8
Simon untied him and stripped off the tape. The bellhop at least was alive, and apparently not even slightly injured, to judge by the ready flow of words that came out of him when his mouth was unwrapped.
"Two men it was, Mistah Templah. One of 'em was that fat man with red hair that Ah done tole you about. Ah'd been off havin' mah supper, and when I come back, there he is in the lobby. He's with another tall thin man, like it might be the other gennelman you was askin' me about. So Ah was goin' to call your room so you could come down and have a look at them, but the clerk tole me you just went out. Then these men started to get in the elevator, and Ah knew there was somethin' wrong, Ah knew they wasn't stayin' here, and with you bein' out Ah just figured they was up to no good. So Ah ran up the stairs, and sho' 'nuff there they were just openin' your doah. So Ah ask them what they was doin', and they tried to tell me they was friends of yours. 'You ain't no friends of Mistah Templah's' Ah says, 'because Mistah Templah done tole me to keep mah eyes open for you.' Then the fat man pulled out a gun and they hustled me in here and tied me up, and then they started search-in' the room. Ah don't think they found what they was huntin' for, because they was awful mad when they went off. But they sho' made a mess of your things."
That statement was somewhat superfluous. Aside from the disorder of the furnishings, which looked as if a cyclone had paused among them, the Saint's suitcase had been emptied on to the floor and everything in it had been tossed around and even taken apart when there was any conceivable point to it.
"Don't let it get you down, Po't Arthur," Simon said cheerfully. "I know they didn't get what they wanted, because I didn't leave anything here that they could possibly want. Unless one of them coveted an electric razor, which it seems he didn't. Just give me a hand with straightening out the wreckage.'
He began to repack his suitcase while Port Arthur Jones became efficient about replacing the carpet and rearranging the furniture.
He was puzzled about the entire performance, for he certainly had no precious goods or papers with him; and if he had had any he certainly wouldn't have left them in his room when he went out. The ransacking must have stemmed from his connection with the Matson murder, but it seemed a long way for the ungodly to have gone with the mere hope of picking up some incidental information about him. The only reasonable explanation would be that they suspected that Matson might have given him something, or told him where to find something, before he died. But Matson had only muttered about an ostrich-skin case in a gladstone lining; and they had the gladstone. If they had taken the trouble to collect the gladstone, hadn't they looked in the lining? Or had they just picked it up along with other things, in the broad hope of coming across what they were searching for?
He said: "This happened just after I went out?"
"Yassah. The desk clerk said you hadn't been gone more 'n a few minutes. He said you went out with a lady."
"What about that Detective Yard?"