re to avoid using the same
elevator that shortly before brought him up to this floor level.
Presently he was outside the hotel, hurrying afoot on his return to
Broadway. On the way he pitched the key into an areaway.

Turning out of Forty-second Street into Broadway and thence going south
to a point just below the intersection with Fortieth Street, he
approached the Clarenden from the opposite side of Broadway. There was
motive in this. One coming across from the opposite side and looking
upward at a diagonal slant could see through the windows along the front
side of the Clarenden with some prospect of making out the faces of such
diners as sat at tables near the windows. Straining his eyes as he
crossed over, Trencher thought he recognised his man. He was almost
sure he made out the outlined head and shoulders of Parker sitting at a
corner table alongside the last window in the row. He trusted he was
right and trusted still more fervently that Parker would bide where he
was for three or four minutes longer.

Tucking his head well down inside his upturned collar and giving the
brim of his hat a tug to bring it still farther forward over his eyes,
he took a long breath, like a man preparing for a dive in cold water,
and went up the flight of stairs from the sidewalk into the building. No
one inside made as if to halt him; no one so far as he could tell gave
him in passing even an impersonal look. There was a wash room, as
Trencher knew, at the back end of the ornate hall which separated the
Chinese lounge and the main cafe on one side, from the private dining
rooms and tea rooms on the other. That wash room was his present
destination.

He reached it without mishap, to find it deserted except for a boy in
buttons. To the boy he surrendered hat and overcoat, and then in the
midst of a feint at hitching up his shirt cuffs, as though meaning to
wash his hands, he snapped his fingers impatiently.

"I forgot something," he said for the boy's benefit; "left it in the
cafe. Say, kid, watch my hat and coat, will you? I'll be back in a
minute."

"Yes, sir," promised the youth. "I'll take good care of 'em."

Bareheaded as he now was and lacking the overcoat, Trencher realised the
chief elements of his disguise were missing; still there had been for
him no other course to follow than this risky one. He could not claim
ownership of one coat and one hat while wearing another coat and another
hat--that was certain. As he neare