"You're absolutely positive of that?" "Yes."
"All right," said Stone, in some relief. "If I understand you, you're sent smack-bang to burgle a hotel room before Keppel gets back to Bristol. It seems to me you're taking a whale of a big risk, because you don't know just when Keppel is due back. Hogenauer thought he'd be out to-night, yes. But I wouldn't call Hogenauer too good a judge of what's likely to happen: Hogenauer's dead. There's something rotten in the whole set-up, especially as-" He checked himself, and brooded. "Seems to me you treat burglary pretty lightly over here. How are you going to work it? Do you know Bristol?"
I know Bristol very well, for I like it above all English cities. And I paritularly remembered the Cabot Hotel, which is at the top of College Green, just after you pass the Cathedral and the Library; large, old-fashioned, comfortable, and sedate. -
"It shouldn't be very difficult," I told him. "I'll engage a room on the same floor as Keppel. Even if he's got his door locked, it's an old-fashioned place and you can almost open the doors with a hairpin."
"H'm," said Stone. "Well, it's your funeral. But what does Merrivale think of it?"
Evelyn had been peering out of the windows; we were coming into Exeter. She turned round as though she fere about to say something, in a worried fashion. Then she regarded Stone, and shook her head.
"No fair play! Never mind what H. M. thinks of it, for the moment. But it's your turn now, Mr. Stone. You said, if Ken fould tell you everything that happened, you'd make an exchange. Right? You said you'd tell us who L. is, and what he's doing?"
Stone contemplated her with the same sceptical and half-amused expression. He nodded.
"All right," he conceded. "I'll tell you just exactly what you want to know. L.'s real name is Lord — John Stuart Lord, to be exact. He was originally an American citizen, though he's pretended to be a good many nationalities and always got away with it. And you want to know what he's doing now? He's lying under six feet of earth in Woodlawn Road Cemetery…. What I'm trying to tell you is that L died of pneumonia, in Pittsburgh, over six weeks ago."