d itself more completely to the romance of that walk than the
wonderful promenade which leads from Central Park to Madison Square.
With few exceptions, the nineteenth century plutocrat has been ousted
from that section of Fifth Avenue; a giant democracy has reared its own
palaces in the shape of hotels and office buildings which pierce the
skies, stores which rival the proudest mansions of Venice in its heyday
and Florence under Lorenzo Medici. Never in after life did Curtis
forget that intimate glimpse of the grandeur and wealth of his native
place. Coming up the harbor by daylight he had been overwhelmed by New
York's proud defiance of the limits imposed by nature, but now, partly
veiled by the mystery of night, the city displayed a feminine beauty at
once entrancing and elusive.

At a cross street he paused for a moment to admire a gem of
architecture wrenched bodily from its Cinque Cento setting by
Brunelleschi, and transplanted to this new land to serve the opulent
need of a vendor of precious stones and metals. In the strip of dark
blue firmament visible above the admirably proportioned cornice he
caught sight of two planets flaming high in the west, and in close
juxtaposition. Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and
he had studied Chinese astrology as a pastime. He recognized these
lamps of the empyrean as Mars and Venus, and, up-to-date American
though he was, drew comfort from that favoring augury. Then, in
stepping from the roadway to the sidewalk, he stumbled over a heavy
curb, and laughed at the reminder that star-gazing did not reveal
pitfalls before unwary feet.

The incident knocked some of the poetry out of him, and it was a quite
normal and level-headed young man who walked into the Central Hotel
soon after ten o'clock, and found Detective Steingall's gaze resting on
him contemplatively from the neighborhood of the cigar counter.

Before rejoining the waiting trio in the office, Steingall was
interviewing the youth in charge of the tobacco and current literature
department.

Such story as the boy had to tell was hardly in favor of Curtis.

"The gentleman came here to buy some stamps, and he and a man who was
reading in the cafe said something to each other in a foreign lingo,"
ran the recital. "No, I don't think I would recognize French if I
heard it--American is good enough for me--but there was no argument,
nothing in the shape of a quarrel. The Englishman spoke twice, and t