We did not say anything, although Evelyn, behind the porter's back, lifted her hands to the level of her ears and shook venomous fists. Our two rooms were at the end of the hall, forming the narrow side of the oblong. We were decorously shown into them, and I got rid of the porter with money…
Then I sat down in one of those mummified overstuffed chairs, and looked round a high room with a very long chandelier and a brass bed. The curtains were blowing slightly at the window. Then there was some fumbling with bolts in a door in the side wall; the door opened, and Evelyn came in. She had removed her hat, and her dark bobbed hair was disarranged. She went to the mirror over the white marble mantelpiece, took a comb out of her bag, and thoughtfully began to run the comb through her hair. Quite suddenly she began to laugh.
"Well, Ken" she said. "We're here. And also we're beaten. Can you pick a Yale lock?" "No."
Her reflection faced me out of the mirror. "At this time to-morrow night," she went on, "we're supposed to be in the Blue Train going felicitously to the South of France. What's the betting we don't make it? We can't get that envelope now-"
I made sulphurous remarks to the effect that we would make the train, and that the envelope was within reach. This room lay directly in line with Keppel's suite, with only the thickness of a wall between. I went to the window and looked out past the blowing curtains. The tricks of eighteenth century builders had their merits: just outside, and only a couple of feet below the window there was a stone ledge running the whole length of the building on that side. It passed beneath Keppel's windows as well. It ran sixty feet above the gardens and trees behind the Library, and the cloisters of the Cathedral School; but it was a good two feet wide, as safe as a path to walk on. Although the moon was partly behind the shoulder of the building, still I could see that path with great clearness in the skim-milk light.
"Do you think you'd better?" said Evelyn quietly, from behind my shoulder.
There was a good clasp-knife in the pocket of Charters's coat. I gave Evelyn directions.
"We don't know when Keppel will be in, but it may be any minute. Stay here, and keep the door to the hall partly open. You've got a straight view down the length of it, of the lift and the staircase. If anyone comes up-"
"What does Keppel look like?"
"I don't know — wait! Bowers said something about him. Little, with a lot of greyish hair sticking up, and he limps. That's distinctive enough. But if you see anybody who looks dangerous "