The room was on the top storey--the eighth--and from it you had a view sheer to the ground. Twenty feet below ran a narrow cornice about a foot wide; three feet or so above the window another and wider cornice jutted out, and above that was the high steep roof of the hotel, though you could not see it from the window. As Racksole examined the window and the outlook, he said to himself that Jules could not escape by that exit, at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and saw that the flue was far too small to admit a man’s body.
Then he called in the commissionaire, and together they bound Jules firmly to the bedstead, allowing him, however, to lie down. All the while the captive never opened his mouth--merely smiled a smile of disdain. Finally Racksole removed the ornaments, the carpet, the chairs and the hooks, and wrenched away the switch of the electric light. Then he and the commissionaire left the room, and Racksole locked the door on the outside and put the key in his pocket.
‘You will keep watch here,’ he said to the commissionaire, ‘through the night. You can sit on this chair. Don’t go to sleep. If you hear the slightest noise in the room blow your cab-whistle; I will arrange to answer the signal. If there is no noise do nothing whatever. I don’t want this talked about, you understand. I shall trust you; you can trust me.’
‘But the servants will see me here when they get up to-morrow,’ said the commissionaire, with a faint smile, ‘and they will be pretty certain to ask what I’m doing of up here. What shall I say to ‘em?’
‘You’ve been a soldier, haven’t you?’ asked Racksole.
‘I’ve seen three campaigns, sir,’ was the reply, and, with a gesture of pardonable pride, the grey-haired fellow pointed to the medals on his breast.
‘Well, supposing you were on sentry duty and some meddlesome person in camp asked you what you were doing--what should you say?’
‘I should tell him to clear off or take the consequences, and pretty quick too.’
‘Do that to-morrow morning, then, if necessary,’ said Racksole, and departed.
It was then about one o’clock a.m. The millionaire retired to bed--not his own bed, but a bed on the seventh storey. He did not, however, sleep very long. Shortly after dawn he was wide awake, and thinking busily about Jules.