, marrying, plunging
neck and crop out of one frantic revel into another. Talk about
delirium tremens, and its little green devils with little pink
eyes--why, it's commonplace, that's what it is--a poor sort of
pipe-dream compared with the reality of life in New York as seen in
company with John Delancy Curtis, of Pekin."

Devar was not by any means the first person in the city who had
associated the name of the capital of China with some bizarre and
elusive element of fantasy in connection with the man who gave "Pekin"
as his address. There was no explaining the conceit; it was just one
of those whimsies which are alike plausible yet enigmatical. Had
Curtis described himself as being of London, or Paris, or even of
Yokohama, no sense of mystery would have attached itself to his
personality. But, to the world at large, Pekin represents the unknown,
and therefore the incongruous. It is the Forbidden City, the inner
shrine of the East, the symbolic rallying-point of a race which
occupies no common ground with the peoples of Europe or America. Had
Curtis written that he hailed from Lhassa, his legal domicile would
have lost its occult extravagance save to the discriminating few.

The mere mention of Pekin now brought back to Curtis's mind the last
time he had written the word, and, by association of ideas, the queer
way in which Steingall had twice alluded to the Plaza Hotel. He said
nothing of this to Devar. He thought, and with good reason, that the
sooner that young man was in bed and asleep the better it would be for
his health, because a mercurial temperament was levying heavy draughts
on physical powers, so he gave no hint of the nebulous doubt induced by
the detective's words.

"The order of the day is bed for each of us," he said, bidding his
friend farewell at the door of the hotel. "Therefore, I shall not
offer you any sort of hospitality at this hour, except the kindest one
of saying good-by speedily. You are coming to lunch, I think?"

"Lunch!" Devar's head wagged solemnly. Feverishly wakeful, he was
really half asleep. "Don't talk to me of lunch. You haven't had
breakfast yet, John D. New York will keep you busy yet awhile, or I
don't size her up right. . . . Good old New York! Isn't she a peach?
Well, so long! If you want me, 'phone. I'll pull a couch under the
instrument and sleep with my clothes on. If I shove my head beneath a
tap I'll be as right as rain. Home, Arthur."

Then Cu