wanted to make sure of."

"I have expressed no opinions. I confined myself to actual facts."

"And isn't it a highly significant fact that you are over head and ears
in love with your wife? _Nom d'un pipe_! Doesn't that complicate the
thing worse than a Chinese puzzle?"

"I really don't see----" began Curtis, yielding to a feeling of
annoyance which was not altogether unwarrantable, but Clancy jerked out
his hands as though they were attached to arms moved by the strings of
a marionette.

"Of course, you don't!" he cried. "You're in love! You're gorged with
the amococcus microbe! It's the worst case I've ever heard of. I once
knew a man who met a girl for the first time at the Park Row end of
Brooklyn Bridge and proposed to her before they had crossed the East
River, but you've set up a record that will never be beaten. You find
a marriage license in the pockets of a murdered man, rush off in a taxi
to the address of the lady named therein, marry her, punch a frantic
rival on the nose, take the fair one to a hotel, flout her father, a
British peer, and hold a banquet at which the Chief of the New York
Detective Bureau is an honored guest; and then you have the hardihood
to tell me that your actions constitute an immaterial side issue in the
biggest sensation New York has produced this year. Young man, wait
till the interviewers get hold of you to-morrow! Wait till the sob
sisters begin gushing over your bride--a pretty one--with a title!
Name of good little gray man! They'll whoop your side issues into a
scare-head front page! Before you know where you are they'll have you
bleating about the color of her eyes, the exquisite curve of her
Cupid's Bow lips, and the way her hair shone when the electric light
fell on it, while she, on her part, will be confiding, with a
suspicious break in her voice, what a perfectly darling specimen of the
American man at his best you are. Mr. Curtis, you're married good and
hard, and if you want to cinch the job you ought to go to jail for a
while."

Unquestionably, the two civilians present thought that Clancy was
slightly mad, so Steingall intervened.

"Hop off your perch, Eugene," he said, "and tell us how you came to
drive Count Vassilan's taxi, and where you took him."

"It was a case of intelligent anticipation of forthcoming events," said
Clancy, whose excitability disappeared instantly, leaving him calm and
extremely lucid of speech. "When Evans (the police c