g another. The walls supported tawdry and
dilapidated decorations, in which beveled mirrors and faded gilding bore
a prominent part. Two large but quite worthless oil paintings hung above
the fireplace and the sideboard respectively, and the window was covered
with gelatine paper simulating stained glass.

Inspector Willis stood surveying the scene with a frown on his brow. How
on earth was he to secrete himself in this barely furnished apartment?
There was not room under the sofa, still less beneath the sideboard.
Nor was there any adjoining room or cupboard in which he could hide, his
keen ear pressed to the keyhole. It seemed to him that in this case
he was doing nothing but coming up against one insoluble problem after
another. Ruefully he recalled the conversation in Archer's study, and
he decided that, whatever it cost in time and trouble, there must be no
repetition of that fiasco.

He stood silently pondering over the problem, the manager obsequiously
bowing and rubbing his hands. And then the idea for which he was hoping
flashed into his mind. He walked to the wall behind the sideboard and
struck it sharply. It rang hollow.

"A partition?" he asked. "What is behind it?"

"Anozzer room, sair. A private room, same as dees."

"Show it to me."

The "ozzer room" was smaller, but otherwise similar to that they had
just left. The doors of the two rooms were beside each other, leading on
to the same passage.

"This will do," Willis declared. "Now look here, Mr. Manager, I wish to
overhear the conversation of your customers, and I may or may not wish
to arrest them. You will show them up and give them lunch exactly as you
have arranged. Some officers from the Yard and myself will previously
have hidden ourselves in here. See?"

The manager nodded.

"In the meantime I shall send a carpenter and have a hole made in that
partition between the two rooms, a hole about two feet by one, behind
the upper part of that picture that hangs above the sideboard. Do you
understand?"

The manager wrung his hands.

"Ach!" he cried. "But meine Zimmern! Mine rooms, zey veel pe
deestroyed!"

"Your rooms will be none the worse," Willis declared. "I will have the
damage made good, and I shall pay you reasonably well for everything.
You'll not lose if you act on the square, but if not--" he stared
aggressively in the other's face--"if the slightest hint of my plan
reaches any of the men--well, it will be ten years at least."