I went out into the street again, and the cabmen flung up their aprons, inviting my patronage. I picked out a cab and got in.
“Where to?”
“Just stay where you are. I'm hiring you by the hour.”
The cabmen walk about whispering, one suggesting this, another that: he's watching the place; out to catch his wife meeting some commercial traveller.
Yes, I am watching the place. There is a light in one or two of the rooms, and suddenly it strikes me that she might stand at a window and see me. “Wait,” I say to the cabman, and go into the hotel again.
“Whereabouts is No. 12?”
“First floor.”
“Looking out on to Raadhusgaten?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must have been my sister,” I say, inventing something in order to slip past the porter.