Now, Jenkins was verger and pew-opener in the church as well as trusted assistant to the aged minister, but the ways and language of the fo'c's'l came back to him with irresistible force when he gazed on the Hungarian's damaged organ.

"Lord love a duck, you've had it handed to you all right," he gasped. "How did you get it? Did you foul a lamp-post, or bump a rock, or what?"

"It is edough that I have met with ad accided," snarled the Count. "Cad't you see that I wadt some water? Is there do place where I cad wash?"

"What you reelly want is a tap," said Jenkins sympathetically. "An' I shouldn't be surprised if a slab of raw beefsteak across yer lamps wouldn't be a bully good notion, too, or you'll have a lovely pair of mice in the morning."

Then, hearing Mr. Hughes's voice from the library, he suddenly recollected the habits of later years.

"Come with me, sir," he said, leading the way to the basement. "I'll do my best for you."

Perhaps it was fortunate for the success of his mission that the Earl of Valletort was left free to deal with the clergyman. The Count's hectoring methods would certainly have stiffened the worthy old gentleman's back, whereas he yielded readily to the Earl's skillful handling. He was much pained at hearing that a peer's daughter should have fallen into the hands of an adventurer.

"Dear me! Dear me!" he wheezed. "This is very sad. The man looked quite a gentleman, I assure you. And he had not the least semblance to a foreigner. His name, too—John D. Curtis—is your lordship really certain of the facts?"

Now, "John" and "Jean" are sufficiently alike in sound to pass muster with the average man, who also connotes no difference between "D" and "de," but the Earl was moved to say quickly:

"Perhaps you are not accustomed to French names, Mr. Hughes?"

"No, I admit it. But, here is an unimpeachable witness," and the minister produced the license from a drawer in the writing-desk.

Lord Valletort glanced at it, and a peculiarly unpleasant scowl convulsed his aristocratic features. Hitherto, a stranger might have believed that Hermione's unfavorable picture of her father had been tinged by a high-spirited girl's hatred of the marriage which he was forcing upon her; but that fleeting expression spoke volumes. If Count Vassilan was of the bovine order, the Earl of Valletort savored of the tiger.

He contrived to smile, however, and the effort to figure wholly as a disconsolate parent cost him far more than he dreamed, since he examined neither the actual certificate nor the register, though both would have been submitted to his scrutiny by the bewildered Mr. Hughes.

"Thank you," he said. "I fully appreciate the position. The scoundrel has learnt how to give an English sound to his name. Probably my daughter taught him. Hard though it is for a father to say such a thing, she is the real brain behind this sordid story of intrigue and wrong-doing."

"Dear me!" gasped Mr. Hughes again. He felt that he must, indeed, be growing old. He had married many hundreds of couples during his ministerial career, and had, in many instances, compared the subsequent lives of his matrimonial clients with the impressions formed during the ceremony, yet never had he been so gravely at fault as in his summing-up of the characteristics of John D. Curtis and Hermione Beauregard Grandison.

Vassilan emerged from the kitchen, dripping but less gory, and the two visitors disappeared, whereupon Mr. Hughes confided his mystification to Jenkins.

But Wil-li-am shook his cadaverous head.

"Mebbe the Earl was right, an' mebbe he was wrong," he said decisively. "I didn't size up the Earl, so I let it go at that, but I did see the other guy—beg pardon, sir, I mean the other gentleman—an' he'll be lucky if he gets to bed to-night without being clubbed by a policeman. Someone has been at him already—hard at him—an' I'm not surprised, for his langwidge reminded me of my best days at sea."

"William!"

"What, sir? Oh, I meant my young days, of course. Now, I wonder——"

It had just occurred to Jenkins that Mr. Curtis and his bride could hardly have got clear away from 56th Street before the Earl and his companion turned up.

"Gee!" he cackled. "I wish I hadn't closed the door so damn quick!"

Mr. Hughes raised hands of horrified protest, and Jenkins wilted.

"Sorry, sir," he stammered. "I must have got a bit wound up when I saw the foreign gentleman's nose. When I went a-whalin' on the Star of the Sea we had a first mate who could man-handle anybody, but even he would have had to use a belayin' pin to stamp his trade-mark in that shape. Now, the question is—could it have been this here Mr. Curtis? It reely is a pity I was so—so spry on the door."

Outside, the chauffeur had announced that he had straightened the levers sufficiently to render them serviceable, and he was directed to make for the Central Hotel, 27th Street, but he had not reached Broadway before the Earl bade him return to Mr. Hughes's residence. What had happened was this—Lord Valletort's recollection of the physique and manner of Jean de Courtois fitted in so ill with the knock-down blow delivered to a portly individual like Ladislas Vassilan that he began to compare the remarks of the elevator man at 1000 59th Street with the confusion in the clergyman's mind on the question of names. Then, though the light had been dim, and his mind was given more to the recognition of his daughter than of the person accompanying her, he was conscious of a growing conviction that the French music-master was a being of an altogether different species. Vassilan, too, having regained some degree of self-control, confirmed him in the belief that there must be some error in their reckoning, and agreed that they might save time by interviewing Mr. Hughes again.

But when the mild eyes of the minister rested on the Count's truculent visage, and noted his water-soaked and blood-stained clothing, there was a distinct drying up in the fount of information.

"No," he said stiffly, in reply to the Earl's request that the marriage license should be produced again, "I regret that I cannot reopen that matter to-night. To-morrow, if you have any cause for complaint, you should consult the proper authorities."

"But you must allow me to emphasize the fact that the license is made out for the marriage of a man with a French name, whereas admittedly you have married my daughter to a man with an English or American name," said the Earl.

"I express no opinion on the point. Your lordship may be assuming facts which are not facts."

"I am making a statement which can be verified quite easily. The name I saw on the license was that of Jean de Courtois, an undersized Frenchman whom I know by sight, whereas my unfortunate friend is a living witness to the presence here of a man who must be of powerful build and exceptional strength."

Mr. Hughes surveyed Vassilan's battered face again, and a doubt, born of a vague memory, began to intrude into his own mind. Moreover, he was an eminently reasonable old gentleman.

"Ah, yes," he said. "My man, Jenkins, said something about a first mate and a belaying pin, whatever that may be—I fancy it is an instrument connected with the flaying of whales—and the bridegroom could certainly not be described as 'an undersized Frenchman' by anyone who paid due regard to the truth. . . . Well, the whole proceeding is highly irregular, but the circumstances are quite exceptional, so——"

In a word, the Earl and Count Vassilan were soon gorged with astonished wrath, for, no matter what discrepancies might exist between license and certificate, there could be no dispute as to the bold signature "John D. Curtis" in the register, while Hermione's handwriting compelled Lord Valletort to believe that he was not the victim of hallucination.

It is easy to see, therefore, how the chase after John D. Curtis became hot thenceforth, but cooled off perceptibly on the trail of Jean de Courtois. The hunters, of course, credited Hermione with a talent for craft and duplicity which she certainly did not possess; being rogues, or of the essence of rogues, they suspected her of roguery, and, in so doing, dug a deep pit for themselves.

On arriving at the Central Hotel they were plunged into a denser fog than ever, and by means so ludicrously simple that even a budding dramatist would hesitate to avail himself of such a crude device. The police had searched the dead man's clothing without finding any positive clew to his name. His linen was marked H. R. H., and certain laundry marks might serve to establish his identity after long and patient inquiry, but the detective who had charge of the case felt that it was becoming unusually complex when the victim's overcoat was produced and the pockets were found to contain letters, a Lusitania wine bill, and a Marconigram—all pointing to the clear fact that the owner of the coat was John D. Curtis.

The detective, Steingall by name, was one of the shrewdest men in the New York police, and his extraordinary faculty of observing minute facts which had escaped others while investigating a crime had earned him the repute of being "the man with a microscopic eye." But he owned to being mystified by this juggling with names.

"Why," he said to the police captain of the precinct, "this fellow Curtis is the man who witnessed the murder, and who will be our most reliable witness if we lay hands on the scoundrels who committed it."

"He said his name was Curtis," commented the other.

The implied doubt seemed to be justified, but Steingall stroked his chin reflectively.

"These papers bear out his story. Look at the dates on the telegram and the bill, and the postmarks on the letters. Can he, by some queer chance, have changed overcoats with the dead man?"

"A most unlikely thing, I should say."

"Something of the sort must have happened. Anyhow, let us get hold of him, and sift this matter thoroughly."

An ambulance came just then, to take the body to the mortuary, and, when it had departed, the two men quitted the traffic bureau where they had been talking, and entered the hotel. Here, excitement was still at fever heat. The press had heard of the murder, and a number of reporters were interviewing everybody in sight, while photographers were adding to the confusion by taking flash-light pictures.

The super-clerk was already showing tokens of the strain. He glared wildly at Steingall when the latter asked if Mr. Curtis was in.

"You're the hundred and first man to whom I have answered 'No' in the last quarter of an hour," he said.

"The first hundred didn't count, anyway," was the dry response. "Pull yourself together, and read that card slowly and collectedly."

"Well," he went on, seeing that the clerk had apparently mastered the copper-plate script, "you see I am not here for amusement. Now, about Curtis, are you sure he is not in his room?"

"His key has not been given up, but I have sent to 605, and we can't get in."

"What do you mean? Is the door locked?"

"We can open every lock in the hotel. It is bolted."

"Have you knocked?"

"We've done everything, short of breaking open the door."

Steingall looked perplexed, but the police captain was confident.

"He has buncoed us, for sure," he said with a smile, though the smile boded evil for John D. Curtis at their next meeting.

"Did you notice him particularly when he registered?" demanded the detective, after a pause.

"Yes. Came to-night by the Lusitania. Here is his signature."

The three men gazed at the register, and Steingall produced a card, on which Curtis had written the name of the hotel.

"Same handwriting!" he murmured. "By the way," he continued, addressing the clerk, "were you here when the murder took place?"

"Yes."

"Did you see anything of it?"

"Not a scratch. I was busy with a lady, who was worrying me about a train to Montclair. She was five minutes making up her mind whether to take the Jersey tunnel or the 23rd Street ferry."

"The only other person, beside Curtis, who saw the whole affair was the hall-porter?"

"I guess that's so."

"Call him into the office."

Questioned anew, the hall-porter was positive about everything except Curtis's connection with the attack. The reporters had scalped him, metaphorically speaking, and his brain was seething. He said "No" when he meant "Yes," and "Yes" for "No," and contradicted himself in each fresh version of the cataclasm which had seared his sky with lightning.

Steingall ultimately gave him up as hopeless that night. Perhaps, next morning, when he had slept and eaten, he might become sane again.

"It's an odd thing that Curtis should have wandered away in this fashion, wearing a strange overcoat," mused the detective aloud.

"He must know it," said the police captain meaningly.

"I rather think we must force that door," said Steingall.

The clerk did not understand the reference to the overcoat, but he was ready enough to adopt the detective's suggestion.

"Shall I send for the engineer, and tell him to bring tools?" he asked.

"There is nothing else for it," admitted Steingall with a shrug. Be it remembered he had seen Curtis, and heard his story. If such a man had committed the most daring crime recorded in New York during a decade, and had flouted the police with such cool effrontery, he (Steingall) would never again trust impressions.

The policemen, the clerk, and a strong-armed artificer went up in the elevator, and, after an imperative knock and a loud-voiced summons to open had been met with blank silence from the interior of No. 605, the workman got busy. The door was stout, and offered a stubborn resistance. It had to be forced off its upper hinge; then it yielded so suddenly that it fell into the room, with the engineer sprawling on top of it. The man yelled, thinking he was being plunged headlong into tragedy, but Steingall switched on the lights, and four pairs of eager eyes peered at nothing in particular. They found the golf clubs, which partially explained the blocking of the door, though it did not occur to any of them at once that the open window might have caused the bag to fall. They rummaged Curtis's portmanteaux and steamer trunks, and came upon evidence in plenty to prove that he was no mere masquerader in another man's name. But that was all. They could form no theory to account for his disappearance, until Steingall noticed the key, lying on the dressing-table, which, with its odds and ends of small articles, was the last place to invite scrutiny. He was gazing at it when the blind flapped, and the door of the wardrobe creaked.

"Confound it!" he cried. "The bedroom door was fastened by accident! The man forgot his key. Look here! I'll show you just how it came about."

He illustrated the slipping of the clubs, and his theory was borne out subsequently by the negro porter who had brought Curtis's belongings upstairs. But an atmosphere of suspicion, of non-comprehension, had been created around the missing man, and it was not to be dispelled, even in Steingall's acute mind, by whittling away the mystery of the blocked door to a minor incident which might occur in any hotel any day.

Leaving the mechanic and the negro to patch the shattered door sufficiently to serve its purpose until it was replaced by another in the morning, the clerk escorted the representatives of the law downstairs. Of course, their departure from the hall and their prolonged absence had been noted by the phalanx of reporters, and they were surrounded instantly. Searching questions were fired at them, but Steingall, who knew how to use the press for his own ends, countered by asking genially:

"In your hunt for copy, have any of you boys come across Mr. John D. Curtis?"

"The man who really saw the riot? I guess not. We want him badly."

An approving grin from his colleagues vouched for the speaker's accuracy.

"Who was killed, anyhow, Steingall?" demanded the journalist who had answered the detective.

"We don't know, yet."

"Does Curtis know?"

"He said he didn't, but I'll tell you something—I shan't be happy till I've had another chat with him."

"Can anyone say who 'John D. Curtis, of Pekin,' really is?" went on the reporter.

"That is the man we are looking for. If there are police officers present, I want them to understand that Curtis should be arrested at sight."

Everyone turned at the sound of the authoritative English voice which had intervened so unexpectedly in the conclave. They saw an elderly man, well dressed, and bearing the unmistakable tokens of good social standing. With him was a foreigner, a most truculent looking person, whose collar, shirt, and waistcoat carried other signs, quite as obvious, but curiously ominous in view of the cause of this gathering in the hall of the hotel.

"May I ask who you are, sir?" said Steingall.

"I am the Earl of Valletort," said the stranger, "and this is Count Ladislas Vassilan."

"Ah! Count Vassilan is not an Englishman?"

"No, but——"

"Is he, by any chance, a Hungarian?"

"Count Vassilan is a Hungarian prince. But the nationality of either of us is unimportant. Are you connected with the New York police?"

"Yes," said Steingall. He answered the Earl, but kept that microscopic eye of his fixed on the Count.

"Very well, then. I repeat that John D. Curtis must be found and arrested—to-night."

"Why?"

"Because he is a dangerous adventurer. I——"

"That's a lie, first sizz out of the syphon," broke in another voice. "I have the honor to be a friend of John D. Curtis. My name is Howard Devar, and I'll stand for John D. all the time against the noble Earl and any God's quantity of blue-blooded, full-blooded Hungarians."

Each member of the animated group was gazing at Devar's boyish, self-possessed, well-chiseled face, when another interruption held them agog. A stout, middle-aged man, followed by a stouter matron, bustled into the circle. The newcomers were just as clearly Americans as the Earl was English, and the man cried angrily:

"Who says that John D. Curtis is a tough? I'm his uncle."

"And I'm his aunt," chimed in the lady.

"Of Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana," said the man.

"Mr. and Mrs. Horace P. Curtis," announced the lady.

"Shake!" said Devar. "I heard about you to-day on board the Lusitania. . . . Now, my lord, we are three to two. What charge do you bring against John D. Curtis?"



CHAPTER V

NINE O'CLOCK

A new note had crept into the voice of the taxi-cab driver when he stopped his vehicle in Madison Avenue and sought Curtis's further commands. No longer did he address his patron with a species of good-humored tolerance, almost of sarcasm; his mental attitude had now become one of respect, even of hero-worship. A little later, while smoking a thoughtful pipe in his own cozy flat somewhere near Second Avenue, he tried to explain this curious development to his wife.

"You see, my dear," he said, "I picked up a fare in Broadway, an' took him where he said he wanted to go. When he got out, he didn't seem to be quite sure whether he wanted to be there or not, an' you can bet I smiled when he said that he supposed the lady he was callin' on lived somewhere around. Anyhow, after hesitatin' a bit, an' tellin' me he wouldn't keep me a minnit, in he dives, an' kep' me coolin' my heels a good quarter of an hour. I grew uneasy, because fares do get so nasty about waitin' charges, so I signals the elevator man, name o' Rafferty, to ask if it was O.K. When Rafferty comes back, we had a chat, an' he tells me that this Miss Grandison—a mighty smart piece she is, too,—was goin' to marry a little Frenchman right away—she was expectin' him to call at eight o'clock an' take her to the minister's place—so it gev' both Rafferty an' me a jar when my dude turns up with the girl an' pipes us for any old address where people could get married. Well, I remembers the number of a shovel hat in 56th Street, an' away we hike, man, girl, an' lady's maid, with never a sign of any Frenchman anywheres. An', by Jove, in they skipped to the parsonage, an' were spliced."

"No, George!" exclaimed his highly interested hearer.

"Fact. True as I'm sittin' here. When they were comin' out, a queer lookin' specimen who opened the door wished 'em happiness. 'Fair weather to you an' your wife, sir,' he said; an' Mr. Curtis—that's my fare's name, I asked him—said something about havin' finished one long voyage an' beginnin' another. Then the fun began. I was just startin' the machine when a private auto dashes up, an' out jumps a foreign-lookin' swell. The girl spots him, an' screams his name—Count Vaseline it sounded like—an' he shouts, 'Here we are, Valtaw'—p'raps that was his way of sayin' Walter—'Got 'em, by— You see after Hermione. I'll fix this—Frenchman?'"

"Don't swear, George," remonstrated the driver's better half.

"I'm not swearin'. Ain't I tellin' you what he said?"

The point was waived.

"And the lady's name was Hermione, was it? It's a pretty name."

"You haven't got it quite right. It was more like the way I said it."

And, indeed, the correction was justified, since it is a regrettable fact that the taxi-cab driver's wife made "Hermione" rhyme with "bone," and laid no stress on the second syllable. Strong in her superior knowledge, for she was an omnivorous reader of fiction—and Greek names were fashionable last November—she passed that point also.

"Well?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Ha, ha!" The narrator laughed joyfully. "The Dago Count went for Curtis as if he was on to a sure thing, but before you could say 'knife' he was on his back on the sidewalk. I've never seen a man put down so quick. I couldn't have floored him so beautifully if I'd hit him with a spanner. But that was only part of the entertainment. Curtis—mind you, before that I'd been treatin' him as an ordinary dude in evenin' dress—acted like an injarubber man filled with chain lightning. He shoved 'Valtaw' back into the auto, grabs the brake an' gear lever, an' puts 'em both out of action, sweeps the two girls into my cab, and——"

Here the taxi-driver bethought himself, and grinned vacuously.

"Well—an' here I am," he concluded.

"I suppose he handed out a good fare," said his wife.

"Yes, he was quite decent about it. Tipped me a couple of dollars over an' above the register."

"I should have thought it would have been more. Men are usually generous when they are getting married."

"He was takin' on a rather expensive bit of stuff, unless I am much mistaken, an' p'raps he was just rememberin' it."

In this ingenuous fashion was a poor woman neatly headed off the scent of a fifty-dollar bill. She rang the knell of a new hat by her next question.

"What was the young lady really like—how was she dressed?" she cried. . . .

Hardly a word was said within the taxi until the corner was turned out of 56th Street into Seventh Avenue. Curtis, who was sitting with his back to the driver, rose, apologized for the disturbance, and looked through the tiny rear window.

"That's all right," he said. "That car won't be able to move for several minutes; but we must leave nothing to chance," so he sank back into a seat, and permitted the driver to take them whither he listed.

Hermione's first words were not exactly those of a fair maid in utmost distress.

"Oh, how splendid it must be to feel sure that you are able to hit a wretch like Count Vassilan and knock him flat!" she cried.

Curtis was surprised. He could not see her kindling eyes, her parted lips, the color which was suffusing forehead and cheeks, and he rather expected to hear subdued sobbing.

"I should hate to have you dislike me as thoroughly as you dislike that fellow," he said.

"I never could. It cannot be in your nature to treat women as he treats them. I do hope you have hurt him."

"I am certain of that, at any rate," laughed Curtis. "He impressed me as weighing a hundred and ninety pounds or thereabouts, and, if it will afford you the slightest gratification, I'll take the first opportunity to work out the approximate force required to drive back a moving body of that weight while traveling forward, say, fifteen miles an hour. There are angles of resistance to be calculated, too, so it offers a decent problem. Meanwhile, the vital question is—where are we going?"

Hermione was easily chaffed out of her bellicose mood. He could picture the droop in the corners of her mouth as she said forlornly:

"I do not know."

"It is evident," he went on, "that they procured the minister's address from the elevator man at your dwelling."

"Ah, that Rafferty! Wait till I see him," broke in Marcelle.

"Please do not scarify Rafferty, if that is his name. I am much more to be blamed than he, because I assured your mistress that the Earl and Count Vassilan were safe on board the Switzerland till the morning. I see now that they telegraphed for a tug, and it is best to assume that they have been kept informed by wireless of nearly every move in the game. . . . You agree with me, I suppose, Lady Hermione, that your return to 1000 59th Street is out of the question?"

"It is, if this mock marriage is to serve any real purpose," she said.

"But pray remember that it is not a mock marriage. You and I are as firmly bound together by the law as if—well, as if we meant it."

She leaned forward a little; her face was etched in Rembrandt lights by the glare from some shop windows.

"Mr. Curtis," she said earnestly, "it is neither just nor reasonable that you should plunge yourself into difficulties for the sake of a girl whom you met to-night for the first time. Why not go out of my life now—this instant? . . . Marcelle and I can find refuge somewhere. The hour is early. . . . Why should you take all the risk?"

He was ready for some such appeal on her part.

"I was taught in school if I did a thing at all to do it thoroughly," he said, "and my experience of life has given the adage a halo. It would be worse than useless to desert you now, Lady Hermione. Whatever penalties I may have incurred in the eyes of the law are committed beyond hope of redemption. If I am sought for, the police know exactly where to lay hands on me, and my crime would become monstrous if it were proved that I ran away from my wife on the night of our marriage. No; we must face the music boldly, and together. We must go to some well-known hotel, register openly, secure rooms, and conduct ourselves on the orthodox lines of all runaway couples, who are presumably head over heels in love with each other. Moreover, in the morning, or whenever we are run to earth, you should allow me to face your father and play the part of the indignant husband. It is essential that your marriage should appear real, or you go back to bondage and I to prison."

"To prison!" The girl's horrified accents showed that she had hardly given a thought to the bald consequences of her escapade.

"Yes. I am not trying to frighten you; but what sort of mercy would a judge show to the craven who absconded before the battle began? If, on the other hand, I am, so to speak, torn from your arms—if a plausible lawyer can depict you tearful and inconsolable—if——"

"You make out a fairly strong case, Mr. Curtis. I have told you that I trust you, and I can only repeat my words of gratitude. . . . Marcelle, you will not leave me?"

"Never, miss, ma'am—that is, your ladyship."

Thus it befell that Curtis was ready with the name of a prominent hotel in Fifth Avenue when the driver halted in Madison Avenue. He made his choice almost at random, but selected one of the newest uptown caravanserais, merely because it lay a considerable distance from 27th Street. Otherwise, his object in picking a large hotel being to avoid notice among a fashionable throng, he might easily have taken his "wife" to the Waldorf-Astoria, in which event certain complications even then hot in the making would not have followed their intricate course, while Hermione's future must have been affected most powerfully.

"I suppose you are prepared to submit to certain conditions which govern this new venture?" said Curtis, when the cab was once more speeding onward to a definite goal.

"What are they?"

It would be scarcely fair to describe Hermione's tone as suspicious, for she was a loyal soul, and was wondering in her heart of hearts what manner of man this knight errant could be; but his very self-possession fluttered her; she had been so accustomed to think and act in her own defense that she experienced a subtle fear of this calm, cool-headed, masterful person whom she must learn to regard as her husband.

"Well,"—Curtis's speech was so unemotional that he might have been describing one of his Manchurian railway schemes—"we must treat each other with a certain familiarity—even use little endearments—in public—and address each other by pet names—mine is Chow."

Despite her troubles, the girl laughed, and Curtis recalled the tinkle of silver bells in a temple at evening on the banks of the far-away Wei-ho.

"But that is the name of a dog!" she tittered.

"Yes. In my case, it denoted some unpleasant personal characteristics when a stupid mandarin put obstacles in my way. I never gave any warning, but rushed in and bit him, not actually, of course, but in his illicit commissions, which annoyed him more than a real bite."

"I don't like Chow," she said. "Your name is John. Won't Jack do?"

"Fine." It was lucky she could not see the smile that flitted across his face. "And yours?"

"Mamma always used my full name, and I have never had anyone else to give me a pet name, unless it was 'Tatters' at school."

"We might bracket Tatters with Chow, and dismiss both," he said lightly. "And I like the sound of Hermione so well that it is pat on my lips already. . . . Now, you, Marcelle—remember that her ladyship has become Lady Hermione Curtis."

"Oh, not Mrs. Curtis?"

"No. An earl's daughter retains her courtesy title after marriage."

"All right, sir. I shan't forget." Indeed, Marcelle was jubilant. She had been "dying" to use her mistress's title, once she became aware of it, but it was taboo at 59th Street.

Curtis had covered a good deal of ground during that brief discussion in the cab, but Hermione was not quite prepared for its logical sequel in the hotel.

Naturally, they attracted no unusual attention when they entered the hotel. Other people merely noticed the passing of a distinguished looking young man in evening dress—for Curtis had promptly whipped off that ominous overcoat—and a slender, veiled lady, of elegant carriage, who walked up to the bureau, followed by a smartly dressed girl who gazed about her with bright, all-seeing eyes.



"My wife and I have been detained in New York this evening unexpectedly," explained Curtis to the hotel clerk. "We want a suite of rooms, a sitting-room, three bedrooms with baths—you would like Marcelle's room to communicate with yours, wouldn't you, dear?" and he turned suddenly to Hermione.

"Y-yes," she faltered, for the attack took her unaware.

"What floor, sir? We have a nice suite on the tenth."

"Not so high, please," said Hermione. Then she sprung a mine on her own account. "I know it is stupid, Jack, darling, but I am so afraid of fire."

"This hotel is absolutely fireproof, madam," put in the clerk, stating a fact implicitly believed by every hotel proprietor in New York in so far as his own building is concerned, "but we can accommodate you on the second floor, Suite F., fifty dollars a day."

"Thank you. That will be just right," said Curtis quickly, for he meant to live like a prince during one night at least, let the morrow bring its own cares. "Now, you understand that we are here without baggage, though my wife's maid will procure some necessaries while we eat, and I mean to get some clothes later, but, if you would like a deposit of, say, a hundred dollars——?"

He felt for his pocketbook, but, to the credit of the clerk be it said, the suggestion was negatived with a smile.

"No need at all for any deposit, sir," was the answer. "I wouldn't be on to my job it I didn't know how and when to discriminate in matters of that sort. Will you register?"

Curtis took a pen and wrote:

"Mr. and Lady Hermione Curtis, and maid." Some imp of adventure moved him to inscribe "Pekin" in the column for visitors' home addresses. But the clerk was obviously impressed by Hermione's title, no less than the singularly remote locality the couple hailed from. He leant back, and took a key from its hook.

"Page!" he said. "Show Mr. Curtis and her ladyship to Suite F." Then he added, as an afterthought: "Would you like dinner served in your sitting-room, sir?"

"I think so," said Curtis, "but my wife shall decide a little later."

Hermione kept silent until they were safely behind the closed door of a well-furnished and delightfully spacious apartment.

"Of course, I bear all expenses," she said firmly.

"What—are we quarreling already?" he asked.

"No, but——"

"You think I am being wildly extravagant. Why, bless your ladyship's dear little heart, this hotel doesn't begin to know how to charge like a taxi. Now, no argument till to-morrow. An American millionaire can really be quite a decent sort of fellow at times, and, if we may assume that this is one of the times, please let me play at being a millionaire—for once."

She raised her veil, and looked at him, straight in the eyes.

"Why are you so different from other men? Why have I never before spoken to a man like you?" she asked.

"But I am not different, and there are plenty of men like me; the other poor chaps haven't had my glorious chance of serving you—that is all. Now, won't you go and see if your room is comfortable, and whether or not Marcelle's quarters are just right? Then come back here, and we'll discuss menus, for which purpose I shall ring for a waiter ek dum."

"Is that Chinese?"

"No, Hindustani. It means 'at once,' but every hotel-wala east of Suez understands it."

Still she lingered.

"Have you any sisters—a mother living?" she said.

"No. I'm the sole survivor of my own family. But I mean to give myself the pleasure of a full introduction while we dine, or sup. Do say you are hungry."

"I have not eaten a morsel since luncheon," she confessed.

"Oh, joy! I must interview the head waiter. No common serf will suffice. Please hurry."

She left him, not without an impulsive movement as though she meant to utter some further words of thanks, but checked her intent on the very threshold of speech. As the lock of the bedroom door clicked, and he was alone, he essayed a review of the amazing sequence of events which had befallen since he strolled out of the dining-room of the Central Hotel. He stood there, motionless, with hands plunged deep in his pockets, but, at the outset of a reverie in which judgment and prudence might have helped in the council, he happened to catch sight of himself in an oblong mirror over the mantelpiece, for the apartment, redolent of New York's later architecture, contained an open grate, and was furnished with the chaste beauty of the Chippendale period. In his present position the reflection in the mirror was oddly reminiscent of a half-length portrait of his grandfather, the warrior who rode at the head of the Fifth Cavalry in '61.

Then Curtis laughed, with the pleasant conviction of a man whose mind has been made up for him by circumstances beyond his control.

"It's bred in the bone—a clear case of Mendelism," he murmured softly, because he had just remembered how Colonel Curtis, before ever the war was ended and its bitterness assuaged, had decided a Southern girl's conflict between love and duty by galloping fifty miles across Confederate South Carolina and carrying off the lady.

Grandfather and grandson alike were men of action. Curtis seldom used a gesture, and never cried over spilt milk. Now he merely turned, peered into his own bedroom, assured himself that Hermione would find its prototype to her fancy, and then summoned a waiter.

Behind the closed door of the other room a girl was similarly engaged in taking stock of the situation; but she had feminine assistance, so there was bound to be talk.

"Oh, your ladyship, isn't this just the dandiest bit out of a novel you ever read?" cried Marcelle when she entered her mistress's room through a communicating door.

"It might be more thrilling if it were not a page out of my own life," said Hermione sadly. She, too, was gazing in a mirror, though, being a woman, the oppressive thought bobbed up through a sea of troubles that her hair must be untidy, and she owned neither comb nor brush.

"But, what luck, miss, your ladyship, to have found a gentleman like Mr. Curtis at the right moment. Talk about life buoys for drowning men and rich uncles from California in plays—who ever heard of anyone wanting a nice husband and getting him in such a way!"

Marcelle's eyes were positively glistening. And these two now were not mistress and maid, but a pair of highly strung women, and young ones at that.

"You have lost your wits in this night's excitement, Marcelle," said Hermione. "Don't you realize that I am only married under mere pretense. Mr. Curtis is nothing to me, nor I to him. He has been kind and gallant, and I am under an obligation which I can never discharge—but that is not marriage."

"It's awful like it, your ladyship."

"No, no. Drive such nonsense from your head. When you marry, don't you hope to love the man of your choice, and will you not feel sure that he loves you?"

"Oh, yes, miladi."

"Then how is it possible for any relationship of that sort to exist between Mr. Curtis and me?"

"You've gone a long way already, ma'am," giggled Marcelle.

"Please don't call me ma'am. It—it irritates me."

"Sorry, miladi, but you will admit, at least, a marriage being necessary, that you were fortunate in finding Mr. Curtis?"

"Yes, doubly fortunate—it is that fact which makes things hard for me."

"Makes what things hard, your ladyship?"

"Oh, I don't know. I scarce recognize my own voice. Marcelle, if I seem distraught and unreasonable, promise me you will pay no heed. For pity's sake, don't leave me!"

Hermione's eyes filled with tears, and Marcelle was on the verge of hysteria.

"I—can't imagine—what there is—to cry about," she murmured brokenly. "Nothing on earth would induce me to go away now—but I do hope—and pray—you will be happy—even though—you only met your husband—little more than an hour ago! . . . And I believe in my heart, Lady Hermione, that you will soon see how fortunate you were in escaping that mincing little Frenchman——"

"Marcelle, the poor man is dead."

"Then it is the best turn he has done you, miladi. I never fancied him. There was something underhanded and mean about him. I have seen his face when you were not looking, and I'm sure he was a hypocrite."

"Marcelle, you will drive me crazy. Don't you understand that I have never intended to marry anybody—really?"

A knock at the door opening into the sitting-room came to Hermione's relief.

"Yes?" she said.

"If you can spare Marcelle, I would recommend that she should go to your flat for any clothes you may need," said Curtis's voice.

Hermione threw open the door.

"A little while ago you told me that it was impossible to think of returning there," she said.

"For you, yes, but not for your maid. Who is to hinder? That man, Rafferty, looked a decent sort of fellow."

"I can manage Rafferty all right," put in Marcelle.

"Of course you can," smiled Curtis. "Just pack a trunk or a couple of bags with Lady Hermione's belongings—you know what to bring—and get Rafferty to call a taxi without attracting too much notice. If you think you are being followed, put your pursuers off the scent. But my own view is that 1000 59th Street is the last place anyone will think of watching to-night."

"Shall I go at once, your ladyship?" said Marcelle, and Hermione said "Yes," with a meekness that was admirable in a wife.

Curtis looked at his pretty bride's hat.

"I have ordered a meal," he said. "It will be served in a few minutes."

"I shall be ready," she replied, beginning nervously to take off her gloves. The wedding ring was inclined to accompany the left hand glove, but, after a second's hesitation, she replaced it. When she appeared in the sitting-room she had discarded her jacket, a close-fitting one of a style that fastened a la militaire, high in the neck. Beneath it she had been wearing a white silk blouse, and the delicate pink of her arms and throat was revealed now through its diaphanous sheen. A string of pearls supported a diamond cross on her breast, and on her left wrist was a watch set in small diamonds and turquoises and carried by a bracelet of gold filigree. She wore only one ring—the ring—and even the slight glance which Curtis gave it brought a vivid blush to her cheeks.

"I am not a past master in the art of ordering banquets," he said cheerily, turning at once to draw her attention to the table, "but the head-waiter here is a gourmet. He suggested caviare, a white soup, a king-fish, a tourne-dos, and a grouse—does that appeal?"

"You take my breath away," she said, with valorous effort to seem at ease.

"Now—as to wine?"

"I seldom touch wine."

"To-night it will make you sleep. What do you say to a glass of Clos Vosgeot?"

"Is that a claret?"

"Yes."

"Well, as it happens, that is the one wine I take."

The dinner proceeded most pleasantly. To his own astonishment, Curtis worked up sufficient appetite to enjoy the meal, though he would have stuffed himself remorselessly to save his charming vis-a-vis from the slightest embarrassment. But he only sipped the wine, for a sixth sense warned him that he must keep a clear head that night.

By inference rather than plain statement, for a deft waiter was constantly coming in and out, he supplied Hermione with glimpses of his own career, and ascertained from her that she had secured Marcelle's services through the good offices of a lady who was a fellow-passenger on the ship.

"She comes from New Orleans, but, notwithstanding her name, she does not speak French," said Hermione. "I think that rather accounts for——"

She stopped, and Curtis did not press for an explanation, but she continued, after a second's pause:

"Marcelle did not like Monsieur de Courtois. I imagined she was annoyed because he always conversed with me in a language she did not understand."

"Then I shall avoid Chinese," he laughed.

"Marcelle——"

Again she hesitated. She was positively dismayed by consciousness of the imminent disclosure, yet too well-bred even to appear to be withholding confidences.

"You have won Marcelle's golden opinion already," she said. "But let us talk of something else."

For the moment they were alone, and she glanced at the watch on her wrist.

"Have you made any plans?" she inquired, and her voice was low, yet sufficiently composed.

"For the future?"

"Yes."

"When Marcelle arrives, I am going to my hotel for some baggage. You, I suggest, are going to bed."

"You will return?"

"Within the hour—if I am alive."

"And to-morrow?"

"To-morrow, may it please your ladyship, we breakfast together at nine o'clock."

"Your plan, then, is mainly composed of eating and sleeping?"

"What else—our policy is one of drifting."

"You are extraordinarily good to me, Mr. Curtis."

"It is 'Jack' in the compact."

She sighed.

"Alas, this compact reads only one way. It means that you give and I receive. Will you—will you believe, in the future, that despair alone could have driven me to the course I have pursued?"

"No," he said sturdily.

"No? That is the only unkind thing you have said."

"I refuse to vilify happy chance in the name of black despair. But—here is Marcelle, and slaves bearing packages. I hear thuds in the next room."

And, indeed, the waiter entering just then with coffee, Marcelle's voice reached them sharply from the corridor:

"Now, you boy, be careful with that hat-box! Do you think you are an express man, or what?"



CHAPTER VI

NINE-THIRTY

Chance is often a skilled stage manager, and chance had arranged a really effective scene in the hall of the Central Hotel. The Earl of Valletort seemed to be somewhat unwilling to take up any of the gauntlets so readily thrown down by Devar and the Curtis family, and, for a few seconds, the ring of reporters was held spellbound by a situation which promised most excellently with regard to the all-important question of "copy."

Then the police captain, after waiting for Steingall to take the lead, nudged his silent colleague, and said gruffly:

"This thing cannot be gone into here. Those who can bring forward testimony of any value ought to come with Mr. Steingall and myself to the precinct station-house."

"Why lose time which cannot be overtaken later?" urged the Earl, appealing to Steingall, since it was the detective who had spoken to him in the first instance.

"We appear to be at cross purposes," said Steingall. "How did you two gentlemen get to know that a murder had been committed?"

"Murder!" gasped Count Vassilan.

"We are not talking of a murder, but of a most scandalous abduction, which will provide only one of a number of most serious charges against this person, Curtis," cried the Earl.

Vassilan seized him by the arm excitedly.

"Don't you understand, dear friend," he muttered in French. "The rascal must have killed de Courtois in order to gain possession of the marriage certificate."

"It will save trouble, sir, if you speak English here," said Steingall. Then he turned to the hotel clerk.

"Place a room at our disposal at once. Lord Valletort is quite right. We have not a second to waste."

A murmur of protest arose from the pressmen, though it was obvious that the police could not conduct the inquiry in the midst of an ever-growing crowd of residents and servants.

"Say, Steingall," whispered the reporter who had spoken for the others earlier, "can't you let us into this? We'll suppress anything you wish—I'll guarantee that, absolutely without reservation."

"I have no objection, but these high-toned strangers may not like it," said the detective quietly.

The Earl, when the point was referred to him, made no difficulty whatsoever about the presence of the journalists—in fact, he rather welcomed publicity.

"It is better that the truth should appear than a garbled and misleading version," he said affably. "I want your help, gentlemen. I know enough of newspaper ways to feel sure that a story of some sort will be star-headed in every news sheet in New York to-morrow, so my friend, Count Vassilan, and I are more than willing that you should be well informed."

Now, that phase of the problem was precisely what Count Ladislas Vassilan seemed to be exceedingly disconcerted about. He was singularly ill at ease. His florid face had paled to a dusky wanness when he heard the ugly word "Murder," and each passing moment served only to increase his agitation. Steingall, to all intents and purposes paying less heed to the man than to any other person present, had not missed one labored breath, one twitch of an eyelid, one nervous gesture. His phenomenal instinct in the detection of crime had fastened unerringly on a singular coincidence. Curtis had hazarded a guess that the real malefactors were Hungarians, and here was a Hungarian Count denouncing Curtis. Certainly that question of nationality promised remarkable developments.

When the whole party, consisting of some fifteen persons, had gathered behind the closed door of the hotel's private office, Steingall took the lead in directing the proceedings.

"It will help straighten out a tangle if I say exactly what has taken place here to-night—that is, to the best of our knowledge," he said. "There is every reason to believe that Mr. John D. Curtis arrived in New York this afternoon from Europe——"

"Right," broke in Devar. "I traveled with him on the Lusitania."

"Yes, his presence on board was announced in most of the papers," added a journalist.

"Please don't interrupt," said the detective. "You will be heard in your turn. Now, this Mr. Curtis was allotted room No. 605, and there is evidence to prove that he behaved like any ordinary individual who had just come from shipboard. He superintended the unpacking of his clothes, gave out a quantity of linen for the laundry, changed into evening dress, and dined alone. Thus far, there is ample corroboration of his own story, because his movements can be checked by the observation of half-a-dozen hotel employes. He says, by the way, that while buying some stamps at the cigar counter before going to the restaurant, he was jostled by a rough-looking foreigner, who apologized in broken French, and whom he took to be a Czech or Hungarian. No one seems to have witnessed this incident, but I have not questioned the man who sold him the stamps. Anyhow, after dinner, at twenty minutes of eight to be exact, he came into the lobby, intending to inform the clerk that he had closed the bedroom door and left his key in the room. We have ascertained that this statement is true; the door had to be forced, because a bag of golf clubs had fallen and become wedged between the door and the side of a steel trunk. Curtis never did speak to the clerk about the key; at that instant, he says, his attention was drawn to the queer behavior of the foreigner who had pushed against him, and who had been joined in the meantime by another man of similar type. They seemed to be very excited, and were apparently expecting someone to turn up, either in the street or from the hotel—Curtis fancied that they were on the look-out for interruption, or news, from both quarters. The porter on duty at the door, who is not quite intelligible to-night, remembers asking these men if they wanted a taxi, but they gave no heed to him. Then, according to Curtis's version of the affair, an automobile dashed up outside, and a young man in evening dress, carrying an overcoat, stepped out, and told the chauffeur to keep the engine going, as he would not be detained more than a minute. At that instant the two foreigners—Hungarians according to Curtis—sprang at the newcomer, and endeavored to force him back into the auto. Failing in this, one of them drew a knife, and stabbed him so severely that he died within a few minutes, and without uttering an intelligible word. Curtis ran to help, but was too far away to prevent the crime, and was further balked in an attempt to seize either of the wretches by having the dying man's body flung in his way. He endeavored to hinder the escape of the scoundrels in the automobile, but failed, because the chauffeur was evidently in league with them, and, when he came back to the crowd which had collected around the prostrate man, it would appear that someone gave him, by mistake, the victim's overcoat in place of his own. This error was not discovered until the police came to search the dead man's clothing, when various documents showed beyond question that the overcoat believed to be his was really Curtis's. Curtis told his story in a clear and straightforward way, and I, for one, have not seen any reason to doubt it. It is odd that he should have disappeared so completely since a few minutes after the crime, but that may be capable of a simple explanation, while it is possible that he has not as yet discovered the change of overcoats, or he must surely have returned and informed us of the mistake. I am assuming, of course, that he would act as one would expect of any reasonable minded citizen who had witnessed a serious crime. . . . Now, Lord Valletort, what have you to say about Mr. Curtis?"

A guttural exclamation from Count Vassilan drew all eyes to him. He seemed to be on the verge of collapse, and was positively livid with fright. In other conditions than those obtaining at the moment, such a display of terror on the part of a truculent looking, strongly built man would have been almost ludicrous; but Steingall found no humor in the spectacle. He was gazing at the Hungarian with a curious concentration, and the police captain, who had begun by thinking his colleague was saying far too much, and who was inclined to disagree with some of his conclusions, now thought he could discern method in his madness.

Again did Vassilan murmur something to the Earl in a strange tongue, and Valletort, with difficulty repressing his annoyance, explained that his friend was feeling the effects of a blow received earlier in the evening, and wished to retire at once to his room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

"By all means," said Steingall suavely. "I gather that Count Vassilan has no connection with the inquiry—in fact, he is not interested in it."

"He is, in a sense——" began the Earl, but Vassilan grasped his arm, and evidently besought him to come away without another word. Though Valletort was in a towering rage, he obviously thought fit to fall in with his companion's views.

"You see how it is," he said, with a nonchalant gesture that was belied by his grating tone. "I am afraid I must postpone my branch of this inquiry till a later hour—probably until the morning."

"Do you withdraw all charges against John D. Curtis?" demanded Devar, and his clear, incisive voice was distinctly hostile in its icy precision.

"No, sir. I do not," was the angry retort.

"Well, I guess you know best why you and the Hungarian potentate have developed this sudden attack of cold feet, but——"

"I'll thank you not to interfere, Mr. Devar," said Steingall determinedly. "If Lord Valletort thinks his business can wait till Count Vassilan has recovered from an indisposition, that is his affair only."

"I think nothing of the sort," snapped the Earl. "You all see that the Count is ill, and common humanity impels me to attend to him first. It may serve to curb this young gentleman's tongue if I say——"

But Vassilan would not permit him to say anything. Though he was the ailing man, he literally dragged Valletort out of the room and into the street.

Steingall looked at the police captain, who quitted the apartment instantly. Then the detective gazed around at the others with a placid smile which seemed to show that he, for one, was well content with the unusual turn taken by events.

"I suppose you boys have verbatim notes of all that was said," he inquired, tossing the remark collectively to the group of pressmen.

"Every word," came the assurance.

"Well, now, I want you to keep all that out of the papers."

"If we do that, Steingall, what is there left?" said one of them good-humoredly.

"The biggest thing you have dropped on to this year; unless I am greatly mistaken, the scoop of scoops for those who happen to be present. I'm not going to pretend that any of you are blind or deaf, and it will assist the police materially if no comment is made on what you have heard and seen. I don't like to put it otherwise than as a friendly hint; but I may want the whole bunch as witnesses before this thing is through, so your mouths should be closed effectually with regard to incidents in this room."

A half-hearted laugh went around, and someone asked:

"We must put up a readable story of some kind—if we cut out certain details, surely we can use others?"

"I said 'incidents in this room,'" repeated the detective.

"Then we can mention the arrival of the Earl and the Count on the scene?"

"Why not?"

"One minute, sir," put in Mr. Horace P. Curtis. "If these gentlemen take you at your word, the charge made against my nephew will be published throughout the length and breadth of the United States to-morrow."

"I don't see how something of the sort is to be avoided," said Steingall.

"Then, in common fairness, the newspapers ought to state that my wife and I, as well as Mr. Devar, as good as told the Earl that he was lying."

"I imagine you can leave the matter safely in the very capable hands of the reporters present," said Steingall.

"Remember, please, that no charge was actually named against Curtis," said Devar. "The Earl of Valletort demanded that he should be found and arrested, and described him as a dangerous adventurer, but gave no shred of proof of his wild-cat statement that Curtis had been engaged in a scandalous abduction, and, when asked for it, discovered that he had urgent business elsewhere."

Steingall held up a hand in quiet reproof.

"My own view is that it would be best, at this stage, to say merely that the two noblemen came here inquiring for Curtis, and leave it at that. I am not trying to deprive the press of a sensation. Surely there is enough in Chapter One for to-night, and those reporters who have had the luck to be present will be able to fill in gaps in Chapters Two and Three when they come along to-morrow or next day."

"Right," said the journalist who, by tacit agreement, seemed to represent his confreres. "There are one or two items we want you to clear up, if you don't mind. First, did Curtis, or anybody else, note the number of the automobile?"

"Yes," said Steingall instantly. "The number is X24-305, and Curtis heard the man who was murdered address the chauffeur as 'Anatole.' He spoke French to the man, too."

"You omitted both of those interesting facts from your summary," commented the reporter with a smile.

"Did I? That was a piece of sheer forgetfulness on my part."

"You didn't forget to rope us all in here as witnesses when the Hungarian prince came on the boards. I knew you had something up your sleeve the moment you began to fill in details. But, as to the crime itself—have you found out the name of the man who was killed?"

"No. There were no papers in his clothes, but that may be accounted for by the singular accident of the exchange of overcoats. His linen was marked 'H. R. H.'"

"'H. R. H.,'" cried a bespectacled journalist who had been a silent listener hitherto. "That's rather odd. Those are the initials of Henry R. Hunter, a member of our staff. The news editor wanted him to take hold in the first instance when the fact that a murder had been committed was 'phoned to the office, but he could not be found anywhere, so I am here in his stead."

"I don't recall anyone of that name," said Steingall sharply.

"No, you wouldn't. He was in our Chicago office till the beginning of September. He did one or two bright things there that caught the chief's eye, so he was brought to New York. . . . By Jove, Hunter is a good French scholar. It was on that account he got on the track of a gang of Chicago anarchists."

A curious stillness fell on the gathering. It was as though a spirit of evil had suddenly made its presence felt; even the electric lamps seemed to have grown dimmer.

"Describe Hunter."

Steingall's voice rang out incisively; the reporter took off his spectacles, and began to burnish them, for his face was glistening with perspiration.

"He is about five feet ten inches in height, and weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 pounds. He is straight and well-built, and his face is finely molded, with big, luminous eyes, deeply recessed, and——"

"Has he a white scar across the left eyebrow?"

"Yes."

For some reason, the journalist carried his description of Hunter's personal appearance no farther. It was unnecessary. Before Steingall uttered another word everyone in the room had a foreboding that they were on the threshold of a discovery which lifted this tragedy into a prominence far beyond aught they had yet dreamed of.

Except for that momentary touch of amazement in the detective's tone they could gather nothing from his manner. But his invariable habit was to speak to the point, and without the least suggestion of ambiguity in his words.

"I am very much afraid, gentlemen, that the murdered man is Mr. Henry B. Hunter," he said. "I must trouble you to come with me, and place the question of identity beyond doubt. I hope that you, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, and you, Mr. Devar, will make it convenient to await my return. There are matters on which you can give me valuable information."

In a few seconds the three found themselves alone. The clerk had business to attend to, but he courteously invited them to remain in the office until the detective came back.

"Did you ever hear such nonsense as this talk about Curtis being mixed up in an abduction?" began Devar, eager to dispossess his friend's relatives of any false impressions they might have formed. "Why, he didn't know a soul in the States—except yourselves," he added tactfully.

The uncle, who had been polishing his domed forehead with a large handkerchief at intervals during the past quarter of an hour, cleared his throat as a preliminary to some important announcement, but his better half had only kept silent because of a real fear that her nephew had been engaged in the commission of serious crime from the instant he set foot in New York, and she entered the fray vigorously now.

"We don't know much about him, and that's the truth, Mr. Devar," she cried. "There was some family disagreement years ago, and the brothers lost track of each other, but Horace here never forgets a name, and why should he, seeing that John was his father's name, and Delancy his mother's, and our nephew has both, so the minute we saw that paragraph in the Chicago papers about the eminent American engineer who had been building railways in China being on board the Lusitania, I says to Horace: 'Horace, it would be shame on us if we allowed your brother's son and your own nephew to arrive in New York without some of his kith and kin to bid him welcome,' and with that we hustled to catch the next train east, but the steamer did the trip quicker'n we counted on, and we just missed being at the docks, so if it hadn't been for our good luck in finding the man who helped John with his baggage, and who remembered the name of the hotel he gave the taxi-driver, we might have been searching New York all this blessed night without dreaming of coming to such a place as this, because the newspapers spoke so highly of John that we made sure he would be stopping in one of the Fifth Avenue hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria or Hoffman House, or perhaps higher uptown, in the Ritz-Carlton or the Plaza."

Mrs. Curtis was stout, so she yielded perforce to lack of breath, and Devar was able to explain smilingly that he, and none other, was responsible for the item in the newspapers.

"The fact is that I took a great liking to John D.," he said. "He is such a real good fellow, and so sublimely unconscious of his own merits, that I wanted to surprise him by starting a modest boom in the press, so I sent a wireless message about him to a journalistic friend in New York. I wondered why the reporters did not get hold of him when they came aboard at the quarantine station, but I remember now that, by some curious trick of fate, he and I stowed ourselves away in a part of the ship where no one was likely to find us, and I clean forgot to put them on his track when I went below."

"I guess my nephew has attended to the booming proposition on his own account," said Horace, getting under way at last.

Devar laughed, but Mrs. Curtis was shocked.

"Horace!" she cried indignantly, "that's the only unkind thing I've heard you say in years. Oh, yes,"—for her husband had spread his hands in mild protest—"I know you didn't mean it, but barbed shafts of humor often fall in places where they hurt, and it is terrible to think of your nephew being mixed up in a murder, and an abduction, and——"

She broke off in mid-career, and fixed a stern eye on Devar.

"Are you quite sure he didn't get flirting with some giddy young thing on board?" she demanded. "I've heard and read of some strange goings-on among people crossing the Atlantic. I could tell you of two marriages and no less than five divorces which——"

Devar was a polite young man, but he thought the situation called for firmness.

"To the best of my belief, your nephew never so much as spoke to any lady on the ship," he vowed. "He read a good deal, and played cards occasionally, and walked the decks with me when the weather permitted, but he did not even mention a woman's name except your own, madam."

"The marvel is that he mentioned us at all," said Horace.

Devar thought in his own mind, that the elder Curtis might be ponderous in body and speech but he certainly revealed horse sense when he opened his mouth.

"And whose fault was that, I should like to know?" cried Mrs. Curtis. "Didn't your own brother quarrel with you because you said he ought to have married a woman of some stability of character, and not a pretty, feather-headed girl who spent her days reading poetry and her nights in attending lectures, and who didn't begin to understand the A.B.C. of a wife's domestic duties?"

"Maybe I was wrong and he was right," said her husband.

"Horace!"

Mrs. Curtis was marshaling her forces for a mighty effort when the door opened, and Steingall entered, accompanied by a tall, well set-up man in evening dress, and wearing an open overcoat and green Homburg hat.

"Well," cried Devar, springing forward with outstretched hand, "I'm mighty glad to see you, John D.!"

The newcomer's face lit with pleasure, but before he could utter a responsive word Mrs. Curtis gurgled:

"John D.! . . . Are you John Delancy Curtis? . . . Horace, is this your nephew?"

"Judging from his looks, Louisa, he ought to be," said the stout man, gazing at the stranger with wide-eyed astonishment.

The Christian names of the couple acted like a galvanic battery on Curtis. At first, he could hardly believe his ears, but some resemblance in the portly Curtis to his own father warned him that this night of nights had not yet exhausted its store of stupefying surprises.

"Why!" he exclaimed, smiling cheerfully, "you must be my uncle and aunt from Bloomington, Indiana!"

"If you're John Delancy Curtis, that's our correct description," said Horace.

"Of course he is," chortled Mrs. Curtis. "He's as like you the day I married you as two peas in a pod, and if our little Horace had been spared he would have been his living image. Nephew, I'm proud to meet you," and Mrs. Curtis folded her relation in an ample embrace.

Curtis carried off a difficult situation with ease. He kissed his aunt, shook hands with his uncle, and was about to answer the lady's torrent of questions with regard to himself and his own people when Steingall interfered.

"Sorry to interrupt you," he said, "but the turn taken by to-night's crime demands your immediate attention, Mr. Curtis. Do you know you are wearing the dead man's overcoat?"

"Yes. I discovered that fact some time ago."

Curtis's prompt admission was more favorable to his cause than he could possibly realize then, though he had seen that the detective's extraordinarily brilliant eyes were fixed on the garment's blood-stained sleeve.

"And have you learnt the owner's name?" went on Steingall quietly.

"Yes, that is, I believe so, owing to a document I found in one of the pockets."

"Ah, what was that?"

"It concerned another person, but I am prepared to tell you its nature if it is absolutely essential."

"Believe me, there must be no concealment—now."

Something in the detective's tone conveyed a hint of peril, of suspicion, to the ears of one so accustomed to dealing with his fellow-men as was Curtis. But he shook off the premonition of ill, and decided, once and for all, to be candor itself where the authorities were concerned.

"It was a marriage license," he said.

"And the names on it?"

"They were those of a Frenchman, Jean de Courtois, and of an English lady, Hermione Beauregard Grandison."

"So you have imagined that the man who was killed was this Monsieur Jean de Courtois?"

For the life of him, Curtis could not prevent the tumultuous pumping of his heart from drawing some of the color from his face.

"Who else?" he inquired, never flinching from Steingall's searching gaze.

"No matter who owned the coat, or whom the license was intended for, the murdered man was no Frenchman, but a New York journalist named Henry R. Hunter," said Steingall.

Then Curtis yielded to the swift conviction that he had unwittingly trapped Lady Hermione into a marriage on grounds that were inadequate and false.

"Good God!" he muttered, and, for the moment, it was impossible for his hearers to resist the dreadful inference that, in some shape or form, he was implicated in the outrage which bulked so large in their minds. Mrs. Curtis wanted to scream aloud, but she dared not. Even Devar was staggered by his friend's unaccountable attitude. The only outwardly unmoved individual present was Horace P. Curtis. He turned and pressed an electric bell; Steingall glared at him, so he explained his action.

"I feel like a highball," he said blandly. "I guess Mrs. Curtis could do with one also. In fact, five highballs would be a bully good notion."



CHAPTER VII

TEN O'CLOCK

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 cafe 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."