"I do, most emphatically. Let me be more precise. Promise me now that you will not stir out of the Plaza Hotel until I come to you."
"Is that really essential?"
"I would not ask you if it were not."
"What time may I expect you?"
"Let me see.… It is now nearly five o'clock. I hope to sleep till eight. I give you till nine. Bath and breakfast brings you to ten. Say eleven."
"I owe you a good deal, so I shall await you till noon. After that hour I reserve my freedom of action."
The detective laughed.
"Good-by," he said, and, as though in keeping with the other fantasies of the night, Curtis was sound asleep in quarter of an hour. He had acquired the faculty of sleeping under any conditions of mental or physical stress, short of illness or severe bodily pain, and he could awake at any hour previously determined on, so, a few minutes before nine o'clock he was in his bath. At a quarter-past nine he rang for a waiter and ordered breakfast.
"For one, sir?" said the man, who had not been on duty the previous evening, but had taken care to ascertain the names of the guests on his section of the floor.
"Yes, for one," said Curtis. "My wife and her maid are not breakfasting in the hotel. Will you kindly send up a batch of morning newspapers?"