Are you coming down with me to investigate
the room beneath us or do you want me to ring up police headquarters and
find out why?"
In the hall the policeman looked at me across the intervening heads
and dropped one slow, approving eyelid. "If the gintleman says so--" he
remarked in heavy tones fraught with meaning, and fixed a cold,
blue, appraising gaze on the detective, who thereupon yielded with
unexpectedly good grace.
"Aw, what's eating you?" was his amiable demand. "Sure, we was going
right down there anyhow--soon's we found out how the land lay up here."
The five of us took the elevator to the lower floor. An unfriendly
atmosphere surrounded me. I was held a hotel wrecker without reason. We
found the corridor empty, the floor desk abandoned--a state of things
rather strikingly the duplicate of that reigning overhead--and in due
course paused before Room 303, where the manager, figuratively speaking,
washed his hands of the affair.
"Here is the room, Mr. Bayne, for which you ask." If I would persist in
my nefarious course, added his tone.
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