One Wonderful Night Part 38

Curtis went with him. In Henry Street a small group was gathered in the roadway. A policeman had proved himself a better shot than Rossi, and Hunter's murder was already avenged in part.

The dead man was left to the district police, to be carried to the mortuary in an ambulance. Steingall, with his prisoner, returned to headquarters, while Clancy made a thorough search of the room the pair had occupied in De Silva's house.

The Hungarian did not deny his name nor his share in the earlier crime.

"It is fate," he said doggedly in his broken French. "When they tell me we have killed the man I know the police get us."

He would say no more. His words seemed to imply that neither he nor Rossi meant to do other than maim the journalist whom they regarded as de Courtois's dangerous helper; but he did not urge the plea. Perhaps he felt that when a Hungarian uses a knife, a trifling error in the matter of direction is pardonable.

"I shall not go home now," said Steingall, bidding farewell to his allies when Martiny had been formally identified and charged. "I must get this thing thoroughly straightened out before morning, though the inquest and police court proceedings will be mere adjournments.

Good-night, Mr. Devar. Good-night, Mr. Curtis. Once more, thank you.

And, by the way, if all is not well at the Plaza, 'phone me at once.

Remember, won't you? Good-night!"

CHAPTER XV

WHEREIN THE PACE SLACKENS--BUT ONLY FOR A FEW HOURS

"Say, old man," muttered Devar, gazing fixedly at Brodie's broad shoulders as Broadway unrolled its even width before the car on the uptown journey, "are we the same couple of blighters who met in a bathroom gangway, 'B' Deck, near staterooms 51 and 52, on board the Cunard steamship _Lusitania_, about twenty-one hours since; or have we become dematerialized?"

Curtis knew that the boy was quivering with excitement, but it was useless to advise a slackening of the tension, so he merely said:

"Do you feel like a Mahatma?"

"If a Mahatma is a fellow with a head like a balloon, not in size, but in contents, yes. Have you ever had a real jag on you, not the big dinner, big bottle, big cigar sort of imitation, but the wild-eyed, imp-seeing, genuine rip-snorter?"

"No. Neither have you."

"I should have denied the charge before to-night. But I know now what it means. It is a brain-storm induced by rum. There are many other varieties, at least fifty-seven, and I've sampled fifty-six different sorts in nine hours. Do you realize that it is just nine hours since I walked into the Central Hotel, and the orchestra struck up? Good Lord!

Nine hours! And do you remember, Curtis, I said as we came up the harbor that you would have a h.e.l.l of a good time in New York? Ha, ha!

likewise ho, ho! A good time! Eating, fighting, marrying, plunging neck and crop out of one frantic revel into another. Talk about delirium tremens, and its little green devils with little pink eyes--why, it's commonplace, that's what it is--a poor sort of pipe-dream compared with the reality of life in New York as seen in company with John Delancy Curtis, of Pekin."

Devar was not by any means the first person in the city who had a.s.sociated the name of the capital of China with some bizarre and elusive element of fantasy in connection with the man who gave "Pekin"

as his address. There was no explaining the conceit; it was just one of those whimsies which are alike plausible yet enigmatical. Had Curtis described himself as being of London, or Paris, or even of Yokohama, no sense of mystery would have attached itself to his personality. But, to the world at large, Pekin represents the unknown, and therefore the incongruous. It is the Forbidden City, the inner shrine of the East, the symbolic rallying-point of a race which occupies no common ground with the peoples of Europe or America. Had Curtis written that he hailed from Lha.s.sa, his legal domicile would have lost its occult extravagance save to the discriminating few.

The mere mention of Pekin now brought back to Curtis's mind the last time he had written the word, and, by a.s.sociation of ideas, the queer way in which Steingall had twice alluded to the Plaza Hotel. He said nothing of this to Devar. He thought, and with good reason, that the sooner that young man was in bed and asleep the better it would be for his health, because a mercurial temperament was levying heavy draughts on physical powers, so he gave no hint of the nebulous doubt induced by the detective's words.

"The order of the day is bed for each of us," he said, bidding his friend farewell at the door of the hotel. "Therefore, I shall not offer you any sort of hospitality at this hour, except the kindest one of saying good-by speedily. You are coming to lunch, I think?"

"Lunch!" Devar's head wagged solemnly. Feverishly wakeful, he was really half asleep. "Don't talk to me of lunch. You haven't had breakfast yet, John D. New York will keep you busy yet awhile, or I don't size her up right. . . . Good old New York! Isn't she a peach?

Well, so long! If you want me, 'phone. I'll pull a couch under the instrument and sleep with my clothes on. If I shove my head beneath a tap I'll be as right as rain. Home, Arthur."

Then Curtis entered the hotel, and a night-porter took him up in the elevator. When he opened the door of Suite F. its tiny lobby was in darkness, but the lights in the sitting-room were switched on.

Evidently, then, neither he nor Devar was mistaken in identifying those illuminated windows when the chase led them past the hotel. But he was struck instantly by the fact that the door leading to Hermione's room was wide open, and, before he could a.s.similate this singular fact, he saw a note lying on a small table just where it must catch his eye on entering his own bedroom.

Curtis was no soothsayer, but he was endowed with a penetrating and usually accurate judgment, and he knew at once that Hermione had left him. Although he had only seen her handwriting when she signed the register at the clergyman's house he recognized the same free, well-formed characters in the "John Delancy Curtis, Esq." on the envelope. He paled, perhaps, and a pang of a pain crueller than bodily ill may have wrung his heart, but he hesitated not a second about opening the letter.

Then he read:

"DEAR MR. CURTIS:--My father has been here, and with him a Mr. Otto Schmidt, a lawyer. They told me that Jean de Courtois is alive, and that you know it, and have known it throughout. Gladly would I have refused to believe them, but, sometimes, there are statements which cannot be lies--which partake of truth in their very essence--which sear their way into one's consciousness as white-hot iron scorches the flesh. Still, owing to my trust in you, I clung to the frail hope that there might be some mistake, so, when they had gone, I telephoned the Central Hotel, and a clerk there a.s.sured me that Monsieur de Courtois was in bed and asleep.

"What am I to say? Perhaps, silence is best. Marcelle and I are returning to my apartments in 59th Street. Please do not come there.

I feel now that I have been selfish and misguided. I fear it will hurt you if I ask to be permitted to bear the heavy expense you must incur with regard to the wretched affair into which I have dragged you, though involuntarily, or, shall I put it? with the blind striving for succor of one sinking in deep waters. Yet, do me one last kindness, and let me reimburse you. That would be a small concession to my pride, because, in some respects, sorely as I am wounded, I shall regard myself as ever in your debt.

"Sincerely yours, HERMIONE.

"P.S. This person, Schmidt, seems to be reliable. You might arrange matters with him."

Now, above and beyond every other characteristic, Curtis was fair-minded. He read the girl's letter once in order to learn what had happened and why she had gone: then he reread it critically, word for word, trying to distil from its disjointed phrases "that essence of truth" which Hermione had spoken of. Evidently, she had determined to keep her words within the bare walls of necessity. The note had a jerkiness of style that was certainly absent from her speech, and the fact argued that she was compelling herself to write with restraint.

She was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with reproach, grief-stricken, and miserable, and unquestionably shocked beyond measure, but she had forced the reflection: "I have no real claim on this man, nor wrong to lay at his door, and, although he has deceived me, I am under heavy obligation to him, so I must neither condemn nor reproach, but say nothing that goes beyond a temperate explanation of my action."

The signature itself was eloquent of the conflict which raged in her troubled brain while the pen was framing those formal sentences.

Well-bred young ladies do not sign themselves by their Christian names, _tout court_, in notes written to young gentlemen of an evening's acquaintance. Yet, what was she to do? "Hermione Beauregard Grandison" had gone beyond recovery with the marriage ceremony, but "Hermione Curtis" was almost ludicrous, considering the text of this, the first note she had written to her "husband."

It was only one side of Curtis's self-reliant nature which a.n.a.lyzed, and criticised, and weighed matters with such judicial calm. There was another which brought a hard glint into his eyes, and caused a hand which gripped the molded back of a lightly-built chair to exert a force of which he was unconscious until the mahogany rail snapped.

Then he remembered Steingall, and his enigmatical inquiries, and turned to the telephone.

At sound of his voice, the detective cleared away any doubt as to the reason which inspired those vague questions.

"Lady Hermione has gone, has she?" he said sympathetically. "I thought as much. There was no use in worrying you about it sooner, but I was told that the Earl and Schmidt had visited her, and that she and the maid had left the hotel in a taxi a few minutes after the departure of the visitors. Will you take my advice?"

"What is it?"

"You ought to have said 'Yes' at once. Go to bed, and force yourself to sleep. Give no instructions to be called, but get up when you waken, and start a new day with a clear head. You'll need it."

"I'm not going to disturb the peace of Lady Hermione's apartments in 59th Street, if that is what you mean."

"Not quite. In fact, not at all. You are not that kind of a man. Did she leave any message?"

"Yes, a letter. Would you care to hear it?"

"If you have no objection."

Curtis read the note instantly, and, so delicate is the perceptiveness of the ear, he could almost follow the trend of the detective's unspoken thought by a hiss of breath or a muttered "Hum," as a name was mentioned or a reason given for some particular action.

"Like the majority of women, she conveys the most important fact in a postscript," was Steingall's dry comment when Curtis had reached the end.

"Where shall I find this man, Schmidt?" inquired Curtis.

"Are you in a hurry, then, to begin the suit for dissolution?"

"That does not account for my anxiety to meet Schmidt."