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