ying surprises.

"Why!" he exclaimed, smiling cheerfully, "you must be my uncle and aunt
from Bloomington, Indiana!"

"If you're John Delancy Curtis, that's our correct description," said
Horace.

"Of course he is," chortled Mrs. Curtis. "He's as like you the day I
married you as two peas in a pod, and if our little Horace had been
spared he would have been his living image. Nephew, I'm proud to meet
you," and Mrs. Curtis folded her relation in an ample embrace.

Curtis carried off a difficult situation with ease. He kissed his
aunt, shook hands with his uncle, and was about to answer the lady's
torrent of questions with regard to himself and his own people when
Steingall interfered.

"Sorry to interrupt you," he said, "but the turn taken by to-night's
crime demands your immediate attention, Mr. Curtis. Do you know you
are wearing the dead man's overcoat?"

"Yes. I discovered that fact some time ago."

Curtis's prompt admission was more favorable to his cause than he could
possibly realize then, though he had seen that the detective's
extraordinarily brilliant eyes were fixed on the garment's
blood-stained sleeve.

"And have you learnt the owner's name?" went on Steingall quietly.

"Yes, that is, I believe so, owing to a document I found in one of the
pockets."

"Ah, what was that?"

"It concerned another person, but I am prepared to tell you its nature
if it is absolutely essential."

"Believe me, there must be no concealment--now."

Something in the detective's tone conveyed a hint of peril, of
suspicion, to the ears of one so accustomed to dealing with his
fellow-men as was Curtis. But he shook off the premonition of ill, and
decided, once and for all, to be candor itself where the authorities
were concerned.

"It was a marriage license," he said.

"And the names on it?"

"They were those of a Frenchman, Jean de Courtois, and of an English
lady, Hermione Beauregard Grandison."

"So you have imagined that the man who was killed was this Monsieur
Jean de Courtois?"

For the life of him, Curtis could not prevent the tumultuous pumping of
his heart from drawing some of the color from his face.

"Who else?" he inquired, never flinching from Steingall's searching
gaze.

"No matter who owned the coat, or whom the license was intended for,
the murdered man was no Frenchman, but a New York journalist named
Henry R. Hunter," said Steingall.

Then Curtis yielded to the swift conviction that h