uce Anatole Labergerie," said Curtis, "but I am
quite sure that the man under arrest is the driver of the car in which
the Hungarians made off. He has admitted, too, that Jean de Courtois
is his friend."

A low whistle revealed Steingall's revised view of the situation.

"Don't go away," he said. "Clancy and I will be with you in less than
quarter of an hour."

Curtis hung up the receiver, and announced the new development. The
Frenchman did not betray any cognizance of it. He had collapsed into a
chair, and looked the degenerate that he was.

But Devar slapped McCulloch's broad shoulders.

"Didn't I tell you?" he cried. "There's a whole lot of night ahead of
us yet. Gee whizz! I'll write a book before I'm through with this!"

CHAPTER XIII

WHEREIN LADY HERMIONE "ACTS FOR THE BEST"

A dejected and disheveled super-clerk was called on to face a new
crisis soon after he had apparently got rid of most of the persons
concerned in the pandemonium which had raged for hours around that
refuge of middle-class decorum and respectability, the Central Hotel in
27th Street.

As he was wont to explain in later days of blessed peacefulness:

"The queerest part of the whole business was that I never had the
slightest notion as to what was going to happen next. Everything
occurred like a flash of lightning, and imitated lightning by never
striking twice in the same place."

It was not to be expected that a man of the Earl of Valletort's social
standing and experience would allow himself to be brow-beaten by a
police official and an uncertain miscellany of people like Devar and
the members of the Curtis family. When the cool night air had tempered
his indignation, and he was removed from the electrical atmosphere
created by his son-in-law's positive disdain and Steingall's negative
indifference, he began to survey the situation. Though not wholly a
stranger in New York, he was far from being versed in the
technicalities of legal and police methods, so he bethought him of
securing skilled advice. The hour was late, but the fact merely
presented a difficulty which was not insuperable to a person of even
average intelligence. He turned into an imposing looking hotel on
Broadway, produced his card, and asked for the manager.

An affable clerk hurried forward, thinking that his house was about to
earn new laurels; if somewhat surprised by the Earl's explanation that
he was in need of a lawyer of repute, and h