Bill noticed that the single stained glass window high in the bathroom wall was barred. That gave him a new slant on the plan. He went into the bedroom and pulled the curtains back from the two windows there. Both were crisscrossed with heavy bars of steel.
Slim Johnson’s bedroom was well protected from all intruders, and he, Bill Bolton, was as effectually a prisoner as though he had been cast into an underground dungeon.
He stood near the door to the sitting room, and through the panels he could hear the mumble of voices. Instinctively he moved nearer and placed his ear against the keyhole.
Slim Johnson was speaking: “Give him an hour. He’ll be in bed and asleep by that time. Then go in there and remove the—er—laundry. Better take Alec with you. It will be heavy. Come along with me, now. I’ve got to see Dago Mike about that shipment he landed tonight. It won’t take long and then we can come back to this job. If the big boss makes us let that lad go after we torture him in the morning—what he doesn’t know about the _laundry_ won’t hurt anybody, eh?”
Bill heard Johnson giggle, and then the door slammed to the corridor. He straightened himself thoughtfully, stared at the bed and saw that a pair of silk pajamas, rose-hued, had been laid out on the coverlet. Slowly he walked into the bathroom again.
The next instant he had the lid of the hamper open, and disclosed to view a bundle of soiled shirts, crumpled pajamas, collars and handkerchiefs. Bill scattered these articles to right and left.
Then uncontrollably, he shrank back. Huddled in the basket, doubled awry, was the body of a man. Only the head and shoulders were visible. But the head was the head of Hank.
Bill bent swiftly, caught up some of the dirty linen and flung it into the hamper. He had to pull himself together. _That_—that was the explanation, of course, for Slim Johnson’s cryptic remarks about the laundry. They were coming back in an hour. Would they take the hamper and all?
“Yes,” he decided. “It would mean just that. Not even a gangster beer baron, or whatever role Slim Johnson plays in the criminal life of this state would permit him to carry dead bodies through the public halls of a hotel without causing comment! And possibly another police raid.... No—Hank was going out in the hamper. How many more,” he wondered, “had traveled that route before and would travel it again....”