One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York
"Ah, that puts a different complexion on the affair, as the young man
said when he kissed his best girl and tasted Somebody's Beauty Powder.
Don't press, Arthur. Just keep him in sight till I consult the law."
As the outcome of a hurried discussion, Brodie received a fresh
mandate. During the straightaway run he was not to approach the gray
car nearer than sixty yards or thereabouts--in effect, remaining within
the same block if possible, but, if the gray car stopped in front of
any dwelling, he was to slacken speed and pass it, taking the middle of
the road, and holding himself in instant readiness to halt or turn as
directed.
"By the way, how are you fixed for petrol?" added Devar.
"I filled the tanks, sir, before leaving the garage. We're good for
the trip to Albany and back."
Brodie's tone was quite cheerful. He, too, had been reviewing the
situation, and the presence of a uniformed policeman had dispelled the
last shred of suspicion that some stupid joke had been worked off
outside the Police Headquarters when a fearsome looking tough was
introduced to him as the Chief of the New York Detective Bureau.
Devar was about to congratulate the roundsman on the prospect of an
all-night journey if Brodie's chance phrase were fated to come true,
when he glanced at Curtis, and elected to remain silent. They were
passing the Plaza Hotel, and his friend was peering up at its square
white bulk. Obviously, he was striving to locate Hermione's room.
Most probably he failed, for it is no easy matter to pick out the
windows of any particular set of rooms in a huge building while rushing
along at twenty-five or more miles an hour. Further, it was now past
one o'clock in the morning, and most respectable people were in bed, so
the solemn mass of the hotel was enlivened by very few rectangles of
light.
But Curtis fancied, as did Devar also, that the illuminated blinds of
three windows on the second floor might possibly be those of Suite F.,
and each wondered, if the surmise were correct, why her ladyship was
remaining up so late.
Devar resolved to say nothing, but Curtis felt that he must talk, if
only for the sake of hearing his own voice. Usually a man of taciturn
habit, the outcome of long vigils among an alien and often hostile race
in a semi-civilized land, he had gone through so much during the five
and a half hours which had unfolded their marvels since he quitted the
dining-room of the Central Hotel, that he ached for human sympathy,
even in a trivial matter of this sort.
"I thought I saw a light in my wife's rooms," he said.
"As you mention it, so did I," agreed Devar.
"I hope she is not awaiting my return?"
"Perhaps she is anxious about you?"
"But why?"
"Women are given that way. She knows you went out with Steingall, and
he is a dangerous character."
"Is Mrs. Curtis staying in the Plaza?" asked the puzzled McCulloch.
"Yes."
"But I thought you occupied a room at the Central Hotel in 27th Street?"
"I did, but I got married at half-past eight, and we went to the Plaza."
"Married at half-past eight--just after the murder!" The policeman's
words formed a crescendo of sheer surprise. For some indefinable
reason this curious conjunction of a crime and a wedding went beyond
his comprehension.
"Yes, it happened so. It might have been avoided, yet, looking back
now over the whole of the circumstances, it would appear that I have
followed a beaten track inevitable as death."
Of course, the roundsman could not grasp the somber thought underlying
Curtis's words, but a species of indeterminate suspicion prompted his
next question.
"You came from the Plaza with Mr. Steingall, I believe, sir?"
"Yes. We were having supper there, with Mr. Devar and my uncle and
aunt, when Mr. Clancy rang him up on the telephone, and he invited us
to accompany him to the Police Headquarters. The rest you know."
Certainly, the explanation sounded quite satisfactory. The attitude of
these two young men and their chauffeur was perfectly correct, and the
policeman's views had been strengthened materially by the tell-tale
tokens he had noted on the gray car, which, however, he had not thought
fit to mention. If Steingall had attended the supper in the Plaza he
must have convinced himself that there was nothing unusual, or, at any
rate, doubtful, about the queer fact that a man who was mixed up in a
remarkable murder should have gone straight from the scene of the
tragedy and got married.
Just to dispel a little of the mist that befogged his brain, he waited
a while and then said:
"Which side of the car was opposite the doorway when those two men
attacked Mr. Hunter?"
"The left. The car had entered the street from Broadway."
"Why do you ask?" inquired Devar, instantly alive to the queerness of
this alteration of topics.
"My mind went back to the job we have in hand," said the roundsman
readily. "I was wondering just what sort of glimpse Mr. Curtis
obtained of the chauffeur. Of course, I see now that he was looking at
the man exactly under similar conditions when we made that stop at 42nd
Street."
Thus, unknown to either of the parties to the alliance, a minor crisis
was averted, because it may safely be conceded that the hard-headed
policeman would have refused then and there to accept any sort of
statement from such a lunatic as John Delancy Curtis, if he were given
a full, true, and particular account of the night's proceedings while
being whirled up Fifth Avenue in a fast moving automobile.
Romance, if it is to be accepted without question, requires the setting
of a comfortable armchair or tree-shaded nook in a summer garden.
There, forgetting and forgotten by the world, man or maid may indeed be
carried far on the Magic Carpet of Tangu, but, when served out by two
strangers to a prosaic policeman seated in a humming car, and bound
Heaven knew whither long after midnight, it is apt to savor of the moon
and witchcraft.
Away up the straight vista of Fifth Avenue sped the two cars. On the
left lay the black solitude of Central Park, on the right the varied
architecture of New York's millionaire dwellings.
Devar and the policeman talked cheerfully enough, but Curtis was
wrapped in his own musings till the rear lamp of the gray car suddenly
curved to the left and vanished.
"He has turned into the Parkway at 110th Street," said McCulloch, and
Curtis awoke with a start to a sense of his surroundings.
"I suppose he's making for St. Nicholas Avenue," went on the roundsman.
"Why?" demanded Curtis, whose recollections of map-study would have
reminded him, in other conditions, that the avenue named by McCulloch
is one of the few which slant across the city's rectangles.
"Well, sir, it's only a guess, but St. Nicholas Avenue is a short cut
to Washington Heights, and cars often follow that route. Yes, there he
goes!"
For an instant they caught a fleeting glimpse of Lenox Avenue, which
runs parallel with Fifth, and then they were bowling along St. Nicholas
Avenue. After a half-mile or less, they crossed Eighth Avenue at an
acute angle, but the gray car kept steadily on, and soon was skirting
St. Nicholas Park.
Thenceforth another mile and a half counted as little until the flying
automobile gained the Harlem River Speedway. Here the pace improved.
There was practically no traffic to interfere with progress now, and
Brodie had to maintain an equable rate of forty miles an hour in order
to keep within sight of his quarry.
At last, by way of Nagle and Amsterdam Avenues, they regained Broadway
itself, at the point where its many sinuosities end at the bridges over
the Harlem River and Spuyten Creek.
By this time, McCulloch was undeniably anxious. Many a mile separated
him from the busy activities of Madison Square and its surroundings,
and the main roads of the State of New York were opening up their
possibilities. Still, he was of Scotch-Irish stock, and even the most
ardent Nationalist would be slow to maintain that the men from beyond
the Boyne are what is popularly and tersely described as "quitters."
"I'd be better pleased if I had any sort of notion where that joker was
heading for," he said, with a grim smile. "I didn't count on taking a
joy-ride at this hour of the morning."
That was his sole concession to outraged official decorum. He accepted
a cigar, and forthwith resigned himself to the exigencies of the chase,
which lay not with him but with the dark and devious purposes of the
sinister Anatole.
The end, however, was nearer than any of them was now inclined to
imagine. A rapid run along the main road through Yonkers brought them
to Hastings and the bank of the Hudson River. The comparatively level
grades of New York were replaced by hilly ground, and if they would
avoid courting observation beyond any doubt of error it was essential
that the gray car should be allowed greater latitude. In fact, it was
almost demonstrable that an alert criminal like the man they were
pursuing--if he really were the ally of Hunter's slayers--could hardly
have failed to realize much earlier that he was being followed.
Moreover, being an expert motorist, he would know that the car in the
rear could not only hold him in the race but close up with him whenever
its occupants were so minded. He would not be lulled into false
security by the present widening of the gap, because that was an
obvious maneuver due to altered circumstances. In a word, there was
now no hope or prospect of running him to earth at a rendezvous, but,
giving him credit for the possession and use of a criminal's brains, it
became an urgent matter to overtake him and compel a halt by
deliberately blocking the way.
They debated the point fully, and Devar was about to tell Brodie to act
when the gray car disappeared.
Not wishing to interfere at a critical moment, Devar drew back from the
window. Brodie spurted down a hill and along a short level lined with
suburban villas; he slowed to take a sharp corner, and the car ran
along a winding lane which could lead nowhere but to the water's edge.
It was pitch dark, and a mist from the Hudson filled the valley.
Common sense urged a careful pace, because it had never been possible
to stop and adjust the powerful headlights, while the luminous haze of
an occasional street lamp served only to reveal the narrowness of the
road and the presence of shacks and warehouses.
The descent was fairly steep, so Brodie shut off the engine, and the
big car crept on with a stealthy and noiseless rapidity which seemed to
betoken an actual sense of danger.
Suddenly they heard a loud splash, accompanied by a muffled explosion,
and McCulloch relieved his feelings by a few words, the use of which is
expressly forbidden by the police manual. But their purport was
ridiculously clear; the gray car had plunged into the Hudson, and who
could tell whether or not Anatole had gone with it? Curtis was the
first to adopt a definite line of reasoning: he assumed command now
with the confidence of one accustomed to be in tight places and to
depend on his own wits for extrication.
"Go forward slowly until the buildings stop, Brodie," he said, for the
two front windows were lowered, and the three men were crowded at them.
"That fellow knew exactly where he was going. When you pull up, light
the acetylene lamps, and we will take the other pair and search the
wharf from which that car was shot into the stream."
Within a few yards the brakes went on with a jerk, and a tall crane
loomed up vaguely in front. All four men sprang to the ground, and
while the chauffeur busied himself with the big lamps Curtis and Devar
disconnected the smaller ones.
They found themselves standing on a wooden quay, evidently used for the