The Firefly of France | Page 8

and earth, no less," while the detective scornfully accused him of having been asleep or jingled, on the ground of my late telephone to the effect that I was holding the man.
The manager, as was natural, took the initiative, bustling past me into my room and peering eagerly around.
"I needn't say, Mr. Bayne," he orated fluently, "how sorry I am that this has happened--especially beneath our roof. It is our first case, I assure you, of anything so regrettable. If it gets into the papers it won't do us any good. Now the important thing is to take the fellow out by the rear without courting notice. Why, where is he?" he asked hopefully. "Surely he isn't gone?"
"Sure, and didn't I tell ye? 'Tis without eyes ye think me!" The policeman was resentful, and so, to tell the truth, was I. The whole maddening affair seemed bent on turning to farce at every angle; the doctor, as a final straw, had just offered /sotto voce/ to mix me a soothing draft!
"Gone! Of course he's gone, man!" I exclaimed with some natural temper. "Did you expect him to sit here waiting all this time? What on earth have you been doing--reading the papers--playing bridge? A dozen thieves could have escaped since I telephoned downstairs!"
"But you said," he murmured, apparently dazed, "that you could hold him." A tactless remark, which failed to assuage my wrath!
"So I could," I responded savagely. "But I didn't expect him to turn into a conjuring trick, which is what he did. He went out that window head foremost, down the ladder, and into the room below. Let's be after him--though we stand as much chance of catching him as we do of finding the King of England!" and I turned toward the doorway, where the manager, the doctor and the detective were massed.
The manager put his hand upon my arm. I looked down at it with raised eyebrows, and he took it away.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, adopting a manner of appeal, "but if you'll reflect for a moment you'll see how it is, I know. People don't care for houses where burglars fly in and out of windows; it makes them nervous; you wouldn't believe how easily a hotel can get a bad name and lose its clientele. Besides, from what you tell me, the fellow must be well away by this time. You'd do me a favor--a big one--by dropping the matter here."
"Well, I won't!" I snapped indignantly. "I'll see it through--or start something still livelier. Are you coming down with me to investigate the room beneath us or do you want me to ring up police headquarters and find out why?"
In the hall the policeman looked at me across the intervening heads and dropped one slow, approving eyelid. "If the gintleman says so--" he remarked in heavy tones fraught with meaning, and fixed a cold, blue, appraising gaze on the detective, who thereupon yielded with unexpectedly good grace.
"Aw, what's eating you?" was his amiable demand. "Sure, we was going right down there anyhow--soon's we found out how the land lay up here."
The five of us took the elevator to the lower floor. An unfriendly atmosphere surrounded me. I was held a hotel wrecker without reason. We found the corridor empty, the floor desk abandoned--a state of things rather strikingly the duplicate of that reigning overhead--and in due course paused before Room 303, where the manager, figuratively speaking, washed his hands of the affair.
"Here is the room, Mr. Bayne, for which you ask." If I would persist in my nefarious course, added his tone.
The detective, obeying the hypnotic eye of the policeman, knocked. There was silence. The bluecoat, my one ally, was crouching for a spring. Then light steps crossed the room, and the door was opened. There stood a girl,--a most attractive girl, the girl that I had seen downstairs. Straight and slender, spiritedly gracious in bearing, with gray eyes questioning us from beneath lashes of crinkly black, she was a radiant figure as she stood facing us, with a coat of bright-blue velvet thrown over her rosy gown.
"Beg pardon, miss," said the policeman, brightly, "this gintleman's been robbed."
As her eyebrows went up a fraction, I could have murdered him, for how else could she read his statement save that I took her for the thief?
"I am very sorry," I explained, bowing formally, "to disturb you. We are hunting a thief who took French leave by my fire-escape. I must have been mistaken--I thought that he dodged in again by this window. You have not seen or heard anything of him, of course?"
"No, I haven't. But then, I just this instant came up from dinner," she replied. Her low, contralto tones, quite impersonal, were yet delightful; I could have stood there talking burglars with