But Rockwell knew and was already moving to the left. Merriam followed. In his relief he smiled brightly back at the floor clerk.
At the corner where the hall turned Rockwell stopped, and Merriam, coming up with him, read "323" on the door before them. Both men looked up at the transom. It was dark.
"In!" said Rockwell.
Merriam inserted the key, turned it, and cautiously opened the door a couple of inches, becoming, as he did so, thrillingly conscious of the burglarious quality of their enterprise.
No light or sound came from within.
For only three or four seconds Rockwell listened. Then he pushed the door wide, stepped past Merriam, and felt for the switch.
"You haven't invited me in, Senator," he said as the room went alight, "but I'm a forward sort of fellow.--Come inside, and close the door," he added.
Merriam pushed the door shut behind him and stared about. The apartment was probably the most gorgeous he had ever seen. The walls were a soft cream colour, the woodwork white, the carpet and hangings and lampshades rose. Most of the furniture was mahogany, some of it upholstered in rose-coloured tapestry. On a table half way down one side of the room stood a bowl of red roses. In the wall opposite Merriam, between the windows, was a fireplace of white marble, containing a gas log, with a large mirror above the mantel in a frame of white and gold. Before this fireplace stood a huge upholstered easy chair, with a pink-shaded floor lamp on one side of it and a small mahogany tabaret on the other.
While Merriam was endeavouring to appreciate this magnificence, Rockwell quickly crossed the sitting room and passed through a door at one side. After a moment he returned, crossed the room again, and disappeared through a second door. Reëmerging, he announced triumphantly, "No one in the bedrooms!"
But Merriam's eyes rested, fascinated, on a garment which Rockwell had brought back with him from the second bedroom--a luxurious smoking jacket of a most lurid crimson colour, which clashed outrageously with the rose and pinks of the senatorial sitting room.