The Cabot is sedate enough, four-square and four-storeyed in grey stone, with geraniums in the window-boxes and a tall stone pillar on either side of the door. I paid the taxidriver from the packet of notes I had pinched out of Serpos's hoard, submitting that I had an excellent right to some of the swag. A sleepy night-porter opened the glass doors of the vestibule. We went through into a tall, narrow hall, carpeted to the baseboards in some flowered stuff, with woodwork so old that the cracks showed even through its many brown coats of paint. There were steel-engraving sporting prints on the walls, and brass warming-pans hanging from the paneling, and the general air of a comfortable place curtained in for centuries. Towards the left, a light burned
inside a kind of fort with frosted glass windows. A young man with poised eyebrows bobbed up inside it.
"Yes, sir," he said heartily.
I asked for Dr. Keppel, explaining that we had come a long way on an urgent appointment, and must see him despite the hour of the night. The clerk automatically reached for the plug of the telephone switchboard, but he stopped.
"Sorry, sir," he said. "Dr. Keppel is out."
"Out? At this hour of the night? But surely-"
The clerk seemed puzzled. "Yes, sir. He's never out as late as this; not after ten, as a rule. Just one moment." He ducked to one side, towards a letter rack, and pulled out a small card. "Yes. He left a message. I wasn't on duty when he went out, but here it is. He said he was going out about nine o'clock, and mightn't return until late."
This was somewhat disconcerting news. Keppel, whom we supposed to be in Moreton Abbot, had at least been in the hotel here this evening up until nine o'clock.
"Ah. He returned from Moreton Abbot, then?"
"Moreton Abbot? Yes, sir. He got back this afternoon, they tell me."