'Then with your permission I will borrow them,' Lavendale observed. 'I am looking for rooms in this neighbourhood.'
'Come in, sir,' he invited pompously. 'I will fetch the keys for you. My secretary,' he added, with a little wave of his hand, pointing to a florid, over-buxom and untidy-looking woman who was struggling with an ancient typewriter. 'You find me hard at work trying to finish a play I have been commissioned to write for my friend Tree. You are aware, perhaps, of my--er--identity?'
'I am sorry,' Lavendale replied. 'You see, I am an American, not a Londoner.'
'That,' the other declared, 'accounts for it. My name is Somers-Keyne--Hamilton Somers-Keyne. My work, I trust, is more familiar to you than my personality?'
'Naturally,' Lavendale assented, a little vaguely.
The dramatist, who had been searching upon a mantelpiece which seemed littered with cigarette ends, scraps of letters and an empty tumbler or so, suddenly turned around with the key in his hand.
'It is here,' he pronounced. 'Examine the rooms for yourself, Mr.----?'
'Mr. Lavendale. They are furnished, I believe, but as regards the rent I know nothing except that the myrmidon who collects it is unpleasantly persistent in his attentions. If you will return the key to me, sir, when you have finished, I shall be obliged.'
The two young men opened the door and explored a dusty, barely-furnished, gloomy, conventional little suite, consisting of a single bedroom, a boxlike sitting-room, and a bathroom in the last stages of dilapidation. The rooms were undoubtedly empty, nor was there anywhere any sign of recent habitation. Lavendale stood at the window, leaned over and counted. When he drew back his face was more than ever puzzled. He looked once more searchingly around the unprepossessing rooms.
'This was the window, Reggie,' he insisted.
Merrill had lost interest in the affair and did not hesitate to show it.
'Seems to me you must have counted wrongly,' he declared. 'In any case, there's no one here now, and it's quite certain that no one has been in during the last hour or so.'
Lavendale said nothing for a moment. He examined the flat once more carefully, locked it up, and took the key back to Mr. Somers-Keyne's room. The dramatist opened the door himself.