“Your jewels are quite safe, I fancy,” said Mr. Carter drily. He wheeled round and picked up something from the floor. “You were standing just where I am when he sprang upon you?”
“That’s so,” assented Mrs. Van Snyder.
It was a fragment of thin glass that Mr. Carter had picked up. He sniffed it and handed it to Tommy.
“Ethyl Chloride,” he murmured. “Instant anaesthetic. But it only keeps one under for a moment or two. Surely he must still have been in the room when you came to, Mrs. Van Snyder?”
“Isn’t that just what I’m telling you? Oh! it drove me half crazy to see him getting away and me not able to move or do anything at all.”
“Getting away?” said Mr. Carter sharply. “Which way?”
“Through that door.” She pointed to one in the opposite wall. “He had a girl with him, but she seemed kind of limp as though she’d had a dose of the same dope.”
Carter looked a question at his henchman.
“Leads into the next suite, sir. But double doors-supposed to be bolted each side.”
Mr. Carter examined the door carefully. Then he straightened himself up and turned towards the bed.
“Mrs. Van Snyder,” he said quietly. “Do you still persist in your assertion that the man went out this way?”
“Why, certainly he did. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Because the door happens to be bolted on this side,” said Mr. Carter drily. 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 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 Varez. 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 out 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.