The Golden Web

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Deane drew one long breath, and without a second's hesitation stole forward until he stood in front of Number 27. Once more he looked around him. The lights from all the transoms in sight had been extinguished. There was only that dimly burning electric light at the end of the corridor, to dissipate the gloom. He fitted the key into the lock and turned it. The door swung open. Deane closed it behind him, turned on the electric light, and gazed around him with fast beating heart. He was there at last! Within this room, if anywhere, was his salvation!

It was, after all, a very ordinary hotel apartment. There was a small single bed, a wardrobe, a toilet table and chest of drawers, a hard, uninviting-looking sofa, and an easy-chair with a stiff back, and armless. Upon the bed were laid out a number of articles of wearing apparel, and upon the floor were two empty portmanteaus. Upon the dressing-table were a number of papers, arranged with some appearance of method. The toilet things were still in their places. Everything was arranged in a stiff and precise condition. It was evident that official hands had been at work.

Deane's rapid glance around lasted barely a few seconds. Then he moved toward the dressing-table and commenced a careful search amongst the papers there. One by one he glanced them through,—a bill for clothes, a restaurant account, half-a-dozen counterfoils of theatre and music-hall tickets, an account for wines and cigars consumed on the steamer Arizona, homeward bound from Cape Town. There was the address of a manicurist, a programme of the Empire. Very soon Deane had come to the end of them. From the first to the last, there was not a single document there of any interest or importance.

He turned away toward the clothes which were laid out upon the bed. One by one he lifted them up and laid them down again, until he came to the gray suit which the man Sinclair had been wearing on the day when he had made his eventful visit to the city. Deane held up the coat, and a little exclamation almost escaped from his lips as he saw where in a certain place the lining showed signs of stitching, as though something had been sewn inside the pocket. He thrust his hand there. There was an opening, but it was empty! He tried the other side, but in vain. Then he began slowly to realize that this search of his was doomed to end in failure. There was nowhere else to look. He glanced at his watch. Although it seemed to him that he had been in the little room for hours, he had indeed been there for barely five minutes.

He moved toward the door, opened it softly, and listened outside in the corridor. There was no sound of anyone stirring, no sign of life or movement anywhere. He returned to the room and renewed his search. One by one he lifted up the different articles of clothing and felt in the pockets. His search was rewarded with the discovery of a single halfpenny in an odd waistcoat pocket. He left the clothes alone then and went through the papers once more, with a similar lack of success. Softly he opened all the drawers, ransacked the wardrobe, searched every inch of the room. When at last he desisted, it was because there was nowhere else to look, nothing else to attempt. He stood up in the middle of the room and drew a little breath. He had found nothing, nothing had transpired to compensate in any way for the risk which he had run. Yet there was one consolation. It was scarcely possible that Ruby Sinclair could be more successful than he. The paper which might make her fortune and ruin him was not here.

Deane turned at last toward the door. There was no need for him to prolong the risk he ran. He would return to his room, and leave the hotel later in the morning.

He took a few cautious steps toward the door. Suddenly he stopped short and held his breath. Very slowly he turned his head, and listened intently. Someone was stirring in the next room. There was a connecting door, hidden by a curtain, and even as he stood there he heard the handle shake as though it were being turned. He leaned forward and turned out the electric light. Standing there in the darkness he distinctly heard a key inserted in the lock of the hidden door. He heard it softly opened and the curtain pushed back. There was someone else in the room, someone else whom he could not see, someone else who also took an interest in the effects of the murdered man!

There was an interval of several seconds—it seemed minutes—it might well have been hours. Then the stealthy footsteps came towards him. A little stiff rustle of draperies proclaimed the sex of the intruder. Without a second's warning, the electric light flashed out all over the room. The girl would have screamed, but Deane, who was prepared, leaned forward, and his hand suddenly closed over her mouth. She looked at him with dilated eyes.

"You!" she exclaimed. "You!"

"Good God!" he answered. "Winifred Rowan!"