One Wonderful Night | Page 4

engine
only?"
"Yes."
"Well, her trouble was known by wireless, and there is a man on board
whom dad has to meet. This chap is important. I am not."
"My dear fellow, don't think of leaving your friends on my account this
evening," and Curtis, without looking around, showed that he had
noticed the befurred elderly lady and two very pretty daughters who
were taking Howard Devar under their elegant wings.
"Oh, that's my aunt, and two of my cousins. I have dozens of 'em,
dozens of cousins, that is. Anyhow, old sport, don't wait in after 7.30;
just leave word where you may be about eleven."
No further protest by Curtis was possible, because Devar's present
behavior was of the whirlwind order. He seemed to own as many trunks
as cousins, and a lantern-jawed Customs official was gloating over
them already. Perhaps Curtis felt a faint whiff of surprise that his young
friend had not introduced him to his relatives, but it vanished instantly.
Steamer acquaintance is a nebulous thing at the best; in that respect, the
land is more unstable than the sea.
At last, the stranger in his own country was consigned to a porter, his
two steamer trunks, a kit-bag, a suit-case, and a bundle of worn golf
clubs were placed on a taxi, and a breath of clean, cold air blew in on
his face as the vehicle hurried along West Street, that broad and
exceedingly useful thoroughfare which New York has finally wrested
from its waterside slums.
The chief city of America is fortunate in the fact that a noble harbor
presents her in full regalia to the voyager from Europe. That favorable
first impression, unattainable by the majority of the world's capitals, is
never lost, and now it enabled Curtis to disregard the garish ugliness of

the avenues and streets glimpsed during a quick run to the center of the
town. For one thing, he realized how the mere propinquity of docks and
wharves infects entire districts with the happy-go-lucky carelessness of
Jack ashore; for another, he knew what was coming.
Or he fancied that he knew, a state of mind which, particularly in New
York, produces brain storms. His first shock came when the taxi drew
up in front of a narrow-fronted, exceedingly tall building, equipped
with revolving doors, while a hall-porter, dressed like an archduke,
peered through the window and inquired severely:
"Have you reserved a room, sir?"
Yes, this was the Central Hotel, rebuilt, gone skyward, in full cry after
its more pretentious à la carte neighbors, and the hall-porter was
pained by the mere suspicion that the fact was not accepted of all the
world of travel.
Although the newcomer confessed that he had not made any
reservation of rooms, the Archduke graciously permitted him to
alight--indeed, quelled an incipient rebellion on Curtis's part by
ordering a couple of negroes to disappear with most of the baggage. So
Curtis announced meekly to a super-clerk that he wanted a room with a
bathroom, and was allowed to register. As in a dream, he signed "John
D. Curtis, Pekin," and was promptly annoyed at finding what he had
written, because, being a citizen of New York, he had meant to claim
the distinction, and ignore his long years in Cathay.
"You'll find 605 a comfortable, quiet room, Mr. Curtis," said the clerk.
"Going to make a long stay, may I ask?"
"A few days--perhaps a fortnight. I cannot say offhand."
"Well, sir, I can't fix you better than in 605."
From some points of view, the clerk had never uttered a truer word. It
was wholly impossible that he or Curtis should guess how an
apparently empty and really excellent apartment in the Central Hotel

should be full to the ceiling that evening with that dynamite in human
affairs called chance. If the slightest inkling of the forthcoming
explosion could have been vouchsafed to both men, there is no telling
what Curtis might have done, for he was a true adventurer, of the
D'Artagnan genus, but the clerk would certainly have used all his
persuasiveness to induce the guest to occupy some other part of the
house. In later periods of unruffled calm, he was wont to date from that
moment the genesis of gray hairs among his once raven-hued locks.
But chance, like dynamite, not only gives no warning of its explosive
properties but resembles that agent of disruption in following a
curiously wayward path. Curtis was piloted into an elevator by an
affable negro, was conducted to 605, which, of course, lay on the sixth
floor, and was plunged forthwith into the prosaic business of
consigning a good deal of soiled linen to the laundry.
The room was insufferably hot, so he directed the negro attendant to
shut off the radiator,