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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Please don't put away your cigar on my account," she said. "I like the smell of good tobacco." "Ha!" cackled Clancy. "Thank you," said Steingall, tucking the Havana into a corner of his mouth. The two men exchanged glances, and Winifred smiled. Steingall's look of tolerant contempt at his assistant was distinctly amusing.
When the cool night air had tempered his indignation, and he was removed from the electrical atmosphere created by his son-in-law's positive disdain and Steingall's negative indifference, he began to survey the situation. Though not wholly a stranger in New York, he was far from being versed in the technicalities of legal and police methods, so he bethought him of securing skilled advice.
Clancy, who had taken a chair at the side of the table, sat on it as though he were an automaton built of steel springs and ready to bounce instantly in any given direction. Steingall's huge bulk lolled back indolently. He had been smoking when the others entered, and a half-consumed cigar lay on an ash-tray. Winifred thought it would be rather amusing if she, in turn, made things comfortable.
Steingall's tone was so offhanded that Lamotte was afraid he had lost a good opportunity of saving his neck. "But what is there to tell?" he cried. "Just what happened outside the Central Hotel and afterwards." "I brought Mr. Hunter there, and nodded to Martiny and Rossi, who were waiting on the sidewalk, to show that he was inside the car.
The others could hear the peculiar rasping sound of a voice otherwise undistinguishable, but it was evident that the police captain was greatly puzzled. At last he beckoned to Curtis. "You're wanted," he said laconically. Curtis went to the instrument, and Steingall's rather amused tone was soon explicable. "There's a screw loose, somewhere," he said.
He gave that question pride of place in pursuance of a queer thought which had leaped into his brain during the enforced interval. But, if he had been thinking hard, so had Curtis, and the latter had outlined a plan of action which was fated to disrupt Steingall's, much as a harmless looking percussion cap may interfere with the smug torpor of a powder magazine.
"Like the majority of women, she conveys the most important fact in a postscript," was Steingall's dry comment when Curtis had reached the end. "Where shall I find this man, Schmidt?" inquired Curtis. "Are you in a hurry, then, to begin the suit for dissolution?" "That does not account for my anxiety to meet Schmidt."
Now, it was one thing to sympathize with a helpless and gentle girl, but another to resist the call of the wild. The dominant note in Mick the Wolf was brutality, and the fighting instinct conquered even his pain. With an oath he made his way to the hall, and it needed all of Steingall's great strength to overpower him, wounded though he was.
"Now, don't forget to lurch about the sidewalk," was Steingall's next injunction to the amateurs. "Think of all the bad language you ever heard, and use it. We're toughs, and must behave as such. Can either of you sing?" "I can," admitted Curtis. "That will help some. Strike up any sort of sailor's chanty when we're in the restaurant."
"I have no wish to traduce Anatole Labergerie," said Curtis, "but I am quite sure that the man under arrest is the driver of the car in which the Hungarians made off. He has admitted, too, that Jean de Courtois is his friend." 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."
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