could be no question that a bed was being dragged or shoved to and fro on a carpeted floor.
"My land!" whispered the girl in an awed tone. "There's something wrong in there!"
"Let me try your key," said the clerk. He rattled the master-key in the keyhole, but with no avail.
"I suppose it acts all right in every other lock?" he growled.
"Oh, yes, sir. I've been using it all the evening."
"Someone has tampered with the lock from the outside," he said savagely. "There is nothing for it but to send for the engineer. Before we're through with this business we'll pull the d—d hotel to pieces. A nice reputation the place will get if all this door-forcing appears in the papers to-morrow."
Certainly the clerk was to be pitied. Never before had the decorum of the Central Hotel been so outraged. Its air of smug respectability seemed to have vanished. Even to the clerk's own disturbed imagination the establishment had suddenly grown raffish, and its dingy paint and drab upholstery resembled the make-up and cloak of a scowling tragedian.
A strong-armed workman came joyously. He had already figured as a personage below stairs, because of his earlier experiences, and it was a cheering thing to be called on twice in one night to participate in a mystery which was undoubtedly connected with the murder in the street.
Before adopting more strenuous methods he inserted a piece of strong wire into the keyhole, thinking to pick the lock by that means; but he soon desisted.
"Some joker has been at that game before me," he announced. "A chunk of wire has been forced in there after the door was locked."
"From the outside?" inquired Steingall.
"Yes, sir. These locks work by a key only from without. There is a handle inside.… Well, here goes!"
A few blows with a sharp chisel soon cut away sufficient of the frame to allow the door to be forced open. On this occasion, there being no wedge in the center, it was not necessary to attack the hinges, and, once the lock was freed, the door swung back readily into the interior darkness.
The engineer, remembering his needless alarm at falling head foremost into Curtis's room, went forward boldly enough now, and paid for his temerity. He was so anxious to be the first to discover whatever horror existed there that he made for the center of the apartment without waiting to turn on the light, and, as a consequence, when he stumbled over something which he knew was a human body, and was greeted with a subdued though savage whine, he was even more frightened than before.
But no one was concerned about him or his feelings when Steingall touched an electric switch and revealed a bound and gagged man fastened to a leg of the bed. At first, owing to the extraordinary posture of the body, it was feared that another tragedy had been enacted. The victim of an uncanny outrage was lying on his side, and his arms and legs were roughly but skillfully tied with a stout rope in such wise that he resembled a fowl trussed for the oven. After securing him in this fashion, his assailants had fastened the ends of the rope to the iron frame of the bed, and his only possible movement was an ignominious half roll, back and forth, in a space of less than eight inches. This maneuver he had evidently been engaged in as soon as he heard voices and knocking outside, but he had been gagged with such brutal efficacy that his sole effort at speech was a species of whinny through his nose.
The detective's knife speedily liberated him; when he was lifted from the floor and laid gently on the bed, he remained there, quite speechless and overcome.
Steingall turned to the agitated chambermaid, whose eyes were round with terror, and who would certainly have alarmed the hotel with her screams had she come upon the occupant of the room in the course of her rounds.
"Bring a glass of hot milk, as quickly as you can," he said, and the girl sped away to the service telephone.
"Wouldn't brandy be better?" inquired Devar.
"No. Milk is the most soothing liquid in a case like this. The man's jaws are sore and aching. Probably, too, he is faint from fright and want of food. If we can get him to sip some milk he will be able to tell us, perhaps, just what has happened."
While they awaited the return of the chamber-maid, the party of rescuers gazed curiously at the prostrate figure on the bed. They saw a small, slight, neatly built man, attired in evening dress, whose sallow face was in harmony with a shock of black hair. A large and somewhat vicious mouth was partly concealed by a heavy black mustache, and the long-fingered, nervous hands were sure tokens of the artistic temperament. There could be no manner of doubt that this hapless individual was Jean de Courtois. He looked exactly what he was, a French musician, while initials on his boxes, and a number of letters on the dressing-table, all testified to his identity.
Curtis, Devar, and the hotel clerk seemed to be more interested in the appearance of the half-insensible de Courtois than Steingall. He gave him one penetrating glance, and would have known the man again after ten years had they been parted that instant; but, if he favored the Frenchman with scant attention, he made no scruples about examining the documents on the table, though his first care was to thank the workman, and send him from the room.
"Now," he muttered to the others in a low tone, "leave the questioning to me, and mention no names."
He picked up a Marconigram lying among the letters, and read it. Without a word, but smiling slightly, he handed it unobtrusively to Curtis. It bore that day's date, and the decoded time of delivery was 4 P.M.
"Arriving to-night," it ran. "Coming direct Fifty-Ninth Street. Expect us there about eight-thirty."
Curtis smiled, too. He grasped the detective's unspoken thought. Steingall had as good as said that the message bore out Curtis's counter charge against Count Vassilan and the Earl of Valletort of conspiring with de Courtois himself to defeat Lady Hermione's marriage project. Indeed, before replacing the slip of paper on the table, the detective produced a note-book, and entered therein particulars which would secure proof of the Marconigram's origin if necessary.
The maid hurried in with the milk, and Steingall, who had covered more ground among the Frenchman's correspondence than the others gave him credit for, now acted as nurse. With some difficulty he succeeded in persuading the stricken man on the bed to relax his firmly closed jaws and endeavor to swallow the fluid. It was a tedious business, but progress became more rapid when de Courtois realized that he was in the hands of those who meant well by him. It was noticeable, too, as his senses returned and the panic glare left his eyes, that his expression changed from one of abject fear to a lowering look of suspicious uncertainty. He peered at Steingall and the hotel clerk many times, but gave Curtis and Devar only a perfunctory glance. Oddly enough, the fact that the two latter were in evening dress seemed to reassure him, and it became evident later that the presence of the clerk led him to regard these strangers as guests in the hotel who had been attracted to his room by the mere accident of propinquity.
His first intelligible words, uttered in broken English, were:
"Vat time ees eet?"
"Ten-thirty," said Steingall.
"Ah, cré nom d'un nom! I haf to go, queek!"
"Where to?"
"No mattaire. I tank you all to-morrow. I explain eferyting den. Now, I go."
"You had better stay where you are, Monsieur de Courtois," said Steingall in French. "Milord Valletort and Count Vassilan have arrived. I have seen them, and nothing more can be done with respect to their affair tonight. I am the chief of the New York Detective Bureau, and I want you to tell me how you came to be in the state in which you were found."
But de Courtois was regaining his wits rapidly, and the clarifying of his senses rendered him obviously unwilling to give any information as to the cause of his own plight. Nor would he speak French. For some reason, probably because of a permissible vagueness in statements couched in a foreign tongue, he insisted on using English.
"Eef you haf seen my frien's you tell me vare I fin' dem. I come your office to-morrow, an' make ze complete explanation," he said.
"I must trouble you to-night, please," insisted Steingall quietly. "You don't understand what has occurred while you were fastened up here. You know Mr. Henry R. Hunter?"
"Yes, yes. I know heem."
"Well, he was stabbed while alighting from an automobile outside this hotel shortly before eight o'clock, and I imagine he was coming to see you."
"Stabbed! Did zey keel heem?"
"Yes. Now, tell me who 'they' were."
Monsieur Jean de Courtois was taken instantly and violently ill. He dropped back on the bed, from which he had risen valiantly in his eagerness to be stirring, and faintly proclaimed his inability to grasp what the detective was saying.
"Ah, Grand Dieu!" he murmured. "I am eel; fetch a doctaire. My brain, eet ees, vat you say, étourdi."
"You will soon recover from your illness. Come, now, pull yourself together, and tell me who the men were who tied you up, and why, if you can give a reason."
The Frenchman shut his eyes, and groaned.
"I am stranjare here, Monsieur le Commissaire," he said brokenly. "I know no ones, nodings. Milor' Valletort, he ees acquaint. Send for heem, and bring ze doctaire."
"Don't you understand that your friend, Mr. Hunter, the journalist who was helping you in the matter of Lady Hermione Grandison's marriage, has been murdered?"
The other men in the room caught a new quality in Steingall's voice. Contempt, disgust, utter disdain of a type of rascal whom he would prefer to deal with most fittingly by kicking him, were revealed in each syllable; but Jean de Courtois was apparently deaf to the mean opinion his conduct was inducing among those who had extricated him from a disagreeable if not actually dangerous predicament. He squirmed convulsively, and half sobbed his inability to realize the true nature of anything that had happened either to himself or to any other person.
"Very well," said the detective, "if you are so thoroughly knocked out I'll see that you are kept quiet for the rest of the evening."
He turned to the clerk.
"Kindly arrange that two trustworthy men shall undress this ill-used gentleman. He may be given anything to eat or drink that he requires, but if he shows signs of delirium, such as a desire to go out, or write letters, or use the telephone, he must be stopped, forcibly if necessary. Should he become violent, ring up the nearest police station-house. I'll send a doctor to him in a few minutes."
De Courtois revived slightly under the stimulus of these emphatic directions.
"I haf not done ze wrong," he protested. "Eet ees me who suffare, and I do not permeet dis interference wid my leebairty."
"You see," said Steingall coolly. "His mind is wandering already. Just 'phone for a couple of attendants, will you, and I'll give them instructions. I take full responsibility, of course."
"But, monsieur——" cried the Frenchman.
"Would you mind getting a move on? I am losing time here," said Steingall quietly to the clerk.
"I claim ze protection of my consul," sputtered de Courtois.
"Poor fellow! He is quite light-headed," said the detective sympathetically, addressing the company at large but speaking in French. "I do hope most sincerely that I may arrest those infernal Hungarians to-night. Not only did they kill Hunter but they have brought this little man to death's door."
The effect of these few harmless sounding words was electrical. Monsieur de Courtois' angry demeanor suddenly changed to that of a sufferer almost as seriously injured as Steingall made out. He collapsed utterly, and never lifted his head even when most drastic measures were enjoined on a couple of sturdy negroes as to the care that must be devoted to the invalid.
Steingall was astonishingly outspoken to Curtis and Devar while they were walking to the elevator.
"I am surprised that that miserable whelp escaped with his life," he said. "Usually, in cases of this sort, the rascal who betrays his friends receives short shrift from those who make use of him. He knows too much for their safety, and gets a knife between his ribs as soon as his services cease to be valuable."
"I must confess that I don't begin to grasp the bearings of this affair," admitted Curtis. "It is almost grotesque to imagine that a number of men could be found in New York who would stop short of no crime, however daring, simply to prevent a young lady from marrying in despite of her father's wishes."
"Of course, the young lady figures large in your eyes," said Steingall with a dry laugh. "You haven't thought this matter out, Mr. Curtis. When you have slept on it, and the fact dawns on you that there are other people in the world than the charming Lady Hermione, you will realize that she is a mere pawn around whom a number of very important persons are contending. I don't wish to say a word to depreciate her as a star of the first magnitude, but I am greatly mistaken if there is not another woman, either here or in Europe, whose personality, if known, would attract far more attention from the police.… By the way, has it occurred to you that Providence has certainly befriended you to-night? The dare-devils who murdered Hunter were inclined to kill you in error.… Now, I want you to concentrate your mind on the face and expression of that chauffeur, Anatole. Keep him constantly in your thoughts. If you can swear to him when we parade him before you with half-a-dozen other men, I shall soon strip the inquiry of its mystery."
In the hall they were surrounded by a squad of reporters, and three photographers took flashlight pictures.
"Hello!" muttered the detective to Curtis, "they've found you! Now we must use our brains to get you out of this."
They escaped the journalists by closing the door of the office on them. Then the clerk was summoned, and solved the first difficulty by revealing a back-stairs exit by way of the basement. An attendant was sent to Curtis's room, to pack a grip with some clothes and linen, and, by adroit maneuvering, the whole party got away from the hotel.
Steingall insisted on interviewing Lady Hermione that night. He pointed out, reasonably enough, that she might possess a good deal of valuable information concerning Count Ladislas Vassilan; if, as Curtis believed was the case, she had already retired to rest, she must be aroused. The hour was not so late, and Vassilan's movements in New York might be elucidated by knowledge of his previous career.
So Curtis announced that his bride was installed in the Plaza Hotel, and, while he and Devar escaped through the cellars, Steingall took Uncle Horace and Aunt Louisa boldly through the lobby. A taxi was waiting there, and he gave the driver the address of the police headquarters downtown, but re-directed him when they were safe from pursuit, and the three, so oddly assorted as companions, arrived at the Plaza within a minute of the two young men.
Steingall went straight to the telephone room, and Curtis ascended to his suite of apartments. He knocked at Hermione's door, and her "Yes, who is there?" came with disconcerting speed. Evidently, she was far from being asleep yet.
"It is I—dear," said Curtis, in whom the mere sense of being near his "wife" induced a species of vertigo. Indeed, he was horribly nervous, since he could not form the slightest notion as to the manner in which she would receive the latest news of de Courtois.
The door was opened without delay, and Hermione appeared, dressed exactly as she was when he bade her farewell.
"I am sorry to disturb you," he said, "but it cannot be helped. Things have been happening since I left you."
Her face blanched, but she tried to smile, though the corners of her mouth drooped piteously.
"They are not here already?" she cried, and he had no occasion to ask who "they" were.
"No," he said, with a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. "The fact is I—I—have brought some friends to see you. That is, some of them will, I hope, be your very good friends—my uncle and aunt, and young Howard Devar, whom I spoke about earlier. There is a detective, too—a very decent fellow named Steingall. Shall I bring them here? It will be pleasanter than being stared at in a crowded supper room."
She was surprised, but the relief in her tone was unmistakable.
"I don't want any supper," she said. "I shall be glad to meet your relatives, of course, though——"
"Though you think I might have mentioned them sooner? Well, the strangest part of the business is that they should be in New York at all. I haven't the remotest idea as to why they are here, or how they dropped across me. But isn't it a rather fortunate thing? They may prove useful in a hundred ways."
"Please don't keep them waiting. What does the detective want?"
"Every syllable you can tell him about Count Vassilan."
"I hardly know the man at all. I always avoided him in Paris."
"You may be astonished by the number of facts you will produce when Steingall questions you. And, I had better warn you that my uncle is even now consulting the head-waiter about a wedding feast. He has adopted you without reservation on my poor description."
His frankly admiring look brought a blush to her cheeks; but she only laughed a little constrainedly, and murmured that she would try to be as complacent as the occasion demanded. Events were certainly in league to lend her wedding night a remarkably close semblance to the real thing. And as Curtis descended to the foyer to summon their waiting guests he decided then and there not to mar the festivities by any explanations concerning Jean de Courtois's second time on earth. Steingall had practically settled the question by confining the Frenchman to his room for the remainder of the night. Why interfere with an admirable arrangement? Let the wretched intriguer be forgotten till the morrow, at any rate!