ng that even
the marvel-surfeited citizens who crowded the sidewalks would gather in
dense groups at a corner, thence to watch and take in the dazzling
significance of some sign new to their vision. Curtis noticed many
such assemblies before the taxi sped out of the magic area which ends
at 42nd Street; but it was all novel to him; he could not discuss the
contrast between last week's glorification of Somebody's Pickles and
to-night's triumph of Everybody's Whisky, and he was almost bemused by
the display, which provided such a bizarre anti-climax to the terrible
drama he had just witnessed.

It was a positive relief, therefore, when the vehicle bowled swiftly
into a quiet cross street, and he was vouchsafed only fleeting glimpses
of broad avenues where fresh multitudes of lamps again bade defiance to
the night.

In one place, an illuminated dial showed that the hour was eight
o'clock, and the curiously simple fact of noting the time roused him to
a perception of all that had happened since he strolled out of the
dining-room of the Central Hotel. He smiled dourly when he remembered
the mislaid key. Did it still repose in the bedroom? Or had a
housemaid found it, and restored it to a numbered hook in the office?
Had not that immaculately dressed clerk said he would find Number 605
"a comfortable, quiet room"? Well, it might be all that, yet Curtis
could hardly help dwelling on the thought that had he been put in any
other cell of the human beehive called the Central Hotel it was highly
probable he would not now be flying across New York on a self-imposed
mission so nebulous, so ill-defined, that already his orderly brain was
beginning to doubt the logic which inspired it.

Was it too late to draw back? To this handy automobile city distances
were negligible quantities, and he would rejoin the detectives before
they could have any reason to suspect him even of carelessness in
withholding from their ken the new and important fact revealed by the
accidental change of overcoats.

And, yes--by Jove!--it would be assumed that _his_ overcoat was the
dead man's, though, indeed, certain papers in the pockets would soon
show that there was a blunder somewhere, because the John D. Curtis
mentioned therein necessarily figured as the chief witness in the case
now being worked up against three unknown malefactors. Oddly enough,
it was contemporaneous with this thought that the queer similarity of
his own name to that of th