Chapter 6 NINE-THIRTY

Chance is often a skilled stage manager, and chance had arranged a really effective scene in the hall of the Central Hotel. The Earl of Valletort seemed to be somewhat unwilling to take up any of the gauntlets so readily thrown down by Devar and the Curtis family, and, for a few seconds, the ring of reporters was held spellbound by a situation which promised most excellently with regard to the all-important question of "copy."

Then the police captain, after waiting for Steingall to take the lead, nudged his silent colleague, and said gruffly:

"This thing cannot be gone into here. Those who can bring forward testimony of any value ought to come with Mr. Steingall and myself to the precinct station-house."

"Why lose time which cannot be overtaken later?" urged the Earl, appealing to Steingall, since it was the detective who had spoken to him in the first instance.

"We appear to be at cross purposes," said Steingall. "How did you two gentlemen get to know that a murder had been committed?"

"Murder!" gasped Count Vassilan.

"We are not talking of a murder, but of a most scandalous abduction, which will provide only one of a number of most serious charges against this person, Curtis," cried the Earl.

Vassilan seized him by the arm excitedly.

"Don't you understand, dear friend," he muttered in French. "The rascal must have killed de Courtois in order to gain possession of the marriage certificate."

"It will save trouble, sir, if you speak English here," said Steingall. Then he turned to the hotel clerk.

"Place a room at our disposal at once. Lord Valletort is quite right. We have not a second to waste."

A murmur of protest arose from the pressmen, though it was obvious that the police could not conduct the inquiry in the midst of an ever-growing crowd of residents and servants.

"Say, Steingall," whispered the reporter who had spoken for the others earlier, "can't you let us into this? We'll suppress anything you wish-I'll guarantee that, absolutely without reservation."

"I have no objection, but these high-toned strangers may not like it," said the detective quietly.

The Earl, when the point was referred to him, made no difficulty whatsoever about the presence of the journalists-in fact, he rather welcomed publicity.

"It is better that the truth should appear than a garbled and misleading version," he said affably. "I want your help, gentlemen. I know enough of newspaper ways to feel sure that a story of some sort will be star-headed in every news sheet in New York to-morrow, so my friend, Count Vassilan, and I are more than willing that you should be well informed."

Now, that phase of the problem was precisely what Count Ladislas Vassilan seemed to be exceedingly disconcerted about. He was singularly ill at ease. His florid face had paled to a dusky wanness when he heard the ugly word "Murder," and each passing moment served only to increase his agitation. Steingall, to all intents and purposes paying less heed to the man than to any other person present, had not missed one labored breath, one twitch of an eyelid, one nervous gesture. His phenomenal instinct in the detection of crime had fastened unerringly on a singular coincidence. Curtis had hazarded a guess that the real malefactors were Hungarians, and here was a Hungarian Count denouncing Curtis. Certainly that question of nationality promised remarkable developments.

When the whole party, consisting of some fifteen persons, had gathered behind the closed door of the hotel's private office, Steingall took the lead in directing the proceedings.

"It will help straighten out a tangle if I say exactly what has taken place here to-night-that is, to the best of our knowledge," he said. "There is every reason to believe that Mr. John D. Curtis arrived in New York this afternoon from Europe--"

"Right," broke in Devar. "I traveled with him on the Lusitania."

"Yes, his presence on board was announced in most of the papers," added a journalist.

"Please don't interrupt," said the detective. "You will be heard in your turn. Now, this Mr. Curtis was allotted room No. 605, and there is evidence to prove that he behaved like any ordinary individual who had just come from shipboard. He superintended the unpacking of his clothes, gave out a quantity of linen for the laundry, changed into evening dress, and dined alone. Thus far, there is ample corroboration of his own story, because his movements can be checked by the observation of half-a-dozen hotel employés. He says, by the way, that while buying some stamps at the cigar counter before going to the restaurant, he was jostled by a rough-looking foreigner, who apologized in broken French, and whom he took to be a Czech or Hungarian. No one seems to have witnessed this incident, but I have not questioned the man who sold him the stamps. Anyhow, after dinner, at twenty minutes of eight to be exact, he came into the lobby, intending to inform the clerk that he had closed the bedroom door and left his key in the room. We have ascertained that this statement is true; the door had to be forced, because a bag of golf clubs had fallen and become wedged between the door and the side of a steel trunk. Curtis never did speak to the clerk about the key; at that instant, he says, his attention was drawn to the queer behavior of the foreigner who had pushed against him, and who had been joined in the meantime by another man of similar type. They seemed to be very excited, and were apparently expecting someone to turn up, either in the street or from the hotel-Curtis fancied that they were on the look-out for interruption, or news, from both quarters. The porter on duty at the door, who is not quite intelligible to-night, remembers asking these men if they wanted a taxi, but they gave no heed to him. Then, according to Curtis's version of the affair, an automobile dashed up outside, and a young man in evening dress, carrying an overcoat, stepped out, and told the chauffeur to keep the engine going, as he would not be detained more than a minute. At that instant the two foreigners-Hungarians according to Curtis-sprang at the newcomer, and endeavored to force him back into the auto. Failing in this, one of them drew a knife, and stabbed him so severely that he died within a few minutes, and without uttering an intelligible word. Curtis ran to help, but was too far away to prevent the crime, and was further balked in an attempt to seize either of the wretches by having the dying man's body flung in his way. He endeavored to hinder the escape of the scoundrels in the automobile, but failed, because the chauffeur was evidently in league with them, and, when he came back to the crowd which had collected around the prostrate man, it would appear that someone gave him, by mistake, the victim's overcoat in place of his own. This error was not discovered until the police came to search the dead man's clothing, when various documents showed beyond question that the overcoat believed to be his was really Curtis's. Curtis told his story in a clear and straightforward way, and I, for one, have not seen any reason to doubt it. It is odd that he should have disappeared so completely since a few minutes after the crime, but that may be capable of a simple explanation, while it is possible that he has not as yet discovered the change of overcoats, or he must surely have returned and informed us of the mistake. I am assuming, of course, that he would act as one would expect of any reasonable minded citizen who had witnessed a serious crime.... Now, Lord Valletort, what have you to say about Mr. Curtis?"

A guttural exclamation from Count Vassilan drew all eyes to him. He seemed to be on the verge of collapse, and was positively livid with fright. In other conditions than those obtaining at the moment, such a display of terror on the part of a truculent looking, strongly built man would have been almost ludicrous; but Steingall found no humor in the spectacle. He was gazing at the Hungarian with a curious concentration, and the police captain, who had begun by thinking his colleague was saying far too much, and who was inclined to disagree with some of his conclusions, now thought he could discern method in his madness.

Again did Vassilan murmur something to the Earl in a strange tongue, and Valletort, with difficulty repressing his annoyance, explained that his friend was feeling the effects of a blow received earlier in the evening, and wished to retire at once to his room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

"By all means," said Steingall suavely. "I gather that Count Vassilan has no connection with the inquiry-in fact, he is not interested in it."

"He is, in a sense--" began the Earl, but Vassilan grasped his arm, and evidently besought him to come away without another word. Though Valletort was in a towering rage, he obviously thought fit to fall in with his companion's views.

"You see how it is," he said, with a nonchalant gesture that was belied by his grating tone. "I am afraid I must postpone my branch of this inquiry till a later hour-probably until the morning."

"Do you withdraw all charges against John D. Curtis?" demanded Devar, and his clear, incisive voice was distinctly hostile in its icy precision.

"No, sir. I do not," was the angry retort.

"Well, I guess you know best why you and the Hungarian potentate have developed this sudden attack of cold feet, but--"

"I'll thank you not to interfere, Mr. Devar," said Steingall determinedly. "If Lord Valletort thinks his business can wait till Count Vassilan has recovered from an indisposition, that is his affair only."

"I think nothing of the sort," snapped the Earl. "You all see that the Count is ill, and common humanity impels me to attend to him first. It may serve to curb this young gentleman's tongue if I say--"

But Vassilan would not permit him to say anything. Though he was the ailing man, he literally dragged Valletort out of the room and into the street.

Steingall looked at the police captain, who quitted the apartment instantly. Then the detective gazed around at the others with a placid smile which seemed to show that he, for one, was well content with the unusual turn taken by events.

"I suppose you boys have verbatim notes of all that was said," he inquired, tossing the remark collectively to the group of pressmen.

"Every word," came the assurance.

"Well, now, I want you to keep all that out of the papers."

"If we do that, Steingall, what is there left?" said one of them good-humoredly.

"The biggest thing you have dropped on to this year; unless I am greatly mistaken, the scoop of scoops for those who happen to be present. I'm not going to pretend that any of you are blind or deaf, and it will assist the police materially if no comment is made on what you have heard and seen. I don't like to put it otherwise than as a friendly hint; but I may want the whole bunch as witnesses before this thing is through, so your mouths should be closed effectually with regard to incidents in this room."

A half-hearted laugh went around, and someone asked:

"We must put up a readable story of some kind-if we cut out certain details, surely we can use others?"

"I said 'incidents in this room,'" repeated the detective.

"Then we can mention the arrival of the Earl and the Count on the scene?"

"Why not?"

"One minute, sir," put in Mr. Horace P. Curtis. "If these gentlemen take you at your word, the charge made against my nephew will be published throughout the length and breadth of the United States to-morrow."

"I don't see how something of the sort is to be avoided," said Steingall.

"Then, in common fairness, the newspapers ought to state that my wife and I, as well as Mr. Devar, as good as told the Earl that he was lying."

"I imagine you can leave the matter safely in the very capable hands of the reporters present," said Steingall.

"Remember, please, that no charge was actually named against Curtis," said Devar. "The Earl of Valletort demanded that he should be found and arrested, and described him as a dangerous adventurer, but gave no shred of proof of his wild-cat statement that Curtis had been engaged in a scandalous abduction, and, when asked for it, discovered that he had urgent business elsewhere."

Steingall held up a hand in quiet reproof.

"My own view is that it would be best, at this stage, to say merely that the two noblemen came here inquiring for Curtis, and leave it at that. I am not trying to deprive the press of a sensation. Surely there is enough in Chapter One for to-night, and those reporters who have had the luck to be present will be able to fill in gaps in Chapters Two and Three when they come along to-morrow or next day."

"Right," said the journalist who, by tacit agreement, seemed to represent his confrères. "There are one or two items we want you to clear up, if you don't mind. First, did Curtis, or anybody else, note the number of the automobile?"

"Yes," said Steingall instantly. "The number is X24-305, and Curtis heard the man who was murdered address the chauffeur as 'Anatole.' He spoke French to the man, too."

"You omitted both of those interesting facts from your summary," commented the reporter with a smile.

"Did I? That was a piece of sheer forgetfulness on my part."

"You didn't forget to rope us all in here as witnesses when the Hungarian prince came on the boards. I knew you had something up your sleeve the moment you began to fill in details. But, as to the crime itself-have you found out the name of the man who was killed?"

"No. There were no papers in his clothes, but that may be accounted for by the singular accident of the exchange of overcoats. His linen was marked 'H. R. H.'"

"'H. R. H.,'" cried a bespectacled journalist who had been a silent listener hitherto. "That's rather odd. Those are the initials of Henry R. Hunter, a member of our staff. The news editor wanted him to take hold in the first instance when the fact that a murder had been committed was 'phoned to the office, but he could not be found anywhere, so I am here in his stead."

"I don't recall anyone of that name," said Steingall sharply.

"No, you wouldn't. He was in our Chicago office till the beginning of September. He did one or two bright things there that caught the chief's eye, so he was brought to New York.... By Jove, Hunter is a good French scholar. It was on that account he got on the track of a gang of Chicago anarchists."

A curious stillness fell on the gathering. It was as though a spirit of evil had suddenly made its presence felt; even the electric lamps seemed to have grown dimmer.

"Describe Hunter."

Steingall's voice rang out incisively; the reporter took off his spectacles, and began to burnish them, for his face was glistening with perspiration.

"He is about five feet ten inches in height, and weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 pounds. He is straight and well-built, and his face is finely molded, with big, luminous eyes, deeply recessed, and--"

"Has he a white scar across the left eyebrow?"

"Yes."

For some reason, the journalist carried his description of Hunter's personal appearance no farther. It was unnecessary. Before Steingall uttered another word everyone in the room had a foreboding that they were on the threshold of a discovery which lifted this tragedy into a prominence far beyond aught they had yet dreamed of.

Except for that momentary touch of amazement in the detective's tone they could gather nothing from his manner. But his invariable habit was to speak to the point, and without the least suggestion of ambiguity in his words.

"I am very much afraid, gentlemen, that the murdered man is Mr. Henry B. Hunter," he said. "I must trouble you to come with me, and place the question of identity beyond doubt. I hope that you, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, and you, Mr. Devar, will make it convenient to await my return. There are matters on which you can give me valuable information."

In a few seconds the three found themselves alone. The clerk had business to attend to, but he courteously invited them to remain in the office until the detective came back.

"Did you ever hear such nonsense as this talk about Curtis being mixed up in an abduction?" began Devar, eager to dispossess his friend's relatives of any false impressions they might have formed. "Why, he didn't know a soul in the States-except yourselves," he added tactfully.

The uncle, who had been polishing his domed forehead with a large handkerchief at intervals during the past quarter of an hour, cleared his throat as a preliminary to some important announcement, but his better half had only kept silent because of a real fear that her nephew had been engaged in the commission of serious crime from the instant he set foot in New York, and she entered the fray vigorously now.

"We don't know much about him, and that's the truth, Mr. Devar," she cried. "There was some family disagreement years ago, and the brothers lost track of each other, but Horace here never forgets a name, and why should he, seeing that John was his father's name, and Delancy his mother's, and our nephew has both, so the minute we saw that paragraph in the Chicago papers about the eminent American engineer who had been building railways in China being on board the Lusitania, I says to Horace: 'Horace, it would be shame on us if we allowed your brother's son and your own nephew to arrive in New York without some of his kith and kin to bid him welcome,' and with that we hustled to catch the next train east, but the steamer did the trip quicker'n we counted on, and we just missed being at the docks, so if it hadn't been for our good luck in finding the man who helped John with his baggage, and who remembered the name of the hotel he gave the taxi-driver, we might have been searching New York all this blessed night without dreaming of coming to such a place as this, because the newspapers spoke so highly of John that we made sure he would be stopping in one of the Fifth Avenue hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria or Hoffman House, or perhaps higher uptown, in the Ritz-Carlton or the Plaza."

Mrs. Curtis was stout, so she yielded perforce to lack of breath, and Devar was able to explain smilingly that he, and none other, was responsible for the item in the newspapers.

"The fact is that I took a great liking to John D.," he said. "He is such a real good fellow, and so sublimely unconscious of his own merits, that I wanted to surprise him by starting a modest boom in the press, so I sent a wireless message about him to a journalistic friend in New York. I wondered why the reporters did not get hold of him when they came aboard at the quarantine station, but I remember now that, by some curious trick of fate, he and I stowed ourselves away in a part of the ship where no one was likely to find us, and I clean forgot to put them on his track when I went below."

"I guess my nephew has attended to the booming proposition on his own account," said Horace, getting under way at last.

Devar laughed, but Mrs. Curtis was shocked.

"Horace!" she cried indignantly, "that's the only unkind thing I've heard you say in years. Oh, yes,"-for her husband had spread his hands in mild protest-"I know you didn't mean it, but barbed shafts of humor often fall in places where they hurt, and it is terrible to think of your nephew being mixed up in a murder, and an abduction, and--"

She broke off in mid-career, and fixed a stern eye on Devar.

"Are you quite sure he didn't get flirting with some giddy young thing on board?" she demanded. "I've heard and read of some strange goings-on among people crossing the Atlantic. I could tell you of two marriages and no less than five divorces which--"

Devar was a polite young man, but he thought the situation called for firmness.

"To the best of my belief, your nephew never so much as spoke to any lady on the ship," he vowed. "He read a good deal, and played cards occasionally, and walked the decks with me when the weather permitted, but he did not even mention a woman's name except your own, madam."

"The marvel is that he mentioned us at all," said Horace.

Devar thought in his own mind, that the elder Curtis might be ponderous in body and speech but he certainly revealed horse sense when he opened his mouth.

"And whose fault was that, I should like to know?" cried Mrs. Curtis. "Didn't your own brother quarrel with you because you said he ought to have married a woman of some stability of character, and not a pretty, feather-headed girl who spent her days reading poetry and her nights in attending lectures, and who didn't begin to understand the A.B.C. of a wife's domestic duties?"

"Maybe I was wrong and he was right," said her husband.

"Horace!"

Mrs. Curtis was marshaling her forces for a mighty effort when the door opened, and Steingall entered, accompanied by a tall, well set-up man in evening dress, and wearing an open overcoat and green Homburg hat.

"Well," cried Devar, springing forward with outstretched hand, "I'm mighty glad to see you, John D.!"

The newcomer's face lit with pleasure, but before he could utter a responsive word Mrs. Curtis gurgled:

"John D.!... Are you John Delancy Curtis?... Horace, is this your nephew?"

"Judging from his looks, Louisa, he ought to be," said the stout man, gazing at the stranger with wide-eyed astonishment.

The Christian names of the couple acted like a galvanic battery on Curtis. At first, he could hardly believe his ears, but some resemblance in the portly Curtis to his own father warned him that this night of nights had not yet exhausted its store of stupefying surprises.

"Why!" he exclaimed, smiling cheerfully, "you must be my uncle and aunt from Bloomington, Indiana!"

"If you're John Delancy Curtis, that's our correct description," said Horace.

"Of course he is," chortled Mrs. Curtis. "He's as like you the day I married you as two peas in a pod, and if our little Horace had been spared he would have been his living image. Nephew, I'm proud to meet you," and Mrs. Curtis folded her relation in an ample embrace.

Curtis carried off a difficult situation with ease. He kissed his aunt, shook hands with his uncle, and was about to answer the lady's torrent of questions with regard to himself and his own people when Steingall interfered.

"Sorry to interrupt you," he said, "but the turn taken by to-night's crime demands your immediate attention, Mr. Curtis. Do you know you are wearing the dead man's overcoat?"

"Yes. I discovered that fact some time ago."

Curtis's prompt admission was more favorable to his cause than he could possibly realize then, though he had seen that the detective's extraordinarily brilliant eyes were fixed on the garment's blood-stained sleeve.

"And have you learnt the owner's name?" went on Steingall quietly.

"Yes, that is, I believe so, owing to a document I found in one of the pockets."

"Ah, what was that?"

"It concerned another person, but I am prepared to tell you its nature if it is absolutely essential."

"Believe me, there must be no concealment-now."

Something in the detective's tone conveyed a hint of peril, of suspicion, to the ears of one so accustomed to dealing with his fellow-men as was Curtis. But he shook off the premonition of ill, and decided, once and for all, to be candor itself where the authorities were concerned.

"It was a marriage license," he said.

"And the names on it?"

"They were those of a Frenchman, Jean de Courtois, and of an English lady, Hermione Beauregard Grandison."

"So you have imagined that the man who was killed was this Monsieur Jean de Courtois?"

For the life of him, Curtis could not prevent the tumultuous pumping of his heart from drawing some of the color from his face.

"Who else?" he inquired, never flinching from Steingall's searching gaze.

"No matter who owned the coat, or whom the license was intended for, the murdered man was no Frenchman, but a New York journalist named Henry R. Hunter," said Steingall.

Then Curtis yielded to the swift conviction that he had unwittingly trapped Lady Hermione into a marriage on grounds that were inadequate and false.

"Good God!" he muttered, and, for the moment, it was impossible for his hearers to resist the dreadful inference that, in some shape or form, he was implicated in the outrage which bulked so large in their minds. Mrs. Curtis wanted to scream aloud, but she dared not. Even Devar was staggered by his friend's unaccountable attitude. The only outwardly unmoved individual present was Horace P. Curtis. He turned and pressed an electric bell; Steingall glared at him, so he explained his action.

"I feel like a highball," he said blandly. "I guess Mrs. Curtis could do with one also. In fact, five highballs would be a bully good notion."