the bottom of that bag.'
'All that lovely money,' said Evelyn dreamily, 'that we've got to leave behind… I say, do you suppose the detective's not paying any attention to you means that H.M. has wangled it at last, and they're not chasing you any longer?'
'It's possible, yes. But I tell you with all sincerity that I am not going to drop into a police station and inquire. Besides, it has suddenly occurred to me that we're not even in Charters's jurisdiction any longer. We're not in Devon. We're in either Somerset or Gloucestershire, depending on the side of the river.'
Evelyn inspected me. 'The Man of the Forty Races,' she said tenderly. 'Darling, will you for God's sake find the nearest lavatory and take off that parson's outfit and get into Charters's coat? Canonicals don't become you: you've got a look as though you had just robbed the poor box. Also, it's suddenly occurred to me that the spectacle of a hatless clergyman showing up at the Cabot Hotel with only one suitcase and a wench without a wedding-ring is going to queer our pitch most awfully.'
I told her she had a low mind, and she inquired, with candour, whether I knew anyone who hadn't.
'It is not,' I added with dignity, 'that I have any objection to taking off this infernal outfit. But it would appear that I am spending my wedding-eve chiefly in lavatories or in jail, and it's getting to be a nuisance. Besides, no sooner will I climb into Charters's coat than along will come Stone and swear I'm disguised again. It's fate. It's — '
'Now, now,' said Evelyn. 'Stone has seen that disguise; and, anyway, where's the disguise about a tweed coat? Don't stand there orating, Ken, or they'll be after us… Hurry!'
She was right. I now understand the meaning of the phrase 'fully clothed and in his right mind.' Once out of that clerical collar, I felt a new man again. In three minutes I had left the lavatory and rejoined her in the breezy square outside the station: and still there was no sign of pursuit. When I bundled Evelyn into the nearest taxi, a clock in the high pointed tower over the station indicated five minutes to two. But on one point I was fiendishly determined. There should be no more disguises or false names that night, with mix-ups of the sort through which we had already floundered. Not ropes or thumb-screws would induce me to give any name other than my own. I explained this to Evelyn, while the cab turned right and then bore to the left, through narrow silent streets in the direction of Bristol Bridge.
'Yes, I know,', Evelyn said thoughtfully, 'but don't you think it may be necessary?'
'Necessary? How?'
She brooded. 'Well, I mean — first of all, you've got to find out whether Keppel is still out. You can't just walk into the hotel and coolly begin burgling his rooms before you know whether or not he's in, can you? And, if Keppel is as tricky a sort as Stone seems to think, this `out all evening may be a blind. First of all, you'll have to pretend to have an urgent appointment with him. Then, if he's really out, you can get a room on the same floor and crack the crib. Urgent appointment. H'm. Couldn't you be Professor Blake of the University of Edinburgh?'
'No, I could not.'
'Yes, but you've got to be something!'
'The `urgent appointment' will do well enough. If we get into a tight corner, I'll tell whatever lie is necessary. But meantime — '
The cab turned up the rise at Bristol Bridge, and then down the long curve of Baldwin Street to the Centre. The great square of the Centre was deserted except for two policemen talking under a clock; a few late electric signs, red and yellow, still flashed away with monotonous gaiety; and the river, winding among buildings as it has done since Bristol was once a city with its streets full of ships, had turned to silver. We went up the slope of College Green, past the Park where Victoria's statue looks out from an eternal whisepering conference of leaves, past the Royal Hotel, past the Cathedral, to the Cabot Hotel some two hundred yards further on.
The Cabot is sedate enough, four-square and four-storeyed in grey stone, with geraniums in the window- boxes and a tall stone pillar on either side of the door. I paid the taxidriver from the packet of notes I had pinched out of Serpos's hoard, submitting that I had an excellent right to some of the swag. A sleepy night-porter opened the glass doors of the vestibule. We went through into a tall, narrow hall, carpeted to the baseboards in some flowered stuff, with woodwork so old that the cracks showed even through its many brown coats of paint. There were steel-engraving sporting prints on the walls, and brass warming-pans hanging from the paneling, and the general air of a comfortable place curtained in for centuries. Towards the left, a light burned
inside a kind of fort with frosted glass windows. A young man with poised eyebrows bobbed up inside it.
'Yes, sir,' he said heartily.
I asked for Dr. Keppel, explaining that we had come a long way on an urgent appointment, and must see him despite the hour of the night. The clerk automatically reached for the plug of the telephone switchboard, but he stopped.
'Sorry, sir,' he said. 'Dr. Keppel is out.'
'Out? At this hour of the night? But surely-'
The clerk seemed puzzled. 'Yes, sir. He's never out as late as this; not after ten, as a rule. Just one moment.' He ducked to one side, towards a letter rack, and pulled out a small card. 'Yes. He left a message. I wasn't on duty when he went out, but here it is. He said he was going out about nine o'clock, and mightn't return until late.'
This was somewhat disconcerting news. Keppel, whom we supposed to be in Moreton Abbot, had at least been in the hotel here this evening up until nine o'clock.
'Ah. He returned from Moreton Abbot, then?'
'Moreton Abbot? Yes, sir. He got back this afternoon, they tell me.'
'Really, this is extremely annoying!' said Evelyn, in her best business-woman's tone. 'There is a limit to secretarial duties! I suppose I must be prepared to take shorthand notes at any time of the night or morning, but when a definite appointment has been made… Professor Blake-'
My murderous look stopped her, but the clerk grew alert. 'But,' I suggested, 'we may wait in his rooms?'
The clerk hesitated. 'Sorry, sir. That's the last of the message. He says if any visitors should call on him, they — that is, he'd rather they didn't wait there. Sorry sir. You understand. My orders. Dr. Keppel-well, he's like that.'
'Then at least,' I said frostily, 'we may take rooms of our own. My secretary is rather tired…'
The clerk eagerly assented to this. Would we like rooms on the same floor as Dr. Keppel? We would. Would we like connecting rooms? We would. The clerk reached after two keys from the rack, pushed forward the ledger, and beckoned the night-porter. Then he smiled.
'Just as a matter of form, sir,' be said; 'the lady not having any luggage — you understand-'
We all considered this a very good joke as I paid him. I signed for both of us, and told the truth. But, as the night-porter led us to a creaky lift, Evelyn and I looked at each other. So Keppel had left a message that, if any visitors called, they must not be allowed to wait in his room? Good God, was it possible he expected us? While the lift swayed upstairs, past high and broad corridors with white-painted doors, I tried to enumerate possible traps. It was just possible Keppel was waiting for us; yet, with all these precautions, it did not seem likely.
His rooms were on the top floor. We went down a hall muffled in dark carpet, with the faint frowsty smell which haunts old hotels. It had been built in a spacious time; the rooms were very large, and there were few of the white-painted doors on either side.
'Which,' I said to the porter, speaking instinctively in a low voice, 'are Dr. Keppel's rooms?'
He nodded towards two doors in the left-hand wall, the last two along that wall. Though the hall was dusky, having only a dim globe in a cut-glass bowl at the head of the staircase by the lift, we could see those doors distinctly: and the ground went from under our feet again. Ordinarily, as I had remembered, the ancient locks of those doors could be picked with a nail-file or a button-hook. But the careful Dr. Keppel bad had both his doors fitted with Yale locks: you could see them gleaming.
We did not say anything, although Evelyn, behind the porter's back, lifted her hands to the level of her ears and shook venomous fists. Our two rooms were at the end of the hall, forming the narrow side of the oblong. We were decorously shown into them, and I got rid of the porter with money…
Then I sat down in one of those mummified overstuffed chairs, and looked round a high room with a very long chandelier and a brass bed. The curtains were blowing slightly at the window. Then there was some fumbling with bolts in a door in the side wall; the door opened, and Evelyn came in. She had removed her hat, and her dark bobbed hair was disarranged. She went to the mirror over the white marble mantelpiece, took a comb out of her bag, and thoughtfully began to run the comb through her hair. Quite suddenly she began to laugh.
