Anyone looking for Paul Ducharme would have paid small
attention to me, and to any friend of Valmont's I was equally
unrecognisable.
I strolled in leisurely manner to the Great Eastern Hotel on the Quay,
and asked the clerk if a portmanteau addressed to Mr. John Wilkins had
arrived that day from London. He said 'Yes,' whereupon I secured a
room for the night, as the last train had already left for the
metropolis.
Next morning, Mr. John Wilkins, accompanied by a brand new and rather
expensive portmanteau, took the 8.57 train for Liverpool Street, where
he arrived at half-past ten, stepped into a cab, and drove to the
Savoy Restaurant, lunching there with the portmanteau deposited in the
cloak room. When John Wilkins had finished an excellent lunch in a
leisurely manner at the Cafe Parisien of the Savoy, and had paid his
bill, he did not go out into the Strand over the rubber-paved court by
which he had entered, but went through the hotel and down the stairs,
and so out into the thoroughfare facing the Embankment. Then turning
to his right he reached the Embankment entrance of the Hotel Cecil.
This leads into a long, dark corridor, at the end of which the lift
may be rung for. It does not come lower than the floor above unless
specially summoned.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89