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 hell 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
associated 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 Lhassa, 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 association 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 assimilate 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 assured 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 brimming 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 analyzed,
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."
"He is a stoutly-built individual, with a large, soft neck, and eyes
which would protrude most satisfactorily under pressure. Is that what
you mean?"
"I want to make his acquaintance, and soon--that is all."
"Now, Mr. Curtis, don't destroy the good opinion I have formed of you.
Let well enough alone. Schmidt has done you a splendid turn, and it
would be foolish on your part to requite a benefactor by trying to
strangle him."
"Mr. Steingall, I am tired, and very, very uncertain of myself----"
"So you don't want even to pretend that there is any humor in the
situation. Yet, unless I err greatly, before many hours have passed
you will agree with me that nothing more directly fortunate in your
behalf could have occurred than Schmidt's interference as Lord
Valletort's legal adviser. I know Schmidt, and Schmidt knows me. In
this affair you would be a baby in his hands, just as he would resemble
a bladder of lard in yours. My difficulty is that I really cannot give
reasons, but you will appreciate the position when I say that, for the
moment, the murder of Mr. Hunter has become an affair of state, and all
information regarding recent developments will be withheld from the
press. Do you follow?"
"Yes."
"I take it, too, that if Lady Hermione were restored to you, and it was
left to the pair of you to determine whether or not the marriage
entered into under such extraordinary conditions should become a real
union, you would be satisfied?"
"I don't see how----"
"You can at least take my word for it, Mr. Curtis, that the chance of
such an outcome will be greatly forwarded if you go straight to bed,
whereas any design you may have formed as to assaulting and battering
Otto Schmidt would, if put into execution, probably defeat the more
important object, or, at any rate, cripple its prospects of success."
"Do you really mean that?"
"I am almost sure of it. There is only one thing of which I am more
certain at the moment."
"And that is?"
"That if it were not for your quickness of eye and hand--and foot, for
that matter--I would now be laid out in a mortuary or on an hospital
table. I appreciate those qualities when exercised on a person like
Martiny, whose main argument is centered in an automatic pistol, but
they would be singularly out of place if tested on Otto Schmidt, when
backed by the laws of the United States, which, strange as it may seem,
I also represent."
"If you put it that way, Steingall----"
"I do, most emphatically. Let me be more precise. Promise me now that
you will not stir out of the Plaza Hotel until I come to you."
"Is that really essential?"
"I would not ask you if it were not."
"What time may I expect you?"
"Let me see. . . . It is now nearly five o'clock. I hope to sleep
till eight. I give you till nine. Bath and breakfast brings you to
ten. Say eleven."
"I owe you a good deal, so I shall await you till noon. After that
hour I reserve my freedom of action."
The detective laughed.
"Good-by," he said, and, as though in keeping with the other fantasies
of the night, Curtis was sound asleep in quarter of an hour. He had
acquired the faculty of sleeping under any conditions of mental or
physical stress, short of illness or severe bodily pain, and he could
awake at any hour previously determined on, so, a few minutes before
nine o'clock he was in his bath. At a quarter-past nine he rang for a
waiter and ordered breakfast.
"For one, sir?" said the man, who had not been on duty the previous
evening, but had taken care to ascertain the names of the guests on his
section of the floor.
"Yes, for one," said Curtis. "My wife and her maid are not
breakfasting in the hotel. Will you kindly send up a batch of morning
newspapers?"
It was only to be expected that the keen and bright intelligence of New
York journalism should have fastened on to the murder in 27th Street as
something out of the ordinary. But its methods were new to the man
whose adult years had been passed far from his native city, and he was
astounded now to find how the descriptive reporter, aided by the
photographer, had depicted and dissected nearly every feature of the
crime. On one point the press was silent--as yet. There was no
mention of Lady Hermione, and, with a reticence which spoke volumes for
the close relations existing between police and reporters, the Earl of
Valletort and Count Vassilan were represented as merely "enquiring for"
John Delancy Curtis, "the man from Pekin."
Curtis had spread the newspapers on the table, and, when a tap on the
door of the sitting-room seemed to indicate the re-appearance of the
waiter, he swept them up in a heap, meaning to go through them at
leisure after breakfast.
"Come in," he said, turning casually.
The door opened, and Hermione entered.
It was what dramatists term "a psychological moment," and, according to
Berkeley, one of the axioms of psychology is that it never transcends
the limits of the individual. Most certainly, at that moment, the
truth of this dictum was demonstrated in a manner which would have
surprised even the doughty philosopher himself.
Curtis saw nothing, knew nothing, thought of nothing not strictly
bounded by the fact that Hermione, and none other, stood there. He
gazed at her spell-bound for a second or two. He neither moved nor
spoke, but remained stock-still, with the newspapers gathered in his
hands, while his eyes blazed into hers without any pretense of
restraint.
She was rosy red, partly because of the wine-like morning air through
which she had walked swiftly, but more, perhaps, because of a very real
embarrassment and contriteness of spirit.
"I came," she faltered--"I am here--that is--will you ever forgive
me!----"
Down went the papers, and round Hermione went Curtis's strong arms. He
was a man of thew and sinew, against whom a slender girl's strength
might not hope to prevail. The last thing she looked for was to be
embraced at sight. It is the last thing any woman expects, and the one
thing to which she is most apt to yield. And really, despite her
fluttered cry of protest, there was something very comforting and
dependable about that masculine hug. Hermione had never before been
clasped in a man's arms. She was a highly kissable person, and women
would embrace her readily, but the total absence of any milk-and-water
convention about Curtis's method of showing delight at meeting her was
at once bewildering and stupefying.
There must be a great deal, too, which does not leap promptly to the
eye in the study of such a dry-as-dust subject as psychology, because
three of its fixed principles are: "Experience is the process of
becoming expert by experiment," "One finds a measure of truth in the
naive realism of Common Sense;" and "Action and Reaction are strictly
correlative."
Applying these tests to the remarkable rapidity of decision and fixity
of purpose displayed by Curtis in squeezing the breath out of Hermione,
and gazing into her eyes until her proud head bent and sought refuge
for a glowing face by hiding it on his breast, it will be noted first,
that, for a man who had no experience in love-making, Curtis was
quickly becoming expert; secondly, that Common Sense teaches that if
one would win a wife one must also woo her; and thirdly, that a
wonderfully effective way to obtain a satisfactory response from
Hermione was to reveal the educational value of a hug.
At last, then--though not before Hermione's arms had gone around his
neck of their own accord, and her lips had met his with a sigh of sheer
content--he permitted her to speak. And of all things in the world she
said that which it thrilled him to hear.
"John, dear," she murmured, "we have become husband and wife in a
strange, mad way, but, perhaps it is for the best, and I shall try
never to give you cause for regret."
By this time one hand was firmly braced around her waist, but the other
was free to lift her chin until her swimming eyes met his.
"Hermione," he said, "I vowed last night that not all the men and laws
in America would tear you from me. If we parted, it was you, and you
alone, who could send me away, and I am glad, oh, so glad, that you
have come back to me."
"Dearest, it sounds like a dream," she said brokenly. "Can a man and a
woman truly love each other who have only met as you and I have met?"
"I think we have solved that problem for all time," he said, tilting
her hat with the joyous abandon of a lover jealous even of the flowers
and plaited straw which should hide any of the sweet perfections of his
mistress.
"But you have plunged me into a sort of trance," she whispered. "I
came here to explain----"
An ominous rattle of a laden tray at the outer door drove them apart as
though a thunderbolt had fallen between them. Hermione rushed to her
own room, there to consult a mirror, and readjust her hat and veil and
disordered hair, but Curtis met a hurrying waiter.
"Sorry to bother you," he said, "but my wife has come in unexpectedly,
and we shall want breakfast for two." He raised his voice:
"Coffee for you, Hermione, or would you prefer tea?"
"Coffee, of course," was the answer, in so calm and collected a tone
that the waiter thought he must have been mistaken in his first
impression.
"No trouble at all, sir," he said, with the ready civility of his
class. "Unless you wish to wait, sir, I'll bring another cup and some
hot plates, and order a further supply from the kitchen."
"You're a man of resource," cried Curtis cheerfully. "I leave the
arrangements to you with confidence. . . . Come along, Hermione.
Don't say you have breakfasted already."
"I won't, because I haven't," she said, reappearing with a smiling
nonchalance which removed the last shred of doubt from the waiter's
mind. But, for all that, she electrified Curtis with a timidly
grateful glance, for she appreciated his thoughtfulness in giving her
an opportunity to collect her scattered wits. There was need of some
such respite; she had much to relate, she thought, before he could
possibly understand the motives which led to her flight.
Barely half an hour ago Mr. Steingall had put in an appearance at her
apartment. He had told her, with convincing brevity, exactly why
Curtis refrained from adding to her perplexities by announcing the
comparative well-being of Jean de Courtois.
"He was very kind," said Hermione, sweetly penitent, "but he made me
feel rather like a worm when he said that if I were his own daughter he
would thank God that I had fallen into the hands of a man like you. He
said, too, that if I owed you something, he owed you more, because you
had saved his life last night, so, being an impulsive creature, I
hurried here to ask your forgiveness for that horrid note."
"There is no lie so difficult to combat as a half truth," said John.
"That fellow, Schmidt, impressed you because he probably believed what
he was saying. As for Steingall, he makes rather too much of what I
did for him, but, if there was any debt on his side, he has repaid me
with ample interest."
The waiter had left the room, and Hermione was free to blush without
restraint, a privilege she availed herself of fully now.
"But, dear, you and I can hardly feel that we are really married," she
said. "Yesterday--it was--different. I cannot remain here now.
Perhaps your uncle and aunt will receive me--until----"
"It is surprising how easily one can get married if one is really bent
on the act," said Curtis, discussing the point as coolly as if it were
a question as to where they would lunch. "At any rate, we shall settle
that difficulty to your complete satisfaction. I expect Steingall here
in less than an hour. Meanwhile, we have lots to tell each other. I
want you to know just what sort of husband you have drawn in the
lottery."
"Do you take me on trust, then?"
"Absolutely without reservation."
Obviously, the conversation did not flag before the detective was
announced. He looked tired and preoccupied when he came in, but his
shrewd, pleasant face brightened with a cheery smile when he saw
Hermione, who was pretending to be interested in a newspaper.
"I am glad to find that two people, at least, have taken my advice," he
said. "Now, Mr. Curtis, I want you for an hour. The various official
inquiries are adjourned till next week, and your presence was dispensed
with. But we are going now to the office of Mr. Otto Schmidt, where we
shall have the pleasure of meeting the Earl of Valletort, Count
Ladislas Vassilan, and, possibly, Monsieur Jean de Courtois. . . . On
no account, young lady," and he turned to Hermione, "must you run away
again during our absence."
"I shall not," said Hermione, so emphatically that they all laughed.