"Did you ever intend to have the Frenchman brought to Schmidt's office?"
"Of course I did. What a question! Good-by. There's your car. I'm off," and the detective swung himself into a passing streetcar.
"Do you know," said Devar thoughtfully, "I am beginning to believe that Steingall says a lot of things he really doesn't mean. I haven't quite made up my mind yet as to whether or not he hasn't run an awful bluff on the noble lord and the most noble count. And the weird thing is that Schmidt didn't call it. Did it strike you, Curtis, that——"
Then he looked at his friend, whose silent indifference to what he was saying could no longer pass unnoticed.
"What is it, old man?" he asked, with ready solicitude. "Are you feeling the strain, or what?"
"It is nothing," said Curtis. "A run in the car will soon clear my head. Perhaps you and I might arrange for a long week-end, far away from New York."
A second time did Devar look at his friend, but, being really a good-natured and sympathetic person, he repressed the imminent cry of amazement. Somehow, he realized the one spear-thrust which had pierced Curtis's armor. It was hateful that such a man should be told he had married Hermione for her money. It was hateful to think that this might be said of him in the years to come. It was even possible that she herself might come to believe it of him, and John Delancy Curtis's knight-errant soul shrank and cringed under the thought, even while the memory of Hermione's first kiss of love was still hot on his lips.