narrow envelope, made of stiff linen paper,
which somehow seemed unfamiliar. He drew it out, and examined it,
standing in front of a well-lighted shop window.

Then he whistled with sheer amazement, as well he might. The envelope
held a marriage license for two people named Jean de Courtois and
Hermione Beauregard Grandison. . . . In a word, he was wearing the
dead man's overcoat, and the fearsome conviction leaped to his brain
that the dead man must be Jean de Courtois.

CHAPTER II

EIGHT O'CLOCK

From one aspect, Curtis's sense of dread and horror was merely
altruistic, the natural welling forth of the springs of human
sentiment. If the man now lying stark and lifeless in that dreary
official bureau had in truth been hurrying on his way to a marriage
feast, then, indeed, tragedy had assumed its grimmest aspect that night
in New York. But, beyond an enforced personal contact with a ghastly
crime, Curtis had no vital interest in its victim, and it should have
occurred to him, as a law-abiding citizen, that his instant duty was to
communicate this new discovery to the authorities. Nay more, such
definite information would help the police materially in their pursuit
of the murderers. It might lay bare a motive, put the bloodhounds of
the law on a well-marked trail, and render impossible the escape of the
guilty ones.

That was the sane, level-headed, man-of-the-world view, and, to one
inured to deeds of violence in a land where the Foreign Devil oft-time
holds his life as scarce worth an hour's purchase, no other solution of
the problem should have presented itself. But, for all his strength of
character, Curtis had been breathing an intoxicating atmosphere ever
since he set foot on American soil. His home-coming had begun by
producing in his soul a subtle exaltation which had survived a
conspiracy of repression. Devar's careless acceptance of the city's
grandeur had jarred; the exuberance of the joyous throng on the jetty
had touched dormant chords of sad memories; even at the very portals of
the hotel the building's newness had struck a bizarre note; and now, as
though to emphasize the vile crime of which he had been an involuntary
witness, came the stifling knowledge that somewhere in New York an
expectant bride was chafing at delay--a delay caused by an assassin's
dagger, while there was not lacking even the tormenting suspicion that
somehow, had he been more wide-awake, he could have prevented