“What eventuality?”
“In case he was not back at his hotel by midnight, I was to bring and give you this note from him,” I answered, and laid the letter on his desk. “He was not back—so I came straight to you.”
He picked up and opened the letter and began to read it; from where I stood I could see that it covered three sides of a sheet of the hotel notepaper. There was not a sign of anything—surprise, perplexity, wonder—on the man’s face as he read—and he only read the thing over once. Then he folded the letter, put it in his desk, and turned to me.
“Mr. Alvery Craye, I think?” he asked.
“Yes,” said I.
“Do you know what’s in this letter, Mr. Craye?” he went on. “Did Mr. Parslewe tell you its contents?”
“No,” I replied. “But he said I could answer any questions you asked, and, if you go anywhere in consequence of the letter, I could go with you.”
“I’ve only one question,” he remarked. “Do you know what time Mr. Parslewe left the hotel?”
“Yes,” I said. “I found that out. He left just about eleven—a few minutes before, I gathered from the hall-porter.”
He nodded, turned a key in his desk, put the key in his pocket, rose, and asking me to sit down a moment, went across the room and through a door at its farther extremity. Within a couple of minutes he was back again, in company with a man in plain clothes; he himself had put on a uniform overcoat and peaked cap. He made some whispered communication to a sergeant who was busily writing at a table in the centre of the room; then he beckoned to me, and the three of us went out into the night.