Again somebody rushed past the door and then back again to the head of the staircase. The whole of the quiet aristocratic hotel seemed to have suddenly awakened from its lethargy. Indeed, a hue and cry seemed to have been started after the man who had until a few moments before been my guest.
What could this mean? Had it not been for the fact that Guertin—or Delanne, as he called himself—was a friend of the assassin Reckitt, I would have believed him to have been an agent of the sûreté.
We heard shouting outside the window at the end of the corridor. It seemed as though a fierce chase had begun after the fugitive Englishman, for yet another man, a thin, respectably-dressed mechanic, had run along and slipped out of the window with ease as though acquired by long practice.
I, too, ran to the window and looked out. But all I could see in the night was a bewildering waste of roofs and chimneys extending along the Rue de Rivoli towards the Louvre. I could only distinguish one of the pursuers outlined against the sky. Then I returned to where Sylvia was standing pale and breathless.
Her face was haggard and drawn, and I knew of the great tension her nerves must be undergoing. Her father was certainly no coward. Fearing that he could not escape by either the front or back door of the hotel his mind had been quickly made up, and he had made his exit by that window, taking his chance to hide and avoid detection on those many roofs in the vicinity.
The position was, to me, extremely puzzling. I could not well press Sylvia to tell me the truth concerning her father, for I had noticed that she always had shielded him, as was natural for a daughter, after all.
Was he an associate of Reckitt and Forbes, as I had once suspected? Yet if he were, why should Delanne be his enemy, for he certainly was Reckitt’s intimate friend.
Sylvia was filled with suppressed excitement. She also ran along the corridor and peered out of the window at the end. Then, apparently satisfied that her father had avoided meeting Delanne, she returned and stood again silent, her eyes staring straight before her as though dreading each second to hear shouts of triumph at the fugitive’s detection.
I saw the manager and remonstrated with him. I was angry that my privacy should thus be disturbed by outsiders.
“Monsieur told the clerk that he was a friend,” he replied politely. “Therefore he gave permission for him to be shown upstairs. I had no idea of such a contretemps, or such a regrettable scene as this!”