from now--maybe in less time than that if things keep on breaking
right. Then I'll get the ducats off of you and beat it across through
the Hudson Tube to the Manhattan Transfer and grab the rattler over
there in Jersey when she comes along from this side. That'll be all. Now
hustle!"

From the drug store he went, carrying the brown suit case with
him, round into Forty-second Street. He had taken a mental note
of the initials on the bag, but to make sure he was right he looked
at them again before he entered the big Bellhaven Hotel by its
Forty-second-Street door. At sight of him a bell boy ran across the
lobby and took from him his burden. The boy followed him, a pace in
the rear, to the desk, where a spruce young gentleman awaited their
coming. "Can I get a room with bath for the night--a quiet inside
room where I'll be able to sleep as late as I please in the morning?"
inquired Trencher.

"Certainly, sir." The room clerk appraised Trencher with a practiced
eye. "Something for about four dollars?"

"That'll do very well," agreed Trencher, taking the pen which the clerk
had dipped in ink and handed over to him.

Bearing in mind the letters and the address on the suit case, Trencher
registered as M. K. Potter, Stamford, Conn. Meanwhile the clerk had
taken a key from a rack containing a vast number of similar keys.

"I won't leave a call--and I don't want to be disturbed," warned
Trencher.

"Very well, sir. Front! Show the gentleman to 1734." Five minutes later
Trencher, in an inner room on the seventeenth floor, with the door
locked on the inside, had sprung the catch of the brown suit case and
was spreading its contents out upon the bed, smiling his satisfaction as
he did so. Plainly fortune was favouring him at each new turning.

For here was a somewhat rumpled black suit and along with it a
blue-striped shirt, showing slight signs of recent wear, a turndown
collar that was barely soiled, and a plain black four-in-hand tie.
Trencher went through the pockets of the suit, finding several letters
addressed to Marcus K. Parker at an address in Broad Street, down in the
financial district. Sewn in the lining of the inner breast pocket of the
coat was a tailor's label also bearing the same name. At the sight
Trencher grinned. He had not missed it very far. He had registered as
Potter, whereas now he knew that the proper owner of the suit case must
be named Parker.

Parker, he figured, belonged to the race of comm