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.
"Well, Ken" she said. "We're here. And also we're beaten. Can you pick a Yale lock?" "No."
Her reflection faced me out of the mirror. "At this time to-morrow night," she went on, "we're supposed to be in the Blue Train going felicitously to the South of France. What's the betting we don't make it? We can't get that envelope now-"
I made sulphurous remarks to the effect that we would make the train, and that the envelope was within reach. This room lay directly in line with Keppel's suite, with only the thickness of a wall between. I went to the window and looked out past the blowing curtains. The tricks of eighteenth century builders had their merits: just outside, and only a couple of feet below the window there was a stone ledge running the whole length of the building on that side. It passed beneath Keppel's windows as well. It ran sixty feet above the gardens and trees behind the Library, and the cloisters of the Cathedral School; but it was a good two feet wide, as safe as a path to walk on. Although the moon was partly behind the shoulder of the building, still I could see that path with great clearness in the skim-milk light.
"Do you think you'd better?" said Evelyn quietly, from behind my shoulder.
There was a good clasp-knife in the pocket of Charters's coat. I gave Evelyn directions.
"We don't know when Keppel will be in, but it may be any minute. Stay here, and keep the door to the hall partly open. You've got a straight view down the length of it, of the lift and the staircase. If anyone comes up-"
"What does Keppel look like?"
"I don't know — wait! Bowers said something about him. Little, with a lot of greyish hair sticking up, and he limps. That's distinctive enough. But if you see anybody who looks dangerous "
She nodded, and glanced round quickly. Then she picked up the tooth-glass from the wash-stand.
"Right you are, old boy. If you can burgle a window, leave it open and we'll leave this one open too. If I see anyone coming close, I'll shut the door, and then throw this glass down on the hearth and smash it. You should be able to hear it like a shot. Only, Ken, for God's sake be caref — "
I climbed out. We have all seen the thing done on the films: where the spectacle of a person shuffling with shaky legs along a ledge is supposed to be funny. It is not funny. It is not as easy as it looks. At first you have no difficulty with your feet or legs, but from the waist up to the shoulders you seem to be shaking and swaying out over the edge. For some reason you feel naked. You notice sounds more: the surge of wind rustling in trees sixty feet below, or the gritty scrape of your own shoes. When you see the world below, it seems to swing outward and the whole business becomes only half real. But that is when your knees and legs begin to shake.
I was pressing my left shoulder to the wall, and groping ahead in the grime with my right hand. There was a sensation of rocking tipsily before I got my fingers round the frame of the nearest window. So far as I could see, there were four windows in Keppel's suite. I held on to the frame of the nearest one, feeling hot all over, and edged forward.
The window was wide open.
Wide open. Even the blind was up, and the blind moved or flapped gently when a vast rustling of wind rose in the trees below. The window was an empty black rectangle, into which very little light could penetrate. And I did not like it.
It seemed to invite too much. It seemed to lure you in, as though even the blind were whispering. My natural instinct was to put my hand through, take hold of the sill on the inside, and pull myself through. Yet there are other whispers as well, and in the brain a tiny bell gives warning. Even when you are stuck like a poultice to the wall sixty feet up, something whispers like the wind in the trees. Look out, it says. Don't touch that window. Don't touch