"Hi, there! Officer!" I shouted lustily. My hail, if not my words,
reached him; he glanced up, saw the figure on the ladder, and was seized
instantaneously with the spirit of the chase.
Yelling something reassuring, the gist of which escaped me, he
constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the
ladder's foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused
to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the
officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself
across its sill, and again took refuge in the St. Ives Hotel.
With a bellow of rage, the policeman dashed toward the porte-cochere,
while I ducked back into the room, rapidly revolving my chances of
cutting off the man's retreat below. If the system of numbering was the
same on every floor, my thief must, of course, emerge from Room 303. But
this similarity was problematical, and to invade apartments at random,
disturbing women at their opera toilets and maybe even waking babies,
was too desperate a shift to try.
It reminded me to wait with what patience I could summon for the house
detective.
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