One Wonderful Night | Page 4

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 �� 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, and himself threw open the window. Glancing out, he discovered that he was located in a corner which commanded a distant glimpse of Broadway. Directly before his eyes, in the topmost story of a comparatively low building, a lady who had forgotten to draw the blinds of her flat was apparently indulging in calisthenic exercises, so Curtis, being a modest man, drew the blind in his own room, and busied himself with a partial unpacking of his baggage. The door faced the bed, at a distance of some six feet. A wardrobe