“I shall be here for a week at least, therefore I hope you will give me the pleasure of spending an evening with Pedro and myself. We will dine at a restaurant and go to one of the variety theatres afterwards.”
I thanked him, and laughing at our encounter we parted quite good friends.
On returning to my room I examined the bolt, and found that the screws of the brass socket had been forced from the woodwork and it was lying on the floor.
That fact caused suspicion to again arise in my mind. Surely considerable force must have been used to break away the socket from the woodwork. Yet I had heard nothing!
However, I returned to bed, and leaving the lights on I reflected upon the strange episode. The fellow’s excuse was quite a legitimate one, yet I could not put from myself the fact that the door had been forced. By whom, if not by him?
And yet he was so cool it seemed impossible that he was a thief whom I had caught red-handed.
After half an hour I rose again and thoroughly examined the bolt, when my suspicion was increased by a strange discovery. In my absence the socket of the bolt had been removed, the screw holes enlarged and filled up with bread kneaded into a paste; into this the screws had been placed so that although I had bolted the door I could not secure it, for the smallest pressure from outside would break the fastening from the woodwork!
The dodge was one often practised by hotel thieves. But what proof had I that the lawyer from Burgos had prepared that bolt? I had no means of knowing when the screws had been rendered unstable, or by whom. It might have been done even before I had occupied that room, for the paste was hard and crumbling.
Nevertheless the fact remained that my door had been prepared for a midnight theft, and I had found a stranger in my room. So with a resolve to make further inquiry next morning, I threw myself down and slept.
I must have been tired and overwrought, for it was past nine o’clock when I awoke and drew up the blinds.