An approving grin from his colleagues vouched for the speaker's accuracy.

"Who was killed, anyhow, Steingall?" demanded the journalist who had answered the detective.

"We don't know, yet."

"Does Curtis know?"

"He said he didn't, but I'll tell you something--I shan't be happy till I've had another chat with him."

"Can anyone say who 'John D. Curtis, of Pekin,' really is?" went on the reporter.

"That is the man we are looking for. If there are police officers present, I want them to understand that Curtis should be arrested at sight."

Everyone turned at the sound of the authoritative English voice which had intervened so unexpectedly in the conclave. They saw an elderly man, well dressed, and bearing the unmistakable tokens of good social standing. With him was a foreigner, a most truculent looking person, whose collar, shirt, and waistcoat carried other signs, quite as obvious, but curiously ominous in view of the cause of this gathering in the hall of the hotel.

"May I ask who you are, sir?" said Steingall.

"I am the Earl of Valletort," said the stranger, "and this is Count Ladislas Va.s.silan."

"Ah! Count Va.s.silan is not an Englishman?"

"No, but----"

"Is he, by any chance, a Hungarian?"

"Count Va.s.silan is a Hungarian prince. But the nationality of either of us is unimportant. Are you connected with the New York police?"

"Yes," said Steingall. He answered the Earl, but kept that microscopic eye of his fixed on the Count.

"Very well, then. I repeat that John D. Curtis must be found and arrested--to-night."

"Why?"

"Because he is a dangerous adventurer. I----"

"That's a lie, first sizz out of the syphon," broke in another voice.

"I have the honor to be a friend of John D. Curtis. My name is Howard Devar, and I'll stand for John D. all the time against the n.o.ble Earl and any G.o.d's quant.i.ty of blue-blooded, full-blooded Hungarians."

Each member of the animated group was gazing at Devar's boyish, self-possessed, well-chiseled face, when another interruption held them agog. A stout, middle-aged man, followed by a stouter matron, bustled into the circle. The newcomers were just as clearly Americans as the Earl was English, and the man cried angrily:

"Who says that John D. Curtis is a tough? I'm his uncle."

"And I'm his aunt," chimed in the lady.

"Of Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana," said the man.

"Mr. and Mrs. Horace P. Curtis," announced the lady.

"Shake!" said Devar. "I heard about you to-day on board the _Lusitania_. . . . Now, my lord, we are three to two. What charge do you bring against John D. Curtis?"

CHAPTER V

NINE O'CLOCK

A new note had crept into the voice of the taxi-cab driver when he stopped his vehicle in Madison Avenue and sought Curtis's further commands. No longer did he address his patron with a species of good-humored tolerance, almost of sarcasm; his mental att.i.tude had now become one of respect, even of hero-worship. A little later, while smoking a thoughtful pipe in his own cozy flat somewhere near Second Avenue, he tried to explain this curious development to his wife.

"You see, my dear," he said, "I picked up a fare in Broadway, an' took him where he said he wanted to go. When he got out, he didn't seem to be quite sure whether he wanted to be there or not, an' you can bet I smiled when he said that he supposed the lady he was callin' on lived somewhere around. Anyhow, after hesitatin' a bit, an' tellin' me he wouldn't keep me a minnit, in he dives, an' kep' me coolin' my heels a good quarter of an hour. I grew uneasy, because fares do get so nasty about waitin' charges, so I signals the elevator man, name o' Rafferty, to ask if it was O.K. When Rafferty comes back, we had a chat, an' he tells me that this Miss Grandison--a mighty smart piece she is, too,--was goin' to marry a little Frenchman right away--she was expectin' him to call at eight o'clock an' take her to the minister's place--so it gev' both Rafferty an' me a jar when my dude turns up with the girl an' pipes us for any old address where people could get married. Well, I remembers the number of a shovel hat in 56th Street, an' away we hike, man, girl, an' lady's maid, with never a sign of any Frenchman anywheres. An', by Jove, in they skipped to the parsonage, an' were spliced."

"No, George!" exclaimed his highly interested hearer.

"Fact. True as I'm sittin' here. When they were comin' out, a queer lookin' specimen who opened the door wished 'em happiness. 'Fair weather to you an' your wife, sir,' he said; an' Mr. Curtis--that's my fare's name, I asked him--said something about havin' finished one long voyage an' beginnin' another. Then the fun began. I was just startin'

the machine when a private auto dashes up, an' out jumps a foreign-lookin' swell. The girl spots him, an' screams his name--Count Vaseline it sounded like--an' he shouts, 'Here we are, Valtaw'--p'raps that was his way of sayin' Walter--'Got 'em, by-- You see after Hermione. I'll fix this--Frenchman?'"

"Don't swear, George," remonstrated the driver's better half.

"I'm not swearin'. Ain't I tellin' you what he said?"

The point was waived.

"And the lady's name was Hermione, was it? It's a pretty name."

"You haven't got it quite right. It was more like the way I said it."

And, indeed, the correction was justified, since it is a regrettable fact that the taxi-cab driver's wife made "Hermione" rhyme with "bone,"

and laid no stress on the second syllable. Strong in her superior knowledge, for she was an omnivorous reader of fiction--and Greek names were fashionable last November--she pa.s.sed that point also.

"Well?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Ha, ha!" The narrator laughed joyfully. "The Dago Count went for Curtis as if he was on to a sure thing, but before you could say 'knife' he was on his back on the sidewalk. I've never seen a man put down so quick. I couldn't have floored him so beautifully if I'd hit him with a spanner. But that was only part of the entertainment.

Curtis--mind you, before that I'd been treatin' him as an ordinary dude in evenin' dress--acted like an injarubber man filled with chain lightning. He shoved 'Valtaw' back into the auto, grabs the brake an'

gear lever, an' puts 'em both out of action, sweeps the two girls into my cab, and----"

Here the taxi-driver bethought himself, and grinned vacuously.

"Well--an' here I am," he concluded.

"I suppose he handed out a good fare," said his wife.

"Yes, he was quite decent about it. Tipped me a couple of dollars over an' above the register."

"I should have thought it would have been more. Men are usually generous when they are getting married."

"He was takin' on a rather expensive bit of stuff, unless I am much mistaken, an' p'raps he was just rememberin' it."

In this ingenuous fashion was a poor woman neatly headed off the scent of a fifty-dollar bill. She rang the knell of a new hat by her next question.