Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and he had studied Chinese astrology as a pastime.

He recognized these lamps of the empyrean as Mars and Venus, and, up-to-date American though he was, drew comfort from that favoring augury.

Then, in stepping from the roadway to the sidewalk, he stumbled over a heavy curb, and laughed at the reminder that star-gazing did not reveal pitfalls before unwary feet.
The incident knocked some of the poetry out of him, and it was a quite normal and level-headed young man who walked into the Central Hotel soon after ten o'clock, and found Detective Steingall's gaze resting on him contemplatively from the neighborhood of the cigar counter.
Before rejoining the waiting trio in the office, Steingall was interviewing the youth in charge of the tobacco and current literature department.
Such story as the boy had to tell was hardly in favor of Curtis.
"The gentleman came here to buy some stamps, and he and a man who was reading in the cafe said something to each other in a foreign lingo," ran the recital.

"No, I don't think I would recognize French if I heard it--American is good enough for me--but there was no argument, nothing in the shape of a quarrel.

The Englishman spoke twice, and the other fellar three times." "Mr.Curtis is an American," Steingall explained.
"Well, he doesn't talk like one, anyhow," pronounced young New York--in this instance, of a pronounced Jewish type--which is perhaps the most dogmatic juvenility extant.
Then Curtis entered.