Chapter Thirteen.
The Hidden Ear.
“No, Dick! A trifle farther this way,” whispered Freda Crisp, who with a piece of string had been measuring the blank wall of the sparely-furnished hotel sitting-room.
“Do you think so? I don’t,” replied a lean, well-dressed, rather striking-looking man of middle-age, who held in his hand a steel gimlet, nearly two feet in length, such as is used by electricians to bore holes through walls and floors to admit the passage of electric-lighting wires.
“Slip out and measure again,” urged the woman, who was wearing a simple blouse and a navy-blue skirt which looked rather shabby in the grey afternoon light. “It won’t do to be much out.”
The man, whom she had addressed as Dick, carefully opened the door of the room a little way, peered out into the corridor, and waited. There being no sign of anyone stirring—for hotels are usually most quiet at about half-past three in the afternoon—he slipped out. He took the string and, stooping to the floor, measured from the lintel of the door to the dividing wall of the next room.
Twice he did so, and then made a knot in the string, so that there should be no further mistake.
On creeping back to where the woman awaited him, he said:
“You were quite right, Freda. Now let’s get to work.”