One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York
"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