"I want to make a trade with you." The new-comer held out his silk hat. "Will you give me your hat, or any old hat you've got around the place, for this?"
"I will," said the watchman calmly. Though good-humored, he seemed a man of few words. "And who might you be?" he added.
"I came in last night with Mr. Shaw, and I spent the night here. When I woke up," added Laurie drily, "I found that my host had moved."
"You're a young lad," he said, with friendly sympathy. "'Tis a pity you've got into these habits."
Laurie grinned at him. He had discovered that his money, like his watch, was safe in his pockets. Taking out a bill, he showed it to his companion.
"Do you like the looks of that?" he inquired.
"Tell me all you know about Shaw, and take it for your trouble."
"I will," promptly agreed the other, "but 'tis not much you'll get for your money, for 'tis little enough I know. The man you're talkin' about, I suppose, is the fat fella with eyes you could hang yer hat on, that had the back room on the ground floor."
"Then all I know is, he moved in three days ago, and he moved out two hours ago. What he did between-times I don't know. But he paid for the room for a month in advance, so nobody's mournin' his loss."
"Didn't he say why he was going, or where?"
"Divil a word did he say. He was in a hurry, that lad. He had a gang of three men with him, and they had the place empty in ten minutes. I lent 'em a hand, an' he give me a dollar, and that's the last I saw of him."
A sudden thought struck the watchman. "Where was you all the time?" he asked with interest.
"You're too young for that sort of thing, me boy. Now, I'm no teetotaler meself," he went on argumentatively. "A glass once in a while is all right, if a man knows whin to stop. But--"
"How about that hat?" interrupted the restive victim of this homily. "Have you got one handy?"
The watchman disappeared into a shadowy corner and returned with a battered derby.
"An' a fine grand hat it is!" he earnestly assured the new owner, as he handed it over.
Laurie took the hat and put it on his head, where, being too small for him, it perched at a rakish angle. He dropped the bank-note into his own silk hat, and handed them to his companion, who accepted them without visible emotion. Evidently, brief though his stay in the building had been, Herbert Ransome Shaw had accustomed its watchman to surprises. Laurie's last glimpse of the man as he hurried away showed him, with extreme efficiency and the swift simultaneous use of two well-trained hands, putting the silk hat on his head and the bill in his pocket.