"Very well," Deane answered, "I will give you twenty pounds each,--no more."

The man placed the key silently in his hands, and Deane counted out eight five-pound notes.

"If I were you, sir," he said, "if you want to be alone in the room and be sure of no one seeing you, I should use it between four and five to-morrow morning. Everyone is off duty then except the night-porter."

Deane nodded. "By the way," he said, "do you know anything about the chambermaid on this floor--the young, slim one?"

The waiter shook his head. "She has only just come."

"Do you know her name?" asked Deane.

The man smiled. "It is always the same," he answered,--"always Mary."

"She would not be allowed in 27?" Deane asked. "She would not be likely to be there to clean it out, or anything of that sort?"'

The man shook his head again. "No one is allowed to enter it," he said.

"No one has been in but the detectives and lawyers."

Deane dismissed the man and settled down once more to his reading. He found it difficult, however, to concentrate his thoughts. The key was on the chair by his side. It was all he could do to restrain himself from stealing down the corridor and commencing his search.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SEARCH

Deane remembered afterwards, with a painful exactness, every step which he took in his stockinged feet down the dimly-lit corridor. Only one of the electric lights had been left burning, and that one was encased in a shade of red gla.s.s, and was set in the wall facing him. A few seconds ago he had heard Big Ben strike four o'clock. For the last two hours he had sat in his room and waited. Time seemed to have stood still. In that two hours he had seen himself stripped of all his possessions, dishonored, friendless. He had seen himself married to Lady Olive, richer and more prosperous than ever, a successful politician, a man on whom the eyes of the world were turned always with respect and approval.

Hope and fear had swung in his mind like the movement of a pendulum. All that he needed was that paper! If once he could see it burning into white ashes, or torn into a hundred pieces, he knew that there was nothing in the world strong enough to bar his progress.

Four o'clock at last! At the sound of the hour he had sprung to his feet. Before the echoes of the last stroke had died away he was absolutely committed to his enterprise. For a moment he stood outside the door of his room, which he had left ajar. He looked toward the main corridor and listened intently; there was no sound to be heard. The night watchman--if, indeed, he were making his rounds--was nowhere in that vicinity. In all the great hotel, not a soul seemed to be stirring.

Deane drew one long breath, and without a second's hesitation stole forward until he stood in front of Number 27. Once more he looked around him. The lights from all the transoms in sight had been extinguished.

There was only that dimly burning electric light at the end of the corridor, to dissipate the gloom. He fitted the key into the lock and turned it. The door swung open. Deane closed it behind him, turned on the electric light, and gazed around him with fast beating heart. He was there at last! Within this room, if anywhere, was his salvation!

It was, after all, a very ordinary hotel apartment. There was a small single bed, a wardrobe, a toilet table and chest of drawers, a hard, uninviting-looking sofa, and an easy-chair with a stiff back, and armless. Upon the bed were laid out a number of articles of wearing apparel, and upon the floor were two empty portmanteaus. Upon the dressing-table were a number of papers, arranged with some appearance of method. The toilet things were still in their places. Everything was arranged in a stiff and precise condition. It was evident that official hands had been at work.

Deane's rapid glance around lasted barely a few seconds. Then he moved toward the dressing-table and commenced a careful search amongst the papers there. One by one he glanced them through,--a bill for clothes, a restaurant account, half-a-dozen counterfoils of theatre and music-hall tickets, an account for wines and cigars consumed on the steamer _Arizona_, homeward bound from Cape Town. There was the address of a manicurist, a programme of the _Empire_. Very soon Deane had come to the end of them. From the first to the last, there was not a single doc.u.ment there of any interest or importance.

He turned away toward the clothes which were laid out upon the bed. One by one he lifted them up and laid them down again, until he came to the gray suit which the man Sinclair had been wearing on the day when he had made his eventful visit to the city. Deane held up the coat, and a little exclamation almost escaped from his lips as he saw where in a certain place the lining showed signs of st.i.tching, as though something had been sewn inside the pocket. He thrust his hand there. There was an opening, but it was empty! He tried the other side, but in vain. Then he began slowly to realize that this search of his was doomed to end in failure. There was nowhere else to look. He glanced at his watch.

Although it seemed to him that he had been in the little room for hours, he had indeed been there for barely five minutes.

He moved toward the door, opened it softly, and listened outside in the corridor. There was no sound of anyone stirring, no sign of life or movement anywhere. He returned to the room and renewed his search. One by one he lifted up the different articles of clothing and felt in the pockets. His search was rewarded with the discovery of a single halfpenny in an odd waistcoat pocket. He left the clothes alone then and went through the papers once more, with a similar lack of success.

Softly he opened all the drawers, ransacked the wardrobe, searched every inch of the room. When at last he desisted, it was because there was nowhere else to look, nothing else to attempt. He stood up in the middle of the room and drew a little breath. He had found nothing, nothing had transpired to compensate in any way for the risk which he had run. Yet there was one consolation. It was scarcely possible that Ruby Sinclair could be more successful than he. The paper which might make her fortune and ruin him was not here.

Deane turned at last toward the door. There was no need for him to prolong the risk he ran. He would return to his room, and leave the hotel later in the morning.

He took a few cautious steps toward the door. Suddenly he stopped short and held his breath. Very slowly he turned his head, and listened intently. Someone was stirring in the next room. There was a connecting door, hidden by a curtain, and even as he stood there he heard the handle shake as though it were being turned. He leaned forward and turned out the electric light. Standing there in the darkness he distinctly heard a key inserted in the lock of the hidden door. He heard it softly opened and the curtain pushed back. There was someone else in the room, someone else whom he could not see, someone else who also took an interest in the effects of the murdered man!

There was an interval of several seconds--it seemed minutes--it might well have been hours. Then the stealthy footsteps came towards him. A little stiff rustle of draperies proclaimed the s.e.x of the intruder.

Without a second's warning, the electric light flashed out all over the room. The girl would have screamed, but Deane, who was prepared, leaned forward, and his hand suddenly closed over her mouth. She looked at him with dilated eyes.

"You!" she exclaimed. "You!"

"Good G.o.d!" he answered. "Winifred Rowan!"

Their mutual surprise was something paralyzing. They drew apart and looked at one another as they might have done at ghosts.

"What do you want here?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

Was it his fancy, he wondered, or did her lips curl for a moment in something like mockery?

"I came to repay a debt," she whispered. "I came to find the paper which you are afraid may fall into someone else's hands. I came to search for it, but it is not here."

"And I," Deane answered.

"You have found it, perhaps?" she exclaimed.

He shook his head. "It has gone!"

"Perhaps he never had it," she whispered.

Deane shook his head. He was being led away by the excitement, the tenseness of the moment,--the unexpectedness of the whole situation. "He showed it to me," he answered, "only just before that night."

"Ah!"

The monosyllable seemed to leave her lips dry. She moistened them with her tongue, and moved a little towards him. There was something in her face which he could not recognize. And then, before further speech was possible, they heard something which, coming so unexpectedly against such a background of silence, terrified them both. An electric bell somewhere close at hand was ringing out its sharp summons into the night.

"What is that?" Deane asked quickly.

"Someone is ringing from one of the numbers opposite," she answered.

"Get back to your room quickly. They have heard us talking. Someone will be in here to search."

"But you?" he objected.

"I am safe," she answered. "I am on duty on this floor. I have something to do in the next room. Quick!"

He slipped from the door. The little side corridor was as yet empty. For a second or two he listened intently. There were no footsteps as yet audible in the main corridor. In half-a-dozen swift strides he reached the door of his own room, turned the handle, and pa.s.sed inside. Almost immediately there were footsteps in the corridor outside. The bell of the room opposite was answered. Again silence! The seconds grew into minutes, and the minutes pa.s.sed away. Then his door was suddenly opened from the outside, softly and silently. Winifred Rowan stood there on the threshold of his room, with the handle of the door still in her hand, and to his fancy there was something ominous in the way she looked at him.

"You need search no more," she said. "I have found the paper."

He held out his hand. "The reward is yours!" he declared.

She drew away from him. "I shall claim it very soon," she said. "Ring your bell at seven o'clock, when I shall be on duty, and I will bring it to you. Hush!"

She glided away and closed the door. Deane drew a long breath. So it was over, then,--over, and he had won!