One Wonderful Night | Page 9

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 na?ve 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 said.
This colorless statement, intended to be reassuring, seemed to have such an alarming effect on the girl that he hastened to add:
"I am here with reference to Monsieur Jean de Courtois."
His hearer smiled, and her manner changed from fright to friendliness. Indeed, if he had not been so wrapped up in the highly disagreeable task which lay before him, he could hardly have failed to notice that she welcomed, rather than resented, the visit of a smart looking young man to the establishment.
"Oh, come in, do," she said, glancing up at him with demure but very bright eyes. "Why didn't you say at once that you had been sent by Mr. de Courtois, without trying to scare me stiff by talking about relatives?"
He obeyed, and he closed the door.
"I really meant what I said," he persisted. "Something has happened to