One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York

Untying the rope, except at the man's ankles, he brought the listless hands in front, and placed a pair of handcuffs on the wrists. "Now," he said, "if you have any sense left, you'll keep quiet and enjoy the ride back to New York." "Why am I arrested? I have a right to know?" The words were yelped at him rather than spoken. "All in good time, Anatole. You'll have everything explained to you fair and square." "That is not my name. That's a Frenchman's name." "It fitted you all right in 27th Street a few hours ago." "I was not there. I can prove it." "Of course you can. You'd be a poor sort of crook if you couldn't. But what's this?" the roundsman had found some letters and a pocketbook in an inner pocket of the chauffeur's closely buttoned jacket--"M. Anatole Labergerie, care of Morris Siegelman, saloon-keeper, East Broadway, N. Y.," he said. "You know someone named Anatole, anyhow, so we are warm, as the kids say," he went on sarcastically. "I say nothing. I admit nothing. I demand the presence of a lawyer," was the defiant reply. "You'll see a heap of lawyers before the State of New York has no further use for you. Now, I'll take you to a nice, quiet hotel for the night. In with you. . . . Mind the step. Let me give you a friendly hand. . . . No, that seat, if you please, close up in the corner. I'll go next. Mr. Curtis, you don't object to being squeezed a little, I'm sure, though the three of us will crowd the back seat, and if the gentleman who says nothing and admits nothing will only change his mind, and tell us exactly how he has spent a rather exciting evening, the story will help pass the journey quite pleasantly." But Anatole Labergerie, whose accent was that of a Frenchman with a very complete knowledge of English, had evidently determined on a policy of silence, and no word crossed his lips during the greater part of the long run to the police station-house in 30th Street, in which precinct, the 23rd, the murder had occurred, and to which McCulloch was attached. His presence in the car acted as an effectual damper on conversation in so far as Curtis and Devar were concerned. If their suspicions were justified, he was a principal in an atrocious crime, and mere propinquity with such a wretch induced a feeling of loathing comparable only with that shrinking from physical contact to which mankind yields when confronted with leprosy in its final forbidding form. But McCulloch was jubilant. He regarded his prisoner with the almost friendly interest taken in his quarry by the slayer of wild beasts to whose rifle has fallen some peculiarly rare and dangerous "specimen." He enlivened the road with anecdotes of famous criminals, and each story invariably concluded with a facetious reference to the "chair" or a "lifer." Once or twice he gave details of the breaking up of some notorious gang owing to information extracted from one of its minor members, who, in consequence, either escaped punishment or received a light sentence; but the captive remained mute and apparently indifferent, whereupon Curtis, who had been revolving in his mind certain elements in a singularly complex mystery, broke fresh ground by saying: "The strangest feature of this affair is probably unknown to you, Mr. McCulloch. To all intents and purposes, the men who killed the journalist were acting in concert with a Frenchman named Jean de Courtois, and their common object was to prevent a marriage arranged for last night. Yet this same de Courtois was found gagged and bound in his room at the Central Hotel shortly before midnight. Someone had maltreated him badly, and the wonder is he was not killed outright." Now, the roundsman, wedged close against the prisoner, felt the man give an almost unconscious and quite involuntary start when de Courtois was mentioned, and there could be no question that he was straining his ears to catch each syllable Curtis uttered. Nudging the latter, McCulloch said: "So it was a near thing that two weddings were not interfered with last night, sir?" "No, not two, only one. I married the lady." "You did!" The policeman's undoubted bewilderment was convincingly genuine, but, despite his surprise, he was alert to catch the slightest move or sign of emotion on the part of the captive. "Yes," said Curtis. "I married her before half-past eight." "Then you must have possessed some knowledge of the parties mixed up in this business?" "No, not in the sense you have in mind. I cannot supply full particulars now, but you will learn them in due course. The point I wish to emphasize is this--poor Mr. Hunter's death was absolutely needless. I imagine he only came into connection with the intrigue by exercising the journalistic instinct to obtain exclusive details of a sensational news item which involved several distinguished people. The miserable tools employed by men who wished to gain their own ends were not even true to each other, and they undoubtedly attacked Hunter by error." "Did they mean to kill you, then?" "Oh, no. They had never heard of me. I dropped from the skies, or the nearest thing to it, since I was on the Atlantic at this hour yesterday." McCulloch was aware that the Frenchman had been profoundly disturbed by Curtis's statements, and kept the ball rolling. That name, de Courtois, seemed to supply the clew to the man's agitation, so he harped on it. "Has Mr. Steingall seen de Courtois?" he asked. "Yes. Mr. Devar and I accompanied him to de Courtois's room, and set the rascal free." "That settles it," said the roundsman emphatically. "If the man with the camera eye has looked de Courtois over it is all up with the whole bunch. Are you listening, Anatole? This should be real lively hearing for you." "Monsieur de Courtois is a friend of mine," came the sullen response. "Oh, is he? Then you do know something about events in 27th Street, eh?" "I tell you nothing, but why should I deny that I know Monsieur de Courtois?" "Or that you are a Frenchman," put in Curtis quietly. "One of the few words in the French language which no foreigner can ever pronounce is that word 'Monsieur,' especially when it is followed by a 'de.' I speak French well enough to realize my limitations." "Now, Anatole, cough it up," said McCulloch jocularly. "You've no more chance of winning through than a chunk of ice in hell's flames." "Let me alone, I'm tired," said the other, relapsing into a stony inattention which did not end even when Brodie brought the car to a stand outside the police station-house in West 30th Street. The advent of the roundsman with a prisoner and escort created some commotion among his colleagues. The police captain was the same official who had harbored suspicion against Curtis not so many hours ago, and his opinion was not entirely changed, only modified. He glanced darkly at Curtis and Devar, but was manifestly cheered by sight of McCulloch with a chauffeur in custody. "Hello!" he cried, "and where in Hades have _you_ been?" "A long way from home, Mr. Evans," said the roundsman. "But it was worth while. This is Anatole, whose other name is Labergerie, the man wanted for the murder in 27th Street." "The deuce it is! Where did you get him?" "Away up beyond Yonkers." "Hold on a minute." He swung round quickly to a telephone, and called up Headquarters. "Hello, there," he said, when an answer came. "Mr. Steingall or Mr. Clancy in? Both? Well, put me through. . . . That you, Mr. Steingall? I'm Evans, 23rd precinct. . . . Sergeant McCulloch has just arrived with a prisoner, the chauffeur, Anatole; and Mr. Curtis is here, too. . . . Anatole Labergerie is the full name." Some conversation followed. The others could hear the peculiar rasping sound of a voice otherwise undistinguishable, but it was evident that the police captain was greatly puzzled. At last he beckoned to Curtis. "You're wanted," he said laconically. Curtis went to the instrument, and Steingall's rather amused tone was soon explicable. "There's a screw loose, somewhere," he said. "Anatole Labergerie is a respectable garage-keeper. I know him well. Half an hour ago I called him out of bed, chiefly on account of his front name, and he told me that Mr. Hunter hired a car from him last evening, but never showed up at the appointed place and time, and the chauffeur brought the car back to the garage to wait further orders." "I have no wish to traduce Anatole Labergerie," said Curtis, "but I am quite sure that the man under arrest is the driver of the car in which the Hungarians made off. He has admitted, too, that Jean de Courtois is his friend." A low whistle revealed Steingall's revised view of the situation. "Don't go away," he said. "Clancy and I will be with you in less than quarter of an hour." Curtis hung up the receiver, and announced the new development. The Frenchman did not betray any cognizance of it. He had collapsed into a chair, and looked the degenerate that he was. But Devar slapped McCulloch's broad shoulders. "Didn't I tell you?" he cried. "There's a whole lot of night ahead of us yet. Gee whizz! I'll write a book before I'm through with this!" CHAPTER XIII WHEREIN LADY HERMIONE "ACTS FOR THE BEST" A dejected and disheveled super-clerk was called on to face a new crisis soon after he had apparently got rid of most of the persons concerned in the pandemonium which had raged for hours around that refuge of middle-class decorum and respectability, the Central Hotel in 27th Street. As he was wont to explain in later days of blessed peacefulness: "The queerest part of the whole business was that I never had the slightest notion as to what was going to happen next. Everything occurred like a flash of lightning, and imitated lightning by never striking twice in the same place." It was not to be expected that a man of the Earl of Valletort's social standing and experience would allow himself to be brow-beaten by a police official and an uncertain miscellany of people like Devar and the members of the Curtis family. When the cool night air had tempered his indignation, and he was removed from the electrical atmosphere created by his son-in-law's positive disdain and Steingall's negative indifference, he began to survey the situation. Though not wholly a stranger in New York, he was far from being versed in the technicalities of legal and police methods, so he bethought him of securing skilled advice. The hour was late, but the fact merely presented a difficulty which was not insuperable to a person of even average intelligence. He turned into an imposing looking hotel on Broadway, produced his card, and asked for the manager. An affable clerk hurried forward, thinking that his house was about to earn new laurels; if somewhat surprised by the Earl's explanation that he was in need of a lawyer of repute, and had applied to the proprietor of an important hotel as one most likely to further the quest, he responded with prompt civility. "There are several lawyers guests in the hotel at this moment, my lord," he said. "Each is a notable man in one branch of practice or another. May I ask if you want advice in a matter of real estate, or some commercial claim, or a criminal charge?" "The latter, in a sense," said the Earl. "A relative of mine has contracted a marriage under conditions which are illegal, or, at any rate, most irregular." The clerk stroked his chin. "Mr. Otto Schmidt has just concluded a remarkable nullity of marriage suit," he pondered. "Just the man for my purpose. Is he in?" Within five minutes the Earl was closeted with Mr. Otto Schmidt in the