One Wonderful Night Part 3

He saw a girl, not a day older than twenty, dressed in a simple costume of brown cloth, and wearing a hat, veil, and gloves of harmonizing tints. The veil had been hurriedly lifted above the brim of the hat, and a pair of what seemed to be intensely dark violet eyes gazed at him from a small-featured, pallid face from which every vestige of color had fled.

"Is this thing true?" she said, halting timidly within a few feet of him. "Perhaps Marcelle has misunderstood you. Who sent you?--Monsieur de Courtois himself, I suppose?"

Her voice, so wistful, so pleading, perfect in cadence yet almost childlike in its evident anxiety to be rea.s.sured, reached uncharted depths in his soul. At once he began to ask himself why this mere girl should be exposed to the impish trick which fate had played on her, and, in the same breath, he was conscious of a fierce anger against the ghouls who had contrived it.

"Are you Miss Grandison?" he asked, rather to gain time than because of any doubt as to her personality.

"Yes. And you?"

"My name is Curtis--John D. Curtis. I only landed in New York three hours ago."

He added the explanatory sentence in order to clear the ground, as it were, for the strange and horrible story he had to tell, but its effect was curious in the extreme. The girl's white face blanched to that wan hue which personal fear lends to distress.

"Where have you come from?" she gasped.

"From Pekin."

"From Pekin!"

"Yes. I have been traveling without pause during the past eight weeks."

By this time he had ascertained two certain facts about Hermione Beauregard Grandison. In the first place, she was the prettiest and most graceful creature he had ever met; in the second, she had all the hall-marks of good breeding and high social caste. His brain was so busy over these discoveries that he disregarded the really remarkable way in which the object of his visit had been shelved for the moment.

It might reasonably be expected that the disconsolate lady would be concerned mainly as to the fate of the missing bridegroom, but the mistress evidently shared the maid's disquietude about Curtis himself.

And, precisely as in the case of Marcelle, Miss Grandison's face showed relief when it became manifest that he was a complete stranger.

"Pray forgive me for questioning you in this manner," she said, with a rapid reversion to a conventional air that disconcerted her hearer in a way she little imagined. "Will you come in here, and be seated? . . .

Now, please tell me just why you have called, Mr. Curtis."

She had preceded him into a prettily furnished dining-room, and the notion leaped up in his troubled mind that she was not so deeply moved by the malfortune of Monsieur Jean de Courtois as might be expected from the man's prospective bride.

Still, he tried bravely to accommodate himself to conditions which left his brain in a whirl.

"I had better begin by saying that your marriage cannot take place--to-night----" he added, flinching from the necessity of bringing that look of dismay into those charming eyes. "That is why I asked your maid if there was no other person whom I could take into my confidence. You see, it is a terribly hard thing to be compelled to discuss such a matter with one so closely bound up with--with Monsieur de Courtois."

"But there is no one else. Marcelle and I live here quite alone."

More than ever did Curtis feel uncomfortable, but he had deliberately elected for this miserable job, and he meant to go through with it.

"So I gathered from Mademoiselle Marcelle herself," he said. "Well, then, Miss Grandison, I have no option but to inform you, with all the sympathy any man must feel for a woman in your position, that Monsieur de Courtois has met with an accident."

"Oh, how terrible! Is he badly hurt?"

"Yes."

"Yet it may be possible for the ceremony to be performed. Monsieur de Courtois has proved himself such a true friend, he has always been so anxious to help me, that I am sure he would be glad if I brought the minister to the hospital, or to his apartments in the hotel if he has been taken there, and the marriage would be solemnized without causing him the slightest inconvenience or worry, no matter how ill he may be, so long as he is conscious."

Curtis thought he had never before heard the English language twisted into such enigmas as these few simple words presented. It was an outrage to credit this well-mannered and delightful girl with the cold-blooded callousness which seemed to reveal itself in every syllable. That she was blithely unaware of this element in her excited utterances was shown by her eager face and animated att.i.tude. She had risen from the chair in which she had seated herself when they entered the room, and obviously expected him to lose no time in conducting her to the bedside of Jean de Courtois.

"Pray sit down again, Miss Grandison," said Curtis, and his voice a.s.sumed a sterner, more commanding note, though he, too, stood up, and approached nearer, lest she might collapse in a faint and fall before he could save her. "I fear I have blundered woefully in a.s.suming a role for which I am ill-fitted, but I must make you realize somehow that your marriage is irrevocably--postponed."

"Why?"

A slight color tinged her cheeks; she was actually becoming annoyed with him!

"I will tell you when you are seated."

"What nonsense! One can hear as well standing."

Nevertheless, she obeyed. People generally did obey when Curtis spoke in that insistent manner.

Now he was quite near her, and his tone grew gentle again.

"The accident from which Monsieur de Courtois suffered was fatal," he said.

She looked at him, wide-eyed, alarmed, but a.s.suredly not with the soul-sickened terror of a woman who loves when she hears that her lover is dead.

"Do you mean that he has been killed?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"Oh, poor fellow. I have lost my only friend, and now, indeed, I am the most wretched girl in all the world."

Flinging her clasped arms on the table, she hid her face in them, and sobbed as though her heart would break. Curtis placed a hand on her shoulder, and strove to calm her with such commonplace phrases as his dazed brain could dictate, but she wept bitterly, just as a child might weep if disappointed about the non-fulfillment of some object on which its heart was set.

"It sounds horrid--I know--" she murmured brokenly, "that I should--seem to be thinking--only of myself. But--Monsieur de Courtois--was the one man--who could save me. Now--I don't know--what will become of me. How cruel is fate! If only--we could have been married yesterday--perhaps this dreadful thing would not have happened."

Curtis, who had never been so mystified in his life, followed up those last disjointed words as a man lost in a forest might cling to a path in the certainty that it would lead somewhere. He rejected all else, since the wild vagaries of events during the past few minutes were beyond his comprehension. He waited, therefore, until the vehemence of her grief had somewhat subsided, and then, with another friendly pressure on her shoulder, he spoke with as much firmness as he thought the situation demanded.

"Now, Miss Grandison, you must endeavor to regain self-control," he said. "Monsieur de Courtois has been killed, and your--your friendship for him--no less than the interests of justice--demand that those responsible for his death should be discovered and punished."

At that, she raised her head, and lifted her swimming eyes to his, and Curtis saw that they were blue, not violet, and that their hue changed as the light irradiated their profound depths.

"He met with no accident, then, but was murdered?" she cried.

"Yes."

"And for my sake?"

"I gather from what you have said that that is possible."

"But what have I said?"

"Well, you seemed to hint that your marriage might have prevented this crime."

"Why?"

No more exasperating monosyllable can fall from a woman's lips than that one word "why," and Curtis felt its full force then and there.