uld become a real
union, you would be satisfied?"

"I don't see how----"

"You can at least take my word for it, Mr. Curtis, that the chance of
such an outcome will be greatly forwarded if you go straight to bed,
whereas any design you may have formed as to assaulting and battering
Otto Schmidt would, if put into execution, probably defeat the more
important object, or, at any rate, cripple its prospects of success."

"Do you really mean that?"

"I am almost sure of it. There is only one thing of which I am more
certain at the moment."

"And that is?"

"That if it were not for your quickness of eye and hand--and foot, for
that matter--I would now be laid out in a mortuary or on an hospital
table. I appreciate those qualities when exercised on a person like
Martiny, whose main argument is centered in an automatic pistol, but
they would be singularly out of place if tested on Otto Schmidt, when
backed by the laws of the United States, which, strange as it may seem,
I also represent."

"If you put it that way, Steingall----"

"I do, most emphatically. Let me be more precise. Promise me now that
you will not stir out of the Plaza Hotel until I come to you."

"Is that really essential?"

"I would not ask you if it were not."

"What time may I expect you?"

"Let me see. . . . It is now nearly five o'clock. I hope to sleep
till eight. I give you till nine. Bath and breakfast brings you to
ten. Say eleven."

"I owe you a good deal, so I shall await you till noon. After that
hour I reserve my freedom of action."

The detective laughed.

"Good-by," he said, and, as though in keeping with the other fantasies
of the night, Curtis was sound asleep in quarter of an hour. He had
acquired the faculty of sleeping under any conditions of mental or
physical stress, short of illness or severe bodily pain, and he could
awake at any hour previously determined on, so, a few minutes before
nine o'clock he was in his bath. At a quarter-past nine he rang for a
waiter and ordered breakfast.

"For one, sir?" said the man, who had not been on duty the previous
evening, but had taken care to ascertain the names of the guests on his
section of the floor.

"Yes, for one," said Curtis. "My wife and her maid are not
breakfasting in the hotel. Will you kindly send up a batch of morning
newspapers?"

It was only to be expected that the keen and bright intelligence of New
York journalism should have fastened on to th