"Really, this is extremely annoying!" said Evelyn, in her best business-woman's tone. "There is a limit to secretarial duties! I suppose I must be prepared to take shorthand notes at any time of the night or morning, but when a definite appointment has been made… Professor Blake-"
My murderous look stopped her, but the clerk grew alert. "But," I suggested, "we may wait in his rooms?"
The clerk hesitated. "Sorry, sir. That's the last of the message. He says if any visitors should call on him, they — that is, he'd rather they didn't wait there. Sorry sir. You understand. My orders. Dr. Keppel-well, he's like that."
"Then at least," I said frostily, "we may take rooms of our own. My secretary is rather tired…"
The clerk eagerly assented to this. Would we like rooms on the same floor as Dr. Keppel? We would. Would we like connecting rooms? We would. The clerk reached after two keys from the rack, pushed forward the ledger, and beckoned the night-porter. Then he smiled.
"Just as a matter of form, sir," be said; "the lady not having any luggage — you understand-"
We all considered this a very good joke as I paid him. I signed for both of us, and told the truth. But, as the night-porter led us to a creaky lift, Evelyn and I looked at each other. So Keppel had left a message that, if any visitors called, they must not be allowed to wait in his room? Good God, was it possible he expected us? While the lift swayed upstairs, past high and broad corridors with white-painted doors, I tried to enumerate possible traps. It was just possible Keppel was waiting for us; yet, with all these precautions, it did not seem likely.
His rooms were on the top floor. We went down a hall muffled in dark carpet, with the faint frowsty smell which haunts old hotels. It had been built in a spacious time; the rooms were very large, and there were few of the white-painted doors on either side.
"Which," I said to the porter, speaking instinctively in a low voice, "are Dr. Keppel's rooms?"
He nodded towards two doors in the left-hand wall, the last two along that wall. Though the hall was dusky, having only a dim globe in a cut-glass bowl at the head of the staircase by the lift, we could see those doors distinctly: and the ground went from under our feet again. Ordinarily, as I had remembered, the ancient locks of those doors could be picked with a nail-file or a button-hook. But the careful Dr. Keppel bad had both his doors fitted with Yale locks: you could see them gleaming.