But nothing happened and I slipped away to get Sampson on the ’phone. It was ten o’clock. He was didactic as usual, and as irritatingly brief: “Report to Lanagan. Room 802 Fairmont. Take the back stairs and make the room above all things without being seen.”
That same old tingle that always shot up my spine when Lanagan was calling me in on the smash of one of his grand climaxes, shivered up to my hair roots. In a general way I knew the quest he was on, but that his search should have led him to the Fairmont hotel, on the very crest of aristocratic Nob Hill, was sufficient without further information to set my imagination humming.
The door was open and I entered, noiselessly. Lanagan was lying on the bed, smoking. He jumped up.
“Here,” he said quickly, indicating a chair drawn up before the door leading to the adjoining room—they were suite rooms but used separately. “Sit there until I get back and take notes on what you hear. Keep your ear glued to that hole.”
He had cut with his pocket knife an inch hole in the panelling of the door. He had whittled it so nicely that it was not quite cut entirely through. “You will find you can hear everything that is said in an ordinary tone of voice. There’s no one in there now. An Englishman named Holmes has the room. Pretty soon I expect him and Larry Leighton in there with a girl. I am going out and get hold of Leslie. Lock the door after me and keep your ears open for us when we get back. I won’t knock, but will turn the handle once or twice.”
“What’s the lay?” I asked.
“No time to talk now,” he flung back over his shoulder, and was gone.
It was probably twenty minutes later when the occupants of the adjoining room entered. There were two men and a woman. I could distinguish perfectly Leighton’s sonorous voice. He had been a lawyer of standing in years gone by, but lately had been involved in one or two transactions a trifle “shady” in character, chiefly pertaining to the administration of estates; but nothing had ever been proved against him nor had the matter ever got into such shape that the papers could use it. So far as the general public was concerned, he stood well enough.
“I felt I could not be wrong,” Leighton was saying. “And I am glad that you are satisfied. It must be a source of great satisfaction to you, Miss Pendelton, to be restored to your name and inheritance.”
“I am only sorry now it did not happen before poor father went,” the girl replied, with a tremble in her voice, and I fancied she was crying.