One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York

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