One Wonderful Night Part 17

"Some friends of yours are anxious to see you. They are in the private office over there," and Steingall thrust out his chin in the indicative manner which the Romans used to call _annuens_.

"Oh, Howard Devar, I suppose. But who else?"

"Come along, Mr. Curtis. You can stand a pleasant surprise, I am sure," and, with that, the detective led the way across the hall, leaving the youthful Jew in a maze of conflicting emotions, for, according to all the rules of the game as played in the dime novel, the tec' should have sprung on his prey like a tiger. Another person whose nervous system received a shock was the super-clerk. He, like the boy, knew of the network of suspicion which had closed on Curtis during the past two hours, and he had watched the cordial meeting between the two men with something akin to stupefaction.

But neither of these onlookers had grasped the really essential fact that Steingall did not say one word as to the hue and cry which resulted from Curtis's strange disappearance. The detective was a master of the art of restraint. In his own way, he applied to his profession the maxim of Horace--_Ars est celare artem_.

And he had his reward in that cry of dismay, almost of horror, which burst from Curtis's lips when he heard the true name of the murdered man.

Uncle Horace's seemingly maladroit interruption (it raised him to a pinnacle of esteem in Devar's mind from which he was never dislodged subsequently) prevented any striking development until a glad-eyed waiter had entered and taken an order for four highb.a.l.l.s. Even Mrs.

Curtis admitted the need of a stimulant, but Curtis steadily refused any intoxicant, even the mildest. Steingall endured the delay stoically. He actually held back a sufficient time to allow Horace P.

Curtis to empty his gla.s.s with one well-sustained effort. Then he came to close quarters with Napoleonic directness.

"I take it you a.s.sumed that the dead man was the Jean de Courtois mentioned in the marriage license?" he said.

He gave that question pride of place in pursuance of a queer thought which had leaped into his brain during the enforced interval. But, if he had been thinking hard, so had Curtis, and the latter had outlined a plan of action which was fated to disrupt Steingall's, much as a harmless looking percussion cap may interfere with the smug torpor of a powder magazine.

"Yes," said Curtis, with the judicial nod of a man who states a comparatively obvious fact.

"Have you that license?"

"No."

"Where is it?"

"Reposing in the writing-desk of the Rev. Thomas J. Hughes, a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who lives in 56th Street, near Seventh Avenue."

"And what is it doing there, pray?"

"I used it. I have married Lady Hermione Grandison."

Steingall permitted himself the rare luxury of a semi-hysterical break in his voice.

"What!" he cried. "Is she the daughter of the Earl of Valletort?"

"Precisely, though you astonish me by the ease with which you connect two such widely different names. Such knowledge usually implies a close acquaintance with the amiable foibles of the British aristocracy."

Certainly it was well that Mrs. Horace P. Curtis had partaken of a tonic in the shape of a highball.

"Well!" she gasped.

For once she was practically speechless, but she gave the astounded Devar a pitiless glance which said plainly:

"Wait till I get my breath, young man, and I'll take some of the c.o.c.ksureness out of you!"

Steingall soon gathered his scattered wits.

"Are you really speaking seriously, Mr. Curtis?" he asked.

"Quite seriously."

"Was this marriage an arranged affair?"

"Oh, yes. The marriage itself was prearranged."

"Candidly, I don't understand you."

"No? I am not surprised. But I do not wish you to remain under any misapprehension as to the true state of affairs. Lady Hermione Grandison meant to marry a French music-master named Jean de Courtois.

I thought, thought honestly but mistakenly, that the man was dead, and, as it was of vital importance that her ladys.h.i.+p should get married to-night, I offered my services as Jean de Courtois' subst.i.tute, and they were accepted."

"Am I to take that statement as literally true?"

"Absolutely."

"You were not acquainted with the lady earlier?"

"No."

"Never seen or heard of her?"

"No."

"How did you come to engage in this--this freak marriage, then?"

Curtis measured Steingall with a contemplative eye.

"You are called on to a.s.similate a novel idea, and, in consequence, are choosing your words badly," he said. "It was not a freak marriage.

Although I may have broken the laws of the State of New York by using a license issued to some other person, Lady Hermione and I are legally husband and wife, and no power on earth can dissolve the union without the expressed consent of one or both of us."

"Do you mean me to accept the bald theory that you first learnt the lady's name and address from a doc.u.ment discovered in another man's overcoat, that you went to her house, told her the man was dead, and suggested that you should become the bridegroom in his stead?"

"As an adjective, 'bald' is--well, bald. But you've got the affair sized up accurately otherwise."

"Oh, the shameless hussy!" broke in Mrs. Horace vehemently.

Steingall turned on her with a certain heat of manner.

"Do not interrupt, madam, I beg," he exclaimed.

"Better reserve judgment, aunt, until you have met my wife," said Curtis. He spoke gently enough. He had appraised his relatives almost at a glance, and was sufficiently broad-minded to allow for the natural distress of a respectable middle-aged lady who had been whirled, as it were, out of her wonted environment, and rapt into the realms of necromancy and Arabian Nights.

Steingall swept aside this intermission with the emphatic hand of a cross-examining lawyer.

"You say it was 'of vital importance that the lady should be married to-night.' What does that imply?"

"Do you wish me to put it in different language?"

"I want to know what the vitally important reason was. I presume she furnished one?"