ubject to yield unnecessary information."

"Supper is served, sir," said a maitre d'hotel to Uncle Horace, and
further discussion of Count Vassilan's tangled matrimonial schemes
became difficult for the moment.

Steingall was pressed to join the party--without prejudice to any
official duties he might be called on to perform next day, as Curtis
put it pleasantly--and consented. Once again had his instinct been
justified, for he was sure that Lady Hermione's Parisian reminiscences
would prove important in some way not yet determinable. Moreover, his
colleagues knew he was at the Plaza Hotel, and he was content to remain
there while his trusted aide, Clancy, was acting as chauffeur during
Count Vassilan's belated excursion.

The police captain was keeping an eye on the Waldorf-Astoria, a
detective was searching the apartment rented by the murdered
journalist, and other men of the Bureau were hunting the record of the
automobile, though Steingall was convinced that this branch of the
inquiry would end in a blind alley, because the car had undoubtedly
been stolen, and its lawful owner would only be able to identify it,
and declare that, to the best of his belief, it was locked in a garage
at the time it was being used for the commission of a crime. Steingall
assumed that the unfortunate Hunter--or it might have been de
Courtois--was led to hire this particular vehicle by adroit
misrepresentation on the part of some unknown scoundrels who were aware
of the contemplated marriage. The shorthand notes in Hunter's book
bore out this theory, because they were obviously data supplied by de
Courtois which would have enabled the journalist to write a thoroughly
sensational story next day. He was convinced, when the truth was
known, it would be discovered that Hunter made the Frenchman's
acquaintance owing to his habit of mixing with the strange underworld
from the Continent of Europe which has its lost legion in New York. De
Courtois was just the sort of vainglorious little man who would welcome
the notoriety of such an adventure as the prevented marriage ceremony,
wherein his name would figure with those of distinguished people, and
the last thing he counted on was the murder of the scribe who had
promised him columns of descriptive matter in the press. The pert
musician was not the first, nor would he be the last, to find that the
role of cat's-paw is apt to prove more exacting than was anticipated.
To his chagrin, he sa