“That one; he only came a few moments since. Mr. Keatcham and his secretary dined together, and Keatcham’s own man waited on them; but the waiter for this floor brought up the dishes. At nine the dishes were brought out and my man helped Keatcham’s valet to pile them a little farther down the corridor in the hall.”
These items the colonel was reading out of his little red book.
“You have put all that down. Do you think it means anything?”
“I have put everything down. One can’t weed until there is a crop of information, you know.”
“True,” murmured Aunt Rebecca, nodding her head thoughtfully. “Well, did anything else happen?”
“The secretary posted a lot of letters in the shute. They are all smoking now. Yes—” he was on his feet and at the door in almost a single motion. There had been just the slightest tattoo on the panel. When the door was opened the colonel could hear the rattle of the elevator. He was too late to catch it, but he could see the inmates. Three gentlemen stood in the car. One was Keatcham, the other two had their backs to Winter. One seemed to be supporting Keatcham, who looked pale. He saw the colonel and darted at him a single glance in which was something like a poignant appeal; what, it was too brief for the receiver to decide, for in the space of an eye-blink a shoulder of the other man intervened, and simultaneously the elevator car began to sink.
There was need to decide instantly who should follow, who stay on guard. Rupert bade the boy go down by the stairs, while, with a kind of bulldog instinct, he clung to the rooms. The lad was to fetch the manager and the keys of the Keatcham suite.
Meanwhile Rupert paced back and forth before the closed doors, whence there penetrated the rustle of packing and a murmur of voices. Presently Keatcham’s valet opened the farther door. He spoke to some one inside. “Yes, sir,” he said, “the porter hought to be ’ere now.”
The porter was there; at least he was coming down the corridor which led to the elevator, trundling his truck before him. He entered the rooms and busied himself about the luggage.
Doggedly the colonel stuck to his guard until the valet and another man, a clean-shaven, fresh-faced young man whom the watcher had never seen before, came out of the room. The valet superintended the taking of two trunks, accepting tickets and checks from the porter with a thoroughly Anglican suspicion and thoroughness of inspection, while the young man stood tapping his immaculate trousers-leg with the stick of his admirably slender umbrella.