“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 her till dawn.  “Do you wish to come in and make sure that he is not in hiding?” With a half smile for which I didn’t blame her, she moved a step aside.

“Certainly not!” I said firmly, ignoring a nudge from the policeman.  “He left before you came—­there was ample time.  It is not of the least consequence, anyhow.  Again I beg your pardon.”  As she inclined her head, I bowed, and closed the door.

“I trust Mr. Bayne, that you are satisfied at last.”  This was the St. Ives manager, and I did not like his tone.