One Wonderful Night | Page 9

by the display, which provided such a bizarre anti-climax to the terrible
drama he had just witnessed.
It was a positive relief, therefore, when the vehicle bowled swiftly into
a quiet cross street, and he was vouchsafed only fleeting glimpses of
broad avenues where fresh multitudes of lamps again bade defiance to

the night.
In one place, an illuminated dial showed that the hour was eight o'clock,
and the curiously simple fact of noting the time roused him to a
perception of all that had happened since he strolled out of the
dining-room of the Central Hotel. He smiled dourly when he
remembered the mislaid key. Did it still repose in the bedroom? Or had
a housemaid found it, and restored it to a numbered hook in the office?
Had not that immaculately dressed clerk said he would find Number
605 "a comfortable, quiet room"? Well, it might be all that, yet Curtis
could hardly help dwelling on the thought that had he been put in any
other cell of the human beehive called the Central Hotel it was highly
probable he would not now be flying across New York on a
self-imposed mission so nebulous, so ill-defined, that already his
orderly brain was beginning to doubt the logic which inspired it.
Was it too late to draw back? To this handy automobile city distances
were negligible quantities, and he would rejoin the detectives before
they could have any reason to suspect him even of carelessness in
withholding from their ken the new and important fact revealed by the
accidental change of overcoats.
And, yes--by Jove!--it would be assumed that his overcoat was the dead
man's, though, indeed, certain papers in the pockets would soon show
that there was a blunder somewhere, because the John D. Curtis
mentioned therein necessarily figured as the chief witness in the case
now being worked up against three unknown malefactors. Oddly
enough, it was contemporaneous with this thought that the queer
similarity of his own name to that of the unfortunate Frenchman first
dawned on him. John D. Curtis and Jean de Courtois were, as names,
particularly as the names of two men of different nationalities,
sufficiently alike to invite comment. Well, that being so, there was all
the more reason why the identity of poor Jean de Courtois should be
established beyond doubt, and this reflection appealed so strongly that,
when the cab stopped, Curtis was once more reconciled to the policy
hurriedly arrived at while he was standing at the corner of Broadway
and 27th Street.

He opened the door, alighted, glanced up at a rather imposing block of
flats, and said to the driver:
"Is this 1000 West 59th Street?"
"Yes, sir. Quite a bunch of people live here," was the answer.
"I take it, then, that the lady I wish to see occupies one of the flats?"
The driver smiled broadly, for it seemed to him that the naïve statement
sounded rather funny.
"I guess that's about the size of it," he said.
Curtis smiled, too. This needless blurting out of confidences to a
cabman was the one folly essential to a complete restoration of his wits.
"Wait for me," he said. "I may be only a minute or two, and I shall
want you to take me right back to the point I came from."
The man nodded, and turned to set the time index of the taximeter. A
few steps led up to a spacious doorway, and Curtis passed through a
revolving door. Halfway along a well-lighted passage he saw an
elevator sign, and found an attendant sitting there.
"I believe that Miss Grandison lives here?" he said.
"Second floor--Number 10--take you up?" was the time-saving reply.
"Yes, but I am not anxious to see Miss Grandison herself. I would
prefer to speak to some male relative."
The attendant looked puzzled; perhaps he was wishful to make smooth
the way for a visitor who was obviously a gentleman, but the problem
offered by Curtis's request presented difficulties, and he fell back on his
official instructions.
"Sorry, but you must explain matters to the maid at Number 10," he
said, quite civilly, and Curtis was soon pressing an electric bell at the

door of the flat itself.
A neatly dressed girl appeared. Her out-of-doors costume suggested
that she was either just going out or just returned, and Curtis,
unaccustomed to the domestic problem as it exists in New York,
fancied that she ranked above the level of a house-maid.
"Is Miss Grandison in?" he asked.
"I'll inquire, sir. What name shall I say?"
It was a noncommittal answer, so he changed ground in the next
question.
"I would prefer not to meet Miss Grandison herself if it is in any way
possible to interview a relative of hers, or a friend," he