I think he looked on me as an unlikely subject to yield unnecessary information." "Supper is served, sir," said a maitre d'hotel to Uncle Horace, and further discussion of Count Vassilan's tangled matrimonial schemes became difficult for the moment.
Steingall was pressed to join the party--without prejudice to any official duties he might be called on to perform next day, as Curtis put it pleasantly--and consented.

Once again had his instinct been justified, for he was sure that Lady Hermione's Parisian reminiscences would prove important in some way not yet determinable.

Moreover, his colleagues knew he was at the Plaza Hotel, and he was content to remain there while his trusted aide, Clancy, was acting as chauffeur during Count Vassilan's belated excursion.
The police captain was keeping an eye on the Waldorf-Astoria, a detective was searching the apartment rented by the murdered journalist, and other men of the Bureau were hunting the record of the automobile, though Steingall was convinced that this branch of the inquiry would end in a blind alley, because the car had undoubtedly been stolen, and its lawful owner would only be able to identify it, and declare that, to the best of his belief, it was locked in a garage at the time it was being used for the commission of a crime.

Steingall assumed that the unfortunate Hunter--or it might have been de Courtois--was led to hire this particular vehicle by adroit misrepresentation on the part of some unknown scoundrels who were aware of the contemplated marriage.

The shorthand notes in Hunter's book bore out this theory, because they were obviously data supplied by de Courtois which would have enabled the journalist to write a thoroughly sensational story next day.