The manager nodded.
“In the meantime I shall send a carpenter and have a hole made in that partition between the two rooms, a hole about two feet by one, behind the upper part of that picture that hangs above the sideboard. Do you understand?”
The manager wrung his hands.
“Ach!” he cried. “But meine Zimmern! Mine rooms, zey veel pe deestroyed!”
“Your rooms will be none the worse,” Willis declared. “I will have the damage made good, and I shall pay you reasonably well for everything. You’ll not lose if you act on the square, but if not—” he stared aggressively in the other’s face—“if the slightest hint of my plan reaches any of the men—well, it will be ten years at least.”
“It shall be done! All shall happen as you say!”
“It had better,” Willis rejoined, and with a menacing look he strode out of the restaurant.
“The Gresham Hotel,” he called to his driver, as he reentered his taxi.
His manner to the manageress of the Bedford Square hotel was very different from that displayed to the German. Introducing himself as an inspector from the Yard, he inquired the purpose of Archer’s call. Without hesitation he was informed. The distiller had engaged a private sitting-room for a business interview which was to take place at eleven o’clock on the following Tuesday between a Miss Coburn, a Mr. Merriman, and a Captain Beamish.
“So far so good,” thought Willis exultingly, as he drove off. “They’re walking into the trap! I shall have them all. I shall have them in a week.”