“Every ship at sea is on the look-out for him,” Forest returned. “The sea’s a big place in which to hide, Paul. But sooner or later he’ll have to put in somewhere for provisions, and then we’ll have him.” He stood up. “Well, let’s look your defences over, Paul. I’ll see if I can pick a hole in them.”
Conrad got to his feet, and together the two men walked towards the hotel.
IV
Around six-thirty the passages, kitchens and still rooms of the Ocean Hotel were noisy with bustling activity as the staff prepared dinner for over five hundred guests.
Unlike the glittering, luxurious restaurant, the staff quarters were dark, damp and cramped. The kitchen staff, already sweating from the heat of the ovens, cursed the long line of laundry hampers that were stacked along the wall, narrowing the passage to and from the kitchens to the preparation room.
The hampers wouldn’t be moved until the following morning when they would be unpacked and the laundry sorted and taken upstairs; in the meantime they were unwelcomed obstructions.
Vito Ferrari lay curled up in one of the top hampers. He listened to the activity going on around him and watched through a chink in the wicker-work the staff scurrying backwards and forwards.
In half an hour the activity would be transferred to the kitchens and the restaurant. In the meantime he waited.
Waiting was no hardship to Ferrari. Patience was the greatest asset to a professional killer, and Ferrari’s patience was without limit.
It had cost him twenty dollars to be smuggled into the hotel basement in the laundry hamper. The delivery man had accepted Ferrari’s story of an illicit loveaffair between himself and the wife of the head chef. The delivery man thought it was pretty funny for a dwarf to be in love to the extent of paying out good money just for a chance of seeing the chef’s wife through a hole in the laundry hamper.