One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York
Grandison were joined in the bonds of wedlock, and, by the time Mr.
Hughes had completed the ceremony, he had pronounced their names so
often, and was so accustomed to their form and sound, that when he
filled in the certificate annexed to the license, "John D. Curtis"
appeared therein in place of "Jean de Courtois."
Hermione was in a pitiable state of suppressed excitement before the
ordeal was concluded. The solemnity and impressiveness of the vows she
was taking disturbed the serenity with which she had schooled herself
to regard the marriage as "make-believe." She was frightened at her
own daring. A dread that the tie she was so lightly assuming might be
harder to undo than she had contemplated was fluttering her heart and
almost paralyzing her limbs. But Curtis was unemotional as an icicle;
or, at any rate, he looked it, which was all that the half-hysterical
girl by his side could ascertain by an occasional timid glance. The
fact lent her a sort of courage to persevere to the end, and she signed
her maiden name for the last time with a numb confidence in the man
whom she had, so to speak, bargained for as a husband in an emergency.
Curtis did not fail to note that the aged clergyman's handwriting was
crabbed and palsied as his bent frame. None could tell, for certain,
whether he wrote "Jean" or "John," "Courtois" or "Curtis," though,
indeed, the balance of probability inclined to the latter of the two
names, Christian and surname, since those were indubitably what he
meant to write.
Then, having stated his fee, and been paid for the ring, he handed
Hermione a copy of the certificate.
"Treasure that during all your days, Mrs. Curtis," he said. "May it be
a charter of lasting happiness and content!"
Mrs. Curtis! Another shock! Hermione felt that she would scream if
there were many more such. And the pressure of the little gold ring on
the third finger of her left hand was becoming intolerable. Iron, it
used to be, said the minister, and a band of iron it seemed to have
become since this man whom she had taken, so completely on trust had
placed it there.
On the way out, Curtis tipped Jenkins, tipped him so lavishly that a
queer little voice squeaked from a queer little face:
"Thank you, sir. Fair weather to both you and your wife, and a safe
berth when you drop anchor!"
So Jenkins had been a sailor, for none but a shell-back would put his
good wishes in such nautical lingo.
"I have just finished one long voyage, but seem to have begun another,"
said Curtis to his "wife." He accompanied the words with a laugh, and
was really talking for the sake of breaking an awkward silence. They
were descending a few steps from the door, and he noticed that a
private automobile was speeding down the street from the same direction
as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up
barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was
starting with the crank.
A shout came from the interior, and a man leaped out. The street was
rather dark in that part, but Hermione recognized the stranger
instantly.
"Count Vassilan!" she cried, and the fear in her voice thrilled Curtis
to the core.
Almost as quickly, the man now running along the sidewalk knew that a
long chase had ended, or he fancied that it had ended, which is not
always the same thing.
"Here we are, Valletort!" he shouted. "Got 'em, by ----! You see
after Hermione! I'll attend to this d--d Frenchman!"
Curtis gently disengaged the clasp of a tiny hand on his arm, a clasp
which was eloquent of a woman's sore need and complete trust. He
stepped forward to meet the Count, a stoutly built, heavy man, who had
reckoned on closing with an undersized Frenchman. There was no time to
rectify mistakes. Curtis met his rival's onset with a beautiful
half-arm jab on the nose. Scientifically, it was perfect, since the
blow was delivered at the back of the Count's head with complete
disregard of intervening tissues, and its recipient went down like one
of those pins which succumbed so regularly to the ball bowled by a
colossal fist in the Broadway electric sign. The only difference was
that the pin fell noiselessly, whereas Count Vassilan roared like a
bull in anguish.
In the next instant Curtis, who, for a mild-mannered person, appeared
to possess a singularly close acquaintance with the ethics of a street
row, sprang at the automobile, pushed back a man who was getting out,
slammed the door, seized the speed levers, and bent them hopelessly
with a violent tug.
A swearing chauffeur fumbled in the seat, but was in no real hurry to
alight, because he had noted the Count's _debacle_, and Curtis ran to
the two cowering women.
"In with you!" he said cheerily, adding, with a grin at the driver:
"Fifty for you if we win clear. Now, be a sport!"
Of course, the driver of a taxi would be a sport. In five minutes he
pulled up somewhere in Madison Avenue, and, leaning back and twisting
his neck, bawled:
"Where to _now_, sir?"
CHAPTER IV
AN INTERLUDE
The appearance on the scene of the Earl of Valletort and Count Ladislas
Vassilan at a moment which, though undeniably critical, might be
described as either opportune or inopportune--the choice of an
adjective depending solely on the varying points of view of the one who
gave and the one who received that powerful thump on the nose--was due
to no feat of skill on the part of the engine-room staff of the
_Switzerland_, but to a judicious combination of wireless telegraphy,
money, and influence.
When it became evident, very early in the morning, that the vessel
might, with luck, crawl up to the quarantine station about midnight,
urgent messages were sent to two consulates and the Port Authorities of
New York. In the result, a fast steam-yacht drew up alongside the
vessel when she took the pilot on board, and the two magnates and their
baggage were transferred from the disabled liner to the deck of the
trim yacht.
She made praiseworthy efforts to reach a quay and a batch of Customs
officers before eight o'clock, but failed by five minutes.
Consequently, some slight delay was experienced, and, with the best of
good will on the part of the officials, the two fuming passengers could
not fling themselves into a waiting automobile until nearly twenty
minutes past the hour.
Then, however, they made up for lost time. Intrusting their belongings
to a porter and a taxi, with instructions to proceed to the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, they bade the chauffeur travel at top speed to
No. 1000 59th Street. Many times were they sworn at en route by
endangered pedestrians and enraged drivers of horsed vehicles; the
growing torrent of ill wishes thus engendered may have exercised some
unrecognized form of telepathy at No. 1000, because a regulating valve
in the steam-heat apparatus, which had never proved intractable before,
suddenly took it into its metallic head to go wrong. Thus, the
elevator man was not aware of a good deal of ringing of electric bells
and hammering on the locked door of flat Number 10.
Ultimately, the valve resumed its normal functions, for no cause that a
hot and oily human being could perceive other than the occasional
"cussedness" which inanimate objects can be capable of; while surveying
it wrathfully, he awoke to the racket in the upper regions.
Behold him, then, angry and perspiring, vowing by all his gods that he
had other duties to perform than eternally watching the comings and
goings of the mansion's occupants; being a free-born American of Irish
ancestry, name of Rafferty, he would certainly have bandied contumely
with Count Ladislas Vassilan had not the Earl intervened. The
Hungarian had addressed Rafferty as though he were a dog: the
Englishman, more certain of his social predominance, treated him as a
person endowed with reason.
"Now, listen to me, my good man," he said, calmly but emphatically, "I
am the Earl of Valletort, and the lady you know as Miss Grandison is
the Lady Hermione Grandison, my daughter. She has come to New York in
order to marry a wretched little French adventurer named Jean de
Courtois, and it is absolutely essential, for her own welfare, not to
mention other considerations, that the wedding, which is to take place
to-night, shall be prevented. Two European consuls and several
important men in your own city have helped me to land this evening from
a vessel which will not disembark her passengers till the morning.
Therefore, it is fairly obvious that you run several sorts of risk by
refusing to help me in finding my daughter, and I can hardly believe
that you know nothing about her movements. . . . Come, my man, don't
be both a fool and a knave, but speak!"
Rafferty, who had calmed down during this impressive harangue, took
thought, and did speak.
"If yer friend had said half as much, my lord, I'd have made him wise
straight away," he answered. "Miss Grandison went off at 8.30 in a
taxi with her maid, Marcelle Leroux, and a strange gentleman who
certainly wasn't Mr. de Courtois, my lord. They wanted to find out
where a clergyman lived, an' I couldn't tell them--not about the
Protestant Episcopal, I mean, my lord--but the driver of the taxi
remembered that there was a minister of that persuasion living in 56th
Street, near 7th Avenue, an' next door to a church. So they made a
bee-line that-a-way, my lord, an' I went to see to the furnace, an'
that's all there is to it, my lord."
"You say the man was not de Courtois?" queried the Earl impatiently.
"I'm sure he wasn't the man who has passed under that name hereabouts
nearly every day for a month, my lord," said Rafferty.
"Oh, some fellow of his own kidney he has hired to assist him," put in
Vassilan, who held fast to that theory, in part, even after he had been
painfully disillusioned as to other parts of it. "Come quickly now,
you, and tell our chauffeur where to take us."
If Rafferty had dared, he would have given the chauffeur directions
likely to lead to further bickering, but the presence of the Earl
restrained him, for Valletort, though thin and hawk-nosed, was an
aristocrat in every inch, whereas Count Ladislas Vassilan wore the
stage aspect of a successful pork-butcher. So he explained matters to
the chauffeur, yet smiled grimly when the automobile wheeled away
almost in the very tracks of Curtis's taxi.
"Who sez there's no such thing as luck?" he chuckled. "That valve knew
what it was about when it stuck, an' my name ain't what it is if that
wedding isn't over and done with by this time. An' I gev him 'my lord'
for it, too! Played the high-tone society act for all it was worth,
eh, what?"
The next scene in the drama began for the Hungarian when he sat upon
the sidewalk in 56th Street, and tried to pacify certain outraged
blood-vessels in the nasal region. Of course, the curtain had been up
some time, but, so far as he was concerned, the incidents which
followed his precipitate descent from the automobile were merely
catastrophic. He had seen a vivid, violet-colored star close to his
eyes, had felt a crushing blow, had heard his own voice vaguely; and
then he awoke to a singular sense of personal dis-ease, and to the fact
that the noble Earl had nearly lost his temper.
"It was entirely your fault, Vassilan," his lordship was saying. "You
gain nothing but lose everything by your bullying tactics. Dash it
all, the fellow downed you like a prize-fighter. Who was he? Not Jean
de Courtois, I'll swear, so where has de Courtois gone? Can't you
stand up? It's damn silly to sit there, nursing your nose. Our
motor-car is out of action. We had better interview this clergyman,
and learn exactly what has happened."
Vassilan rose. He was neither a coward nor a weakling, but he felt