“No. I asked the three commercial gentlemen who were here that night, and they all declared him to be a stranger. Commercial travelers always know each other on the road.”
“Well,” I remarked. “It seems to me that my entertaining friend must have known which room I occupied, got down from his window to mine and entered this room while I was asleep.”
“I think so, Yelverton,” said the old Doctor. “It seems to me that entering by the window that you left open, he first ascertained that the cigarettes he gave you—which obviously were drugged—had sent you to sleep. Then he pressed the little bottle to your lips, forcing you to drink part of its contents—you recollect the cold thing you felt upon your lips—and then, not knowing how much you had swallowed, because in the darkness he could not distinguish, he threw down the bottle and leaving everything to make it appear that you had committed suicide, he clambered back to his own room and afterwards escaped.”
“Do you think so?” asked Thelma.
“I do,” old Feng replied briskly. “Let us go upstairs again and see what we can find.”
We did so. And on examining the outside woodwork of the window which the affable man from Bradford had occupied, we found a large freshly bored hole into which, no doubt, a stout hook had been screwed. To this he must have attached a rope, which enabled him easily to reach my window-sill.
Truly the plot of my enemies had been a well thought out and ingenious one. The threat that if I continued my search for Stanley Audley I should pay for my disobedience with my life, had not been made without the full intention to carry it out!
CHAPTER XVI
GROWING SUSPICIONS
I had been fortunate enough in my life to escape many of the shadows that lie in wait for most men. No serious betrayal of friendship had come to make me bitter or cynical: I did not—as even my profession might have taught me to do—look upon men with suspicion and distrust. I preferred to give them my confidence.
But in spite of this I found myself growing more and more distrustful of old Feng, more suspicious of his motives, more convinced that, for some reason I could not fathom, he was playing a double game.