Bob did not sleep very well the remainder of that night. His mind was too filled with the possibilities that might follow his action. But toward morning he fell asleep, and the early winter sun was quite high when he opened his eyes.
“Gosh,” he exclaimed in a whisper. “I ought to have been up long ago. Wonder if he’s gone out?”
He listened but could hear no sound from the next room.
“I wish I hadn’t gone to sleep,” mused Bob, rather chagrined at himself. “Maybe he’s flown the coop and gone out on the milk train.”
But he was reassured, a little later, by hearing the voice of Jolly Bill himself. The voice followed a knock on his door—evidently a summons to arise—for there were no room telephones in the Mansion House. A chambermaid or bell boy had to come up and knock on the doors of guests to arouse them in case they requested such attention.
“All right I All right!” sounded the voice of the man with the wooden leg. “All right! I’m getting up! Got lots to do to-day!”
This was rather amusing, from the fact that since he had arrived in Cliffside Jolly Bill had done nothing in the line of work—unless digging worms to go fishing could be so called.
“All right! I’m on the job, too!” said Bob, silently to himself. Quickly he mounted to a chair which raised him so that he could look through the transom over his door. He moved silently. He did not want Bill to know, if it could be avoided, that there was a guest in the next room.
With the point of a knife blade, Bob removed a little of the black paint on his side of the transom. It gave him a peep-hole and he applied his eye to it.
Rather a mean and sneaking business, this of spying through peep-holes, the lad thought. The only consolation was that he was going through it in a good cause—his desire to bring criminals to justice and aid Hiram Beegle.