The attendant opened the door.
"Will you take me up to the fourth floor, please," he said, "to Mr. Eustace Charliewood's room?"
"Mr. Charliewood, sir?" the man replied. "Oh, yes, I remember, number 408. Tall, clean-shaved gentleman."
"That's him," Sir William said. "I have only just learnt that he has been staying in the hotel. He is an old friend, and I had no idea he was here."
The iron doors clashed, the lift shot upward, and the attendant and Sir William arrived at the fourth floor.
"Down the corridor, sir, and the first turning on the right," the lift-man said. "But perhaps I'd better show you."
He ran the ironwork gates over their rollers and hurried down the corridor with Sir William. They turned the corner, and the man pointed to a door some fifteen yards away.
"That's it, sir," he said. "That's Mr. Charliewood's room."
Even as he spoke there was a sudden loud explosion which seemed to come from the room to which he had pointed—a horrid crash in the warm, richly-lit silence of the hotel.
The man turned to Sir William with a white face.