While I drank my coffee I looked out the trains for Southwold, and noted down the name of a quiet hotel there, and then went to the manager’s office to give up our rooms. When I got there a tired, angry young man, with a little bag, was interviewing the manager, who was eyeing him doubtfully, while a few paces away the hall porter, all gold braid and hair-oil and turned-out feet, was watching the scene.
“Surely Mrs. Curtis told you she was expecting me, her son,” he was saying as I came up.
“Yes, sir,” said the manager, civil but suspicious. “No doubt, sir. Mrs. Curtis said as you were expected this morning, but, begging your pardon, you arrived last night, sir. Mr. Gregory Curtis arrived last night just after I retired for the evening.”
“Impossible,” said the young man, impatiently. “There is some mistake. Take me to Mrs. Curtis’s room at once.”
The manager hesitated.
“This certainly is Mr. Gregory Curtis,” I said, coming forward. “He is exactly like the photograph of her son which stands on Mrs. Curtis’s table, and which I have seen scores of times.”
The young man looked gratefully at me. And then, in a flash, as it were, we all took alarm.
“Then who did you take up to my mother’s rooms last night?” said her son. “And who took him up?”
“Not me, sir,” said the hall porter promptly. “I was off duty. Clarke, the new night porter, must have took him up.”
“Where is Clarke?” asked the manager, seizing down a key from a peg on the wall.