• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘Why, certainly he did. Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Because the door happens to be bolted on this side,’ said Mr Carter dryly. He rattled the handle as he spoke.

A look of the utmost astonishment spread over Mrs Van Snyder’s face.

‘Unless someone bolted the door behind him,’ said Mr Carter, ‘he cannot have gone out that way.’

He turned to Evans, who had just entered the room.

‘Sure they’re not anywhere in this suite? Any other communicating doors?’

‘No, sir, and I’m quite sure.’

Carter turned his gaze this way and that about the room. He opened the big hanging-wardrobe, looked under the bed, up the chimney and behind all the curtains. Finally, struck by a sudden idea, and disregarding Mrs Van Snyder’s shrill protests, he opened the large wardrobe trunk and rummaged swiftly in the interior.

Suddenly Tommy, who had been examining the communicating door, gave an exclamation.

‘Come here, sir, look at this. They did go this way.’

The bolt had been very cleverly filed through, so close to the socket that the join was hardly perceptible.

‘The door won’t open because it’s locked on the other side,’ explained Tommy.

In another minute they were out in the corridor again and the waiter was opening the door of the adjoining suite with his pass key. This suite was untenanted. When they came to the communicating door, they saw that the same plan had been adopted. The bolt had been filed through, and the door was locked, the key having been removed. But nowhere in the suite was there any sign of Tuppence or the fair-bearded Russian and there was no other communicating door, only the one on the corridor.

‘But I’d have seen them come out,’ protested the waiter. ‘I couldn’t have helped seeing them. I can take my oath they never did.’

‘Damn it all,’ cried Tommy. ‘They can’t have vanished into thin air!’

Carter was calm again now, his keen brain working.

‘Telephone down and find out who had this suite last and when.’

Evans who had come with them, leaving Clydesly on guard in the other suite, obeyed. Presently he raised his head from the telephone.

‘An invalid French lad, M. Paul de Vareze. He had a hospital nurse with him. They left this morning.’

An exclamation burst from the other Secret Service man, the waiter. He had gone deathly pale.

‘The invalid boy–the hospital nurse,’ he stammered. ‘I–they passed me in the passage. I never dreamed–I had seen them so often before.’

‘Are you sure they were the same?’ cried Mr Carter. ‘Are you sure, man? You looked at them well?’

The man shook his head.

‘I hardly glanced at them. I was waiting, you understand, on the alert for the others, the man with the fair beard and the girl.’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Carter, with a groan. ‘They counted on that.’

With a sudden exclamation, Tommy stooped down and pulled something from under the sofa. It was a small rolled-up bundle of black. Tommy unrolled it and several articles fell out. The outside wrapper was the long black coat Tuppence had worn that day. Inside was her walking dress, her hat and a long fair beard.’

‘It’s clear enough now,’ he said bitterly. ‘They’ve got her–got Tuppence. That Russiandevil has given us the slip. The hospital nurse and the boy were accomplices. They stayed here for a day or two to get the hotel people accustomed to their presence. The man must have realised at lunch that he was trapped and proceeded to carry out his plan. Probably he counted on the room next door being empty since it was when he fixed the bolts. Anyway he managed to silence both the woman next door and Tuppence, brought her in here, dressed her in boy’s clothes, altered his own appearance, and walked out bold as brass. The clothes must have been hidden ready. But I don’t quite see how he managed Tuppence’s acquiescence.’

‘I can see,’ said Mr Carter. He picked up a little shining piece of steel from the carpet. ‘That’s a fragment of a hypodermic needle. She was doped.’

‘My God!’ groaned Tommy. ‘And he’s got clear away.’

‘We don’t know that,’ said Carter quickly. ‘Remember every exit is watched.’

‘For a man and