The detective was blessed with a sense of humor; he realized that the inquiry had long since pa.s.sed the bounds of official decorum, and its irregularities had proved so illuminative that he was not anxious to check them yet a while.

"Yes," he said, "you'll do no harm if you keep a still tongue in your head."

"You'll come back to us, John, won't you?" broke in Mrs. Curtis, desperately contributing the first commonplace remark that occurred to her bemused brain.

"Yes, aunt. I'll rejoin you here. Shall I have some supper sent in for both of you?"

"No, my boy," said Uncle Horace, who had revived under the prospect of a long drink. "If any feasting is to be done later it is up to me to arrange it. The night is young. I hope to have the honor of toasting your wife before I go to bed."

Curtis smiled at that, but made no reply, the moment being inopportune for explanations, but Devar murmured, as they crossed the lobby with Steingall and the clerk:

"That uncle of yours is a peach, John D. He points the moral like a Greek chorus."

"I fear he will regard me as a hare-brained nephew," said Curtis. "As for my aunt, poor lady, she must think me the most extraordinary human being she has ever set eyes on. What puzzles me most is----"

"Wow! I know what aunts are capable of," broke in Devar rapidly, for he was doubtful now how his friend would regard the publicity he had not desired. "Mrs. Curtis, senior, is thanking her stars at this minute that she will have a chance of paralyzing Bloomington with full details of her nephew's marriage into the ranks of the British aristocracy. The odd thing is that I'm tickled to death by the notion that I, little Howard, put you in for this night's gorgeous doings.

Didn't you wonder why I pa.s.sed up an introduction to _my_ aunt and my cousins in the Customs shed? Man alive, if Mrs. Morgan Apjohn had made your acquaintance to-day she would have insisted on your dining with the family to-night, and at 7.30 P.M. your feet would have been safely tucked under the mahogany in her home on Riverside Drive instead of leading you into the maze you seem to have found so readily. All I wanted was an excuse to get away soon. Gee whizz! What a fireworks display you've put up in the meantime!"

"Fifth," said the clerk to the elevator attendant, and the four men shot skyward.

As each floor above the street level was a replica of the next higher one, Curtis happened to note that the route followed to the Frenchman's room was similar to that leading to 605.

"What number does Monsieur de Courtois occupy?" he inquired.

"505," said the clerk.

"Then it is directly beneath mine?"

"Yes, sir. He must have heard us breaking open your door."

"I beg your pardon. Heard what?"

"We committed some minor offenses with regard to your property during your absence," said Steingall, "but they were of slight account as compared with your own extravagances. Let me warn you not to say too much before de Courtois. Even taking your version of events, Mr.

Curtis, Lord Valletort will probably raise a wasps' nest about your ears in the morning."

"But why _break open_ the door? Surely, there was a pa.s.s key----"

"Sh-s-sh! Here we are!"

Steingall tapped lightly on a panel of 505, and the four listened silently for any response. None came--that is, there was nothing which could be recognized as the sound of a voice or of human movement inside the room. Nevertheless, they fancied they heard something, and the detective knocked again, somewhat more insistently. Now they were intent for the slightest noise behind that closed door, and they caught a subdued groan or whine, followed by the metallic creak of a bed-frame.

At that instant a chamber-maid hurried up.

"I was just going to 'phone the office," she said to the clerk. "A little while ago I tried to enter that room, but my key would not turn in the lock."

"Did you hear anyone stirring within?" asked the clerk.

"No, sir. I knocked, and there was no answer."

"Listen now, then."

A third time did Steingall rap on the door, and the strange whine was repeated, while there could be no question that a bed was being dragged or shoved to and fro on a carpeted floor.

"My land!" whispered the girl in an awed tone. "There's something wrong in there!"

"Let me try your key," said the clerk. He rattled the master-key in the keyhole, but with no avail.

"I suppose it acts all right in every other lock?" he growled.

"Oh, yes, sir. I've been using it all the evening."

"Someone has tampered with the lock from the outside," he said savagely. "There is nothing for it but to send for the engineer.

Before we're through with this business we'll pull the d--d hotel to pieces. A nice reputation the place will get if all this door-forcing appears in the papers to-morrow."

Certainly the clerk was to be pitied. Never before had the decorum of the Central Hotel been so outraged. Its air of smug respectability seemed to have vanished. Even to the clerk's own disturbed imagination the establishment had suddenly grown raffish, and its dingy paint and drab upholstery resembled the make-up and cloak of a scowling tragedian.

A strong-armed workman came joyously. He had already figured as a personage below stairs, because of his earlier experiences, and it was a cheering thing to be called on twice in one night to partic.i.p.ate in a mystery which was undoubtedly connected with the murder in the street.

Before adopting more strenuous methods he inserted a piece of strong wire into the keyhole, thinking to pick the lock by that means; but he soon desisted.

"Some joker has been at that game before me," he announced. "A chunk of wire has been forced in there after the door was locked."

"From the outside?" inquired Steingall.

"Yes, sir. These locks work by a key only from without. There is a handle inside. . . . Well, here goes!"

A few blows with a sharp chisel soon cut away sufficient of the frame to allow the door to be forced open. On this occasion, there being no wedge in the center, it was not necessary to attack the hinges, and, once the lock was freed, the door swung back readily into the interior darkness.

The engineer, remembering his needless alarm at falling head foremost into Curtis's room, went forward boldly enough now, and paid for his temerity. He was so anxious to be the first to discover whatever horror existed there that he made for the center of the apartment without waiting to turn on the light, and, as a consequence, when he stumbled over something which he knew was a human body, and was greeted with a subdued though savage whine, he was even more frightened than before.

But no one was concerned about him or his feelings when Steingall touched an electric switch and revealed a bound and gagged man fastened to a leg of the bed. At first, owing to the extraordinary posture of the body, it was feared that another tragedy had been enacted. The victim of an uncanny outrage was lying on his side, and his arms and legs were roughly but skillfully tied with a stout rope in such wise that he resembled a fowl trussed for the oven. After securing him in this fashion, his a.s.sailants had fastened the ends of the rope to the iron frame of the bed, and his only possible movement was an ignominious half roll, back and forth, in a s.p.a.ce of less than eight inches. This maneuver he had evidently been engaged in as soon as he heard voices and knocking outside, but he had been gagged with such brutal efficacy that his sole effort at speech was a species of whinny through his nose.

The detective's knife speedily liberated him; when he was lifted from the floor and laid gently on the bed, he remained there, quite speechless and overcome.

Steingall turned to the agitated chambermaid, whose eyes were round with terror, and who would certainly have alarmed the hotel with her screams had she come upon the occupant of the room in the course of her rounds.

"Bring a gla.s.s of hot milk, as quickly as you can," he said, and the girl sped away to the service telephone.

"Wouldn't brandy be better?" inquired Devar.

"No. Milk is the most soothing liquid in a case like this. The man's jaws are sore and aching. Probably, too, he is faint from fright and want of food. If we can get him to sip some milk he will be able to tell us, perhaps, just what has happened."

While they awaited the return of the chamber-maid, the party of rescuers gazed curiously at the prostrate figure on the bed. They saw a small, slight, neatly built man, attired in evening dress, whose sallow face was in harmony with a shock of black hair. A large and somewhat vicious mouth was partly concealed by a heavy black mustache, and the long-fingered, nervous hands were sure tokens of the artistic temperament. There could be no manner of doubt that this hapless individual was Jean de Courtois. He looked exactly what he was, a French musician, while initials on his boxes, and a number of letters on the dressing-table, all testified to his ident.i.ty.

Curtis, Devar, and the hotel clerk seemed to be more interested in the appearance of the half-insensible de Courtois than Steingall. He gave him one penetrating glance, and would have known the man again after ten years had they been parted that instant; but, if he favored the Frenchman with scant attention, he made no scruples about examining the doc.u.ments on the table, though his first care was to thank the workman, and send him from the room.

"Now," he muttered to the others in a low tone, "leave the questioning to me, and mention no names."

He picked up a Marconigram lying among the letters, and read it.