mise were correct, why her ladyship was
remaining up so late.

Devar resolved to say nothing, but Curtis felt that he must talk, if
only for the sake of hearing his own voice. Usually a man of taciturn
habit, the outcome of long vigils among an alien and often hostile race
in a semi-civilized land, he had gone through so much during the five
and a half hours which had unfolded their marvels since he quitted the
dining-room of the Central Hotel, that he ached for human sympathy,
even in a trivial matter of this sort.

"I thought I saw a light in my wife's rooms," he said.

"As you mention it, so did I," agreed Devar.

"I hope she is not awaiting my return?"

"Perhaps she is anxious about you?"

"But why?"

"Women are given that way. She knows you went out with Steingall, and
he is a dangerous character."

"Is Mrs. Curtis staying in the Plaza?" asked the puzzled McCulloch.

"Yes."

"But I thought you occupied a room at the Central Hotel in 27th Street?"

"I did, but I got married at half-past eight, and we went to the Plaza."

"Married at half-past eight--just after the murder!" The policeman's
words formed a crescendo of sheer surprise. For some indefinable
reason this curious conjunction of a crime and a wedding went beyond
his comprehension.

"Yes, it happened so. It might have been avoided, yet, looking back
now over the whole of the circumstances, it would appear that I have
followed a beaten track inevitable as death."

Of course, the roundsman could not grasp the somber thought underlying
Curtis's words, but a species of indeterminate suspicion prompted his
next question.

"You came from the Plaza with Mr. Steingall, I believe, sir?"

"Yes. We were having supper there, with Mr. Devar and my uncle and
aunt, when Mr. Clancy rang him up on the telephone, and he invited us
to accompany him to the Police Headquarters. The rest you know."

Certainly, the explanation sounded quite satisfactory. The attitude of
these two young men and their chauffeur was perfectly correct, and the
policeman's views had been strengthened materially by the tell-tale
tokens he had noted on the gray car, which, however, he had not thought
fit to mention. If Steingall had attended the supper in the Plaza he
must have convinced himself that there was nothing unusual, or, at any
rate, doubtful, about the queer fact that a man who was mixed up in a
remarkable murder should have gone straight from the scene of the
tra