ble
_parti_ than the French music-master?"

Then the noble lord flared into heat.

"Dash it all!" he cried. "You are almost as bad as that detective
person. I am not bothering my brains as to Curtis's desirableness or
otherwise, or comparing him with a worm like de Courtois. I want this
marriage annulled. I want him arrested. I want the aid of the law to
extricate my daughter from the consequences of her own folly. Surely,
such a marriage cannot be legal!"

Schmidt weighed the point from behind the veil, and an unemotional
reply soothed his fiery client.

"The idea is, perhaps, untenable--almost repulsive," he said, "but the
law on the matter is governed by so many differing decisions that I
cannot express a reasoned opinion offhand. You see, the question of
consideration intervenes. And--and--where is the lady now?"

"I don't know."

"You left Curtis at the Central Hotel!"

"Yes."

"In company with Steingall, and two elderly Curtises, and young Devar?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you demand your daughter's present address?"

"I--I was so stunned by what I regarded as official sanction of an
outrage that I came away in a fury."

Mr. Otto Schmidt rose, or rather, raised his oblong shape from a slight
incline on a chair to a horizontal position.

"Let us go to the hotel," he said. "And there must be no more fury.
Leave the inquiry in my hands, my lord, and it will be strange if I do
not succeed in elucidating points which are now baffling us--in fact, I
may say, inducing mental disturbance."

Thus, it came to pass that Krantz, the reception clerk at the Central
Hotel, had just seen the doctor sent to dose de Courtois with bromide
leaving the building when the Earl and Mr. Schmidt entered.

As it happened, the lawyer was known to him, Schmidt having had legal
charge of the corporation which reconstructed the hotel, so it was
impossible for an employe to be reticent with him about the matters
which were discussed forthwith.

"Mr. Steingall gone?" inquired Schmidt affably.

"Yes, sir. He left here nearly half an hour ago," said the clerk,
outwardly self-possessed, but wondering inwardly what new bomb would be
exploded in his weary brain.

"This murder, and its attendant circumstances, constitute a very
extraordinary affair," said the lawyer.

"Yes, sir."

Krantz was not deceived. He had answered some such remark a hundred
times that evening, but he would surely be put on the rack in a moment
b