"You're the hundred and first man to whom I have answered 'No' in the last quarter of an hour," he said.
"The first hundred didn't count, anyway," was the dry response. "Pull yourself together, and read that card slowly and collectedly."
"Well," he went on, seeing that the clerk had apparently mastered the copper-plate script, "you see I am not here for amusement. Now, about Curtis, are you sure he is not in his room?"
"His key has not been given up, but I have sent to 605, and we can't get in."
"We can open every lock in the hotel. It is bolted."
"We've done everything, short of breaking open the door."
Steingall looked perplexed, but the police captain was confident.
"He has buncoed us, for sure," he said with a smile, though the smile boded evil for John D. Curtis at their next meeting.
"Did you notice him particularly when he registered?" demanded the detective, after a pause.
"Yes. Came to-night by the _Lusitania_. Here is his signature."
The three men gazed at the register, and Steingall produced a card, on which Curtis had written the name of the hotel.
"Same handwriting!" he murmured. "By the way," he continued, addressing the clerk, "were you here when the murder took place?"
"Not a scratch. I was busy with a lady, who was worrying me about a train to Montclair. She was five minutes making up her mind whether to take the Jersey tunnel or the 23rd Street ferry."
"The only other person, beside Curtis, who saw the whole affair was the hall-porter?"
Questioned anew, the hall-porter was positive about everything except Curtis's connection with the attack. The reporters had scalped him, metaphorically speaking, and his brain was seething. He said "No" when he meant "Yes," and "Yes" for "No," and contradicted himself in each fresh version of the cataclasm which had seared his sky with lightning.
Steingall ultimately gave him up as hopeless that night. Perhaps, next morning, when he had slept and eaten, he might become sane again.
"It's an odd thing that Curtis should have wandered away in this fashion, wearing a strange overcoat," mused the detective aloud.
"He must know it," said the police captain meaningly.
"I rather think we must force that door," said Steingall.
The clerk did not understand the reference to the overcoat, but he was ready enough to adopt the detective's suggestion.