The man who had taken the girl’s place in the booth had evidently observed her while she had been talking. With a clever, sidewise motion, he picked up the torn pieces of paper. Failing to obtain his number, he left the booth.
In an obscure corner of a hotel lobby, the same man put the slips of paper together and read the message. He dropped the torn fragments in an ash receiver and touched them with a lighted match.
Then he smiled.
Only that smile, slight and momentary on the thin lips, would have reminded an observer of George Clarendon. For the face seemed entirely different.
The man drew a watch from his pocket. Even in that detail he differed from Clarendon. It was ten minutes after nine.
“Ten thirty will be soon enough,” the man murmured.
He remembered every detail of Palermo’s message. All that he lacked were the two words which the physician had given after Thelda had torn the paper. “Then nullify.”
That was one of Palermo’s individual orders. It had meant one thing to Thelda Blanchet — that she was not to follow the instructions given her. She was not to go to Doctor Brockbank’s home that evening.
The man in the hotel lobby had failed to learn the final verbal instructions. Without realizing it, he was about to enter the trap that Doctor Palermo had set for him.