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
occupied the recess, and the negro, while unstrapping a steel trunk at
the foot of the bed, balanced the bag of golf clubs against the front
of the wardrobe--an action simple enough in itself, but comparable in
its after effects to the setting of a clock attached to a bomb.

S