“Your haul, is it? I was thinking it would be our haul.”
“Oh, yes! Certainly! I have a man to see on business while I am in Cincinnati and then I must catch the night train for Louisville. I’ll see you again before I go. My room is 320—directly over yours. You can telephone me there!”
The man in the tweed suit waited until Cheatham was out of sight and then he darted across the street and again mounted the stairs to Room 220. He found the woman standing in the middle of the floor gazing with disgust on the dismantled state of her room. One bureau drawer had been pulled entirely out and the contents strewn over the floor. The open closet door disclosed clothing jerked from the hooks and the mattress was turned over, with bed clothes thrown around anywhere and everywhere.
“Well, Bill,” she said sharply, “you managed to get things in a nice mess! Where’s the brat? You were to take him and keep him and not come back until you heard from me. I don’t see that you need have turned up my things in this way. Of course you were hunting money, but you might have known I wouldn’t have left it around where you could get hold of it.”
“Money, is it? You—you—you two-faced——!” The man was so angry he could hardly speak. “You think you can double-cross me, do you, and get by with it? Not on your life!”
The woman stared at him in astonishment. She looked at him fixedly and her grin turned to a snarl.
“Bill, you are crazy. I don’t know what you are talking about. You stop your carrying on and tell me where that boy is.”
“You tell me! When I got here he was gone and I messed up the room hunting for him, thinking he was hiding.”
“Gone!” Miss Fitchet’s tone was one of such genuine dismay that the brother was forced to recognize her sincerity.
“Yes, gone!”