“You look to me like a dependable man,” he finally said to the clerk, “anyway, I’ve got to take you into my confidence. Will you take duplicate keys to the lieutenant’s room and the room next to it and come with me?”
“Of course, if it is anything important,” replied the clerk, “but you’ll have to give some good reason before I can admit you to either room.”
“Step in here,” Ned said, motioning toward a little check room at the end of the counter. “You saw the sick man carried out?” he asked, as the clerk wonderingly stepped into the designated room.
“Yes, I saw him taken out. He was a stranger—took the room about noon through a friend. I did not see him at all, that is, until he was carried out, and then I did not see his face.”
“You are sure it was not Lieutenant Gordon who was carried out?” asked Ned.
“Why, why, he wasn’t sick. He said nothing to me of being ill.”
“But he has enemies on the Isthmus,” Ned went on, “and is now at work on a very delicate and dangerous job for the government. Suppose—”
The clerk waited to hear no more. He seized the keys asked for and bounded toward the elevator, taking Ned with him. When they entered the lieutenant’s room they found it in great disorder. There were many signs of a desperate struggle. On the floor was a three-cornered slip of paper which had evidently, judging from the quality and thickness, been torn from a drawing roll. The scrap showed only two irregular lines, but Ned recognized them.
Lieutenant Gordon had taken into his possession the crude map of the Gatun dam which Ned had discovered in the old temple bomb-room. The next room, the one from which the alleged sick man had been taken, was also in disorder, and the door which connected the two apartments had been forced open. There was a strong odor of chloroform in both rooms.
The clerk did not need to be told what had taken place. His face turned white as chalk and his voice trembled as he asked: