Permit me"--the slim, deft fingers, like a streak of lightning,
were inside Hamvert's coat pocket and out again with the remainder of
the banknotes--and Jimmie Dale was backing for the door--not the door
of the bathroom by which he had entered, but the door of the room itself
that opened on the corridor. There he stopped, and his hand swept around
behind his back and turned the key in the locked door. He nodded at the
two men, whose faces were working with incongruously mingled expressions
of impotent rage, bewilderment, fear, and fury--and opened the door a
little. "Ten minutes, Weasel," he said gently. "I trust you will not
have to use heroic measures to restrain your friend for that length of
time, though if it is necessary I should advise you for your own sake to
resort almost--to murder. I wish you good evening, gentlemen."
The door opened farther; Jimmie Dale, still facing inward, slipped
between it and the jamb, whipped the mask from his face, closed the door
softly, stepped briskly but without any appearance of haste along the
corridor to the stairs, descended the stairs, mingled with a crowd in
the lobby for an instant, walked, seemingly a part of it, with a group
of ladies and gentlemen down the hall to the side entrance, passed
out--and a moment later, after drawing on a linen dust coat which he
took from under the seat, and exchanging his hat for a tweed cap, the
car glided from the curb and was lost in a press of traffic around the
corner.
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