After dinner two or three men spoke to the Commander as he limped toward the elevator. One, a British colonel, shook hands heartily and congratulated him on the V.C. Another, a stranger evidently, tried to get him into conversation. Trent noted that the Commander, although courteous to a degree, was not minded to make hotel acquaintances. He declined a drink and refused a cigar by taking out his cigarette case. The stranger looked at it curiously.
“Seen some service, hasn’t it?” the affable stranger remarked and took it from the owner’s hand.
“A very old pal,” said the naval man. Trent had observed the slight hesitation before he had permitted it to leave his hand. “I wouldn’t lose it for a lot.”
Trent stood ready. It might be that this thick skinned stranger was after the same loot as he. But he handed it back and strolled off to the café where he joined a group of perfectly respectable business men from Columbus, O.
As most travelers in first class hotels know, the eighteenth story of the Carlton looks across a block of fashionable private houses on its north side. There is on that account no possibility of any prying stranger gazing into its rooms from across the way. Towering above these lesser habitations the Carlton looms inaccessible, austere, remote.
In the grip which had once belonged to the unknown “C. P. of York, Pa.” Anthony Trent had put the kit necessary for a short stay. There was also certain equipment without which certain nervous travelers rarely stray from home. For example there was a small axe. In a collision at sea many are drowned who might escape did not the impact have the effect of jamming the doors of their state rooms. The axe in the hands of the thoughtful voyager could be used to hack through thin planking to freedom. There was also a small coil of high grade rope, tested to three hundred pounds. In case of fire the careful traveler might slide to earth. Not, of course, from an eighteenth floor.
At half past one that night it was very dark and cloudy. A light rain dropped on dusty streets and there was silence. Tying his line to the firm anchorage of a pipe in the bath room Anthony Trent began his work. He was dressed in a dark blue suit. He wore no collar and on his hands were dark gray gloves. Below him was the green and white striped awning that protected Commander Heathcote’s windows. It was almost certain that an Englishman would sleep with windows open.
It was not difficult for a gymnast to slide down the rope head foremost. When Trent could touch the top of the Heathcote awning he took a safety razor blade from his lips and cut a slit across it sufficiently wide to admit his head and shoulders.
It was not a descent which caused much trouble. There was the chance that the rope might break. He wondered through how many awnings he would plunge before consciousness left him.
Heathcote was asleep. By a table near the bed was an ash tray, matches, Conrad’s “Youth” and the cigarette case. And lying near was the stout cane which the man who was wounded in that splendid attack on Zeebrugge used to aid himself in his halting walk.