up, but he remembered now that the outer door of it had been slightly ajar when he went in to his interview with Ziegler. He went up to the big uniformed porter on duty at the swing doors, and asked him if he knew Mrs. Talmage Eglinton by sight.
“Oh yes, sir,” the man replied. “You’ll catch her if you run up to her rooms sharp. She’s just going out.”
“Going out?” exclaimed Forsyth, with well simulated surprise. “I thought I caught a glimpse of her going upstairs a moment ago. She seemed to have only just arrived.”
“Oh no, sir; she came in an hour ago, and was on her way out just now when she found she’d forgotten something.”
Forsyth left the proximity of the porter quickly, and went and waited at the foot of the staircase. The horizon had cleared again, and he smiled at the very thin trick which had so nearly deceived him—would have deceived him, in fact, if one of the gang, eagerly expecting her, had not chanced to be at her door when he went up. After concluding her business with her accomplices she had contrived the meeting on the stairs to throw dust in his eyes, going, in her desire for realism, to the
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