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: