As soon as Nick was alone, he repaired to the telephone and called up the favorite club of Reginald Danton.
“Mr. Danton has just gone out,” he was told, “but he said that he would return in half an hour. No; he did not say where he was going, but I think over to the Waldorf.”
“All right,” said Nick. “If he comes in ask him to wait for the gentleman who met him at the Fifth Avenue front of the Waldorf just before dark this evening.”
For a moment, after he hung up the phone, he stood with his hands behind him, in deep thought; and then he hurried to his dressing-room, from which, after a quarter of an hour he emerged, but so altered in appearance that he bore not the slightest resemblance to himself.
He was now, in every feature of his make-up, a typical Frenchman—a Boulevardier with a title or two to his name and ample time and money at his disposal. As he sauntered out upon the street, he murmured to himself:
“If Danton is at the Waldorf I will run across him there; if he is not, I can look him up at his club later.”
When he arrived at the hotel he entered by the Thirty-third Street door and strolled slowly through the building toward the office. From there he made the rounds of the corridors and also peered into several of the rooms, but nowhere did he get a glimpse of the man he sought. It was evident to him that if Reginald had indeed come to the Waldorf, he had already taken his departure.
Now, it so happens that the Waldorf is a hotel where one rarely takes the trouble to examine the register—indeed, it is rarely in evidence; and they keep three or four on tap, as it were, so that there is always one in which you may write your name while the others are in use by the bookkeepers.
Nevertheless, it so occurred that as Nick was passing the desk in the office, one of the registers was lying idle on the counter near the registry clerk’s window.
Without any object whatever in view, save only the thought of killing time, Nick paused, and, having turned the book around, drew it toward him.