It was only when she approached the door of Number 658, and saw once
more the brown trunk at the end of the hall, that Clo remembered the odd
side-issue of her adventure. She hesitated between the need for haste
and the wish to solve the mystery that troubled her. But it would take
only a minute to run to the trunk, to sit on it again, and see what
happened! Meanwhile, any one who went in, or came out from, Number 658,
must do so under her eyes.
Curiosity conquered. Clo tip-toed to the trunk, sat heavily down on the
rounded top, as she had done before, and nothing happened. There was no
sign of movement within; and Clo wondered if, after all, the thing that
had jumped under the lid had been created by her own jumping nerves.
Suddenly the impulse came upon her to try and open it. She seized the
corner of the rounded lid, but it remained immovable. She picked at the
metal hasp which covered the cheap lock. It did not yield, but her
fingers--or she fancied it--touched moisture. The girl shrank back and
looked at her hand. Thumb and forefinger were smeared with blood.
The girl felt sick, and might have fainted comfortably. "Pooh!" she
scolded herself. "You've cut your finger. Serve you right for not
minding your own business. Go to it now, and no nonsense, if you
please!"
Goading herself to courage she marched to the door of 658 and knocked.
No answer came, and the girl's heart sank. It seemed too bad to be true
that Peterson should have escaped during the few minutes spent in
putting Angel into a taxi. Besides, she had scarcely gone beyond
eye-shot of the hotel entrance.
"Perhaps he's asleep," thought Clo. She turned the handle, and to her
surprise the door yielded. She had expected to find it locked. As
before, the room was unlit save by golden reflections from the street
below. The girl opened the door wide, and deliberately looked in.
Strange; there sat the man in his easy chair in front of the window,
with his mean profile outlined against the light, just as he had sat
when Beverley had answered the summons to "Come in!" One would say, to
look at him, that he had not moved an inch.
Clo's theory had gone wrong. She had urged her conviction upon Angel
that he was the thief; that, if he were the thief, he would "make his
get-away" in haste. Yet here he sat, in the dark, asleep.
She stepped across the threshold, felt along the wall for an electric
switch, found it, and flooded the room with light. Still the figure in
the chair did not stir.
Clo glanced round the squalid room. Peterson had begun to pack. A
suitcase lay open on the narrow bed. The wrinkled gray-white counterpane
was half covered with scattered clothing.
"If he's fast enough asleep, I can go through everything," she thought,
"including his pockets!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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