Chapter 17

WHEREIN JOHN AND HERMIONE BECOME ORDINARY MEMBERS OF SOCIETY

But the phase passed like a disturbing dream. Hermione herself laughed the notion to scorn: and a ready opportunity for such effective exorcism of an evil spirit was supplied by Devar's tact.

When the two young men reached the hotel Devar insisted that Curtis should take Hermione for an hour's run in the park.

"Here's the car, and it's a fine morning, and you've got the girl. What more do you want?" he cried. "If Uncle Horace and Aunt Louisa show up before your return I'll take care of 'em. Now, who helps her ladyship to put on her hat and fur coat--you or I?" That duty, however, was discharged by a smiling and voluble maid named Marcelle Leroux.

So it befell that when Brodie piloted his charges into Central Park through Scholar's Gate, Curtis behaved like a man deeply in love but gravely ill at ease, and Hermione, also in love, but afire with the divine flame of womanly faith, and therefore serenely blind to any possible obstacle which should thrust itself between her and the beloved, saw instantly that something was wrong. Curtis was just the type of man who would torture himself unnecessarily about a consideration which certainly would not have rendered his inamorata less desirable in the eyes of the average wooer. He knew that he had waited all his life to meet Hermione--to meet her, and none other--and the thought that, having found her, having snatched her, as it were, from the sacrificial altar of a false god, he should now lose her, was inflicting exquisite agony.

Happily, this girl-wife of his was adorably feminine, and she decided without inquiry that she was the cause of his melancholy.

"Tell me, John," she said suddenly. "I am brave. I can bear it."

The unexpected words stirred him from his disconsolate mood.

"Bear what, dear one?" he asked, looking at her with the wistful eyes of Tantalus gazing at the luscious fruits which the wrathful winds wafted ever from his parched lips.

"You know that you have made a mistake, and have brought me out here to--to----"

"Ah, dear Heaven!" he sighed; "if I had but the strength of will to adopt that subterfuge it might prove easier for you. But one thing I cannot do, Hermione. I refuse to set you free by means of a lie. I love you, and will love you till life itself has sped."

The trouble was not so bad, then. She nestled closer.

"What is it, John dear?" she cooed, quite confident of her ability to slay dragons so long as he talked in that strain.

He trembled a little, so overpowering was the bitter-sweet sense of her nearness.

"It is rather horrible that you and I should have to discuss dollars and cents," he said, speaking with the slow distinctness of a man pronouncing his own death-sentence, "but your father taunted me with the fact that you are very wealthy. Is that true?"

"Of course it is."

She affected to treat the matter seriously. It was rather delicious to find her lover distressing himself about money, if that was all.

"What is your income?" he demanded curtly.

"I am quite rich. I am worth about half a million dollars a year."

He groaned, and shrank away from her.

"Why did you not tell me that sooner?" he said, almost with a scowl.

"Why should I? Does it matter? Isn't it rather nice to have plenty of money?"

"Good God! It is hard to--to----" His hands covered his face in sheer agony.

"John, don't be stupid. Why alarm me in that way? Wealth doesn't bring happiness--far from it. But didn't you and I--discover each other--before--before----"

"But I know, now," he said brokenly, "and it is a mad absurdity to think that a woman of your place in the world should marry a poor engineer. Do you realize that you receive every fortnight more than I earn in twelve months? King Cophetua marrying a beggar-maid sounds excellent in romance, but who ever heard of a queen wedding a pauper?"

"You are describing yourself rather lamely, John."

"Hermione, don't drive me beyond endurance. I can't bear it, I tell you."

She caught his right hand, and imprisoned it lovingly in hers. Her left hand went around his neck, and she drew him closer.

"John," she whispered, and the fragrance of her was intoxicating, "you must not break my poor heart after taking it by storm. I want you, and shall keep you if I were ten times as rich and you were in rags. What joy has money brought hitherto in my short life? It killed my mother, and has alienated me from my father. It has driven me to the verge of a folly I now shudder at. It has caused death and suffering to men whom I have never seen. It has separated a man and a woman who love each other even as you and I love. If I were a poor girl, working for a living in office or shop, I should know what laughter meant, and cheerfulness, and the bright careless hours when the heart is light and the world goes well. You have brought these things to me, dear, and you must not take them away now. I forbid it. I deny you that wrongful act with my very soul. . . . John, do you wish to see me in tears on this--our first day--together?"

Brodie summed up the remainder of the situation with unconscious accuracy in a subsequent disquisition delivered to an admiring circle in the servants' hall at Mrs. Morgan Apjohn's house.

"Spooning is a right and proper thing in the right and proper place," he said, "but Central Park on a fine morning is not the locality. I was jogging along comfortably when I saw some guys in Columbus Plaza rubbering around at the car, and grinning like clowns at a circus, so I just opened up the engine a bit, and let her rip, except when a mounted cop cocked his eye at me. But, bless you, them two inside didn't care if it snowed. When I brought 'em back to the hotel, Mr. Curtis sez to me: 'We've enjoyed that ride thoroughly, Brodie, but I had a notion that Central Park was larger.' Dash me, I took 'em over nine miles of roadway, and they thought I had gone in at 59th Street and come out at Eighth Avenue."

Devar, too, appreciated the success of his maneuver when he saw Hermione's sparkling eyes and Curtis's complacent air.

"Have you got a sister, Lady Hermione?" he asked _a propos_ to nothing which she or any other person had said.

"No," she answered, without the semblance of a blush.

"I was only wondering," he said. "If you had, you might have cabled for her. I'd just love to take her round the Park in that car."

But the rest of that day, not to mention many successive days, was devoted to other matters than love-making. Shoals of interviewers descended on Curtis and Hermione, on Devar, on Uncle Horace and Aunt Louisa, on Brodie, even on Mrs. Morgan Apjohn when it was discovered that she came to lunch, and on "Vancouver" Devar when he arrived at the Central Station that evening. Steingall's orders were imperative, however. Not a syllable was to be uttered about the one topic concerning which the press was hungering for information, because the shooting affray in Market Street had now become known, and the gray car had been dragged out of the Hudson, and the reporters were agog for the news which was withheld at headquarters. It was then that the magic word, _sub judice_, proved very useful. Even in outspoken America, witnesses do not retail their evidence to all and sundry when men's lives are at stake, and it was quickly determined to charge all five prisoners under one and the same indictment.

Yet, for reasons never understood by the public, Balusky and Viviadi were discharged, and Jean de Courtois was deported. Martiny was sentenced to capital punishment, and Lamotte received a long term of imprisonment. But these eventualities came long after Curtis and Hermione had been remarried in strict privacy, and in the presence of a small but select circle of friends, an occasion which supplied Aunt Louisa with fresh oceans of talk for the delectation of society in Bloomington, Indiana.

At the wedding breakfast, Steingall made a speech.

"Once," he said, "when the present happy event did not seem to be quite so easy of attainment as it looks to all of us now, my friend Mr. Curtis, playing upon a weakness of mine in the matter of literary allusions, suggested that I should substitute Niflheim for Ewigkeit as a simile. I didn't know what Niflheim meant, but I have ascertained since that it is a Scandinavian word describing a region of cold and darkness, a place, therefore, where people might easily get lost. Well, it might have suited certain conditions I had then in my mind, but Mr. Curtis will never go to Scandinavian mythology when he wants to describe New York. To my thinking, it will figure in his mind as more akin to Elysium."

Clancy led the applause with sardonic appreciation, whereupon his chief allowed a severe eye to dwell on him, though his glance traveled instantly to the egg-shell dome of Otto Schmidt, whose aid had been invaluable in stilling certain qualms in the breast of authority.

"My singularly boisterous and most esteemed friend, Mr. Clancy," he continued, "seems to be delighted by the success of that trope. I might gladden your hearts with some which he has coined, because the bride and bridegroom owe more, far more, to him than they imagine at this moment. I remember----"

A loud "No, no!" from Clancy indicated that revelations were imminent.

"Well," said Steingall, "I forget just what he said on one memorable night when four semi-intoxicated stokers held up a downtown saloon, but I do wish to assure you of this--if it were not for Clancy's genius as a detective, and his splendid qualities of heart and mind as a man, this wedding might never have taken place, or, if that is putting a strain on your imagination, let me say that its principals would have encountered difficulties which are now, happily, the dim ghosts of what might have been."

Curtis took an opportunity later to ask Steingall what those cryptic words meant, and the Chief of the Bureau set at rest a doubt which had long perplexed him.

"It was Clancy who prompted the idea of mixing up the two branches of the inquiry," he said. "Under that wizened skin of his he has a heart of gold. 'Why shouldn't those two young people be made happy?' he said. 'I haven't seen the girl,' nor had he, then, 'but I like Curtis, and she won't get a better husband if she searches the island of Manhattan.' So we allowed Lord Valletort and the Count to believe that it was their set of hirelings who killed poor Hunter, whereas Balusky and Viviadi only tied up de Courtois, and were quaking with fear when they heard of the murder, because they assumed he had been killed by some other scoundrels, and that they would be held responsible. It was they who gave us the names of Rossi and Martiny as the likely pair, and the bluff I threw with Lamotte came off."

"For whom were Rossi and Martiny acting? You have never told me," said Curtis.

"Don't ask, sir. But I don't mind giving you a sort of hint. You know, better than I do probably, that Hungary is seething with revolutionary parties, which are more bitter against each other than against the common enemy, Austria. Now, two of these organizations were keen to have Count Vassilan married to Lady Hermione, one because of a patriotic desire to draw her money into the war-chest, the other because they suspected him, and rightly, as a mere tool in the hands of Austria, and they believed, again with justice I think, that when he was married it would be Paris and the gay life for him rather than a throne which might be shattered by Austrian bullets. The Earl of Valletort has degenerated into little better than a company-promoter, and he had made his own compact with Vassilan. Add to these certain facts one other--Elizabeth Zapolya, whom Lady Hermione knows, married an attache in the Austrian Embassy in Paris last week. Tell her that. She will be interested. For the rest, you must deduce your own theories."

Curtis remained silent for a moment. Then he seized Steingall's hand and wrung it warmly.

"Hermione and I have been wondering what we can do to show our sense of gratitude to you and Mr. Clancy," he said.

"Nothing, sir," broke in the detective. "It was all in the way of business, so to speak."

"Yes, and our recognition of your services will take shape in that direction," said Curtis. "Why, man, if it were not for you I might have been charged with murder, and if it were not for Clancy and you, Hermione might now be in Paris with her good-for-nothing father. . . . I'll talk this over with Schmidt."

"Schmidt is a good fellow, but he doesn't know everything, even though he may be a mighty fine guesser," said Steingall.

"I'll tell him just as much as is good for any lawyer," laughed Curtis. "He is acting for my wife and myself now in the matter of providing for Hunter's relatives. We look forward to meeting Clancy and you when we return from the West."

"Is that where you are going for the honeymoon?" asked the detective, with the amiable grin which invariably accompanies the question.

"Yes. We debated the point during a whole day, but some enterprising agent settled it for us by exhibiting a catchy sign--'Why not see America?' And we both cried 'Why not?' Mr. Devar senior, who has what you call a pull in such matters, has secured us the use of a railway president's car for the trip, and a whole lot of friends join us at Chicago. Can you come, too?"

Steingall shook his head.

"No, sir," he said ruefully. "I can't get away from headquarters. I have too much on hand. As for Clancy, he'll be carried out before he quits."

So, for two people at least, a wonderful night merged into a more wonderful month, and the dawn of a new year found them on the threshold of a happy, and therefore, quite wonderful life.

THE END