"But how in God's name could it happen?" demanded the Colonel. "You were stopping overnight at the Phoenix. Didn't you put your money in the safe?"
Masters raised a pair of nerveless hands in a deprecatory gesture.
"I was drinking. I had certain memoranda in the same bag and I took it up to my room to run over some details—then he came and knocked at the door."
"Who came?"
"I don't know. He called me by name and seemed to be a man of means and cultivation. We drank and chatted together. It was in my bedroom in a city hotel, mind you. I didn't drink much.... The bag was locked ... the key was on the table by my hand.... Of course in some fashion he had learned of the money being turned over to me. How?"
The response was dry.
"I don't know. What happened?"
"God knows. I suppose it was some variation of the old device of knock-out drops or some sort of drug. I awoke sitting in my chair—very sick at my stomach—and had just time to make my train by rushing off without breakfast. I had been there all night. I glanced in the bag and seeing the packet there with the rubber bands around it right as rain, I failed to suspect. It was when I got here that I found it had been rifled."
"And the man?"
"I talked with the hotel by long distance. No one by the name he gave me had been registered there. The description meant nothing to them."