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 he had unwittingly trapped Lady Hermione into a marriage on grounds that were inadequate and false.
"Good God!" he muttered, and, for the moment, it was impossible for his hearers to resist the dreadful inference that, in some shape or form, he was implicated in the outrage which bulked so large in their minds.
Mrs.Curtis wanted to scream aloud, but she dared not.