Ned Wilding's Disappearance Part 20

It was a five-storied building, and on both sides of it, were shops for the sale of various articles.

"Can you give me a cheap room?" asked Ned of the clerk behind the desk.

"Sell you one, you mean I guess," was the man's reply as he went on with the operation of cleaning his finger nails. "We don't give 'em away."

"I'd like to engage a room for the night," Ned went on.

"Dollar's the cheapest we've got."

"That will do."

"Register," the clerk said, swinging the book around in front of Ned, and handing him a pen which he dipped into the dirty ink bottle. Then he went on with his manicuring.

"I must sign my name," thought Ned. "No I can't do that! They might trace me!" He felt the rustle of the stock certificate in his pocket as he took the pen. What was he to do?

"Is it necessary to register?" he asked.

"Course it is," replied the clerk looking at him curiously. "That's the law. Everybody who stops at a hotel has to put their name on the book.

What's the matter? You ain't afraid to register, are you? Don't look as though you'd committed a murder or had robbed some one," and the clerk grinned at his joke.

"No, of course not," Ned replied, his heart thumping away under his overcoat. Then he resolved to put on the book a fict.i.tious name. He hesitated a moment and inscribed: "Thomas Seldon," in a large hand as unlike as possible from his own usual small writing.

"Thomas Seldon, eh?" queried the clerk as he turned the book around once more. "Where you from? That has to go down."

Once more Ned hesitated. What should he answer.

"What's the matter? Forget where you live?" the clerk asked.

"No. It's Perryville, New York," replied Ned, taking a name at random, as he had the one he signed in the book.

The clerk told him to write it down, and after this was done the number 113 was placed after his name.

"Hope you're not superst.i.tious," the clerk remarked.

"Why?" asked Ned.

"There's a thirteen in your room number."

"I don't mind that."

"Some folks do," the clerk continued. "But that's the only dollar room we've got left. Front!"

A boy answered the ring of the bell which the clerk touched, and, taking Ned's grip led the way. A rattling, shaking elevator, of an antiquated type, carried Ned and his guide to the fifth floor. The young porter opened the door of a small room and set Ned's grip down inside of it.

"Here's where you bunk," he remarked.

Ned had read of the necessity for tips in New York, and handed the boy a dime. The lad seemed to welcome it.

"T'anks," he said.

"What's that rope for?" asked Ned, as he noticed one in a corner of his room.

"Fire escape. New law. All rooms has to have 'em," the boy replied. "If the shebang goes up you drop the rope out of the window and slide down.

Your window's right over the back yard and there's a gate that leads out into a side street."

"Do they have many fires?" asked Ned, feeling a bit nervous.

"Many? Every day ten or a dozen."

"I mean around here?"

"Ain't had none since I worked here, but when this place goes it'll go quick. It's about a thousand years old, I guess."

When the boy had gone Ned looked out of the window. It overlooked the rear yard of the hotel, a place filled with boxes, barrels and all sorts of rubbish. The rope was fastened to an iron ring in the wall, and looked stout enough to hold several men. It was long enough to reach to the ground, as Ned could see.

"Hope I don't have to use it," he thought.

Leaving his valise in his room, Ned went downstairs, again, the old elevator taking considerable time on the trip.

"I'll look around a bit, have some supper and then go to bed," he decided. "Maybe my luck will change to-morrow."

Ned after walking about the streets for awhile went back to the same restaurant where he had dined before, as he did not fancy the looks of his hotel well enough to eat there. He strolled about through the brilliantly lighted streets after supper pondering on his curious plight, and then went back to the Imperial.

As he approached the desk to get to the elevator he saw a stout man in close conversation with the clerk. He could hear the latter, in reply to some question, say:

"Guess we haven't got anybody here you want, Jim. No new ones came except a kid. Queer thing about him, though, I believe he's registered under the wrong name. Acts sort of funny."

"What name did he give?" asked the stout man.

"'Never'--'ever'--no, that isn't it but it's something like that.

'Seldom'--that's it--no it isn't either--'Seldon,' that's it. 'Thomas Seldon.' I sized him up for a queer one."

"I'll have to get a look at him," the stout man went on. "I don't know as we have any call for him, but it's best to be on the safe side."

Ned felt his knees beginning to shake. He wondered who the big man might be. Just then the youthful porter sauntered toward him. Ned had come to a halt half way up the lobby of the hotel.

"Pipe off that guy?" asked the boy in a friendly whisper, with a nod at the stout man. Ned understood the question to mean "Do you know who that man is?" and he answered that he did not.

"One of the detectives from the Central Office. The sleuths come here same as at other hotels, every once in a while, to see if anybody they want might happen to be on hand. Guess he won't land anybody this time, though, about a week ago--"

But Ned did not stop to listen. The stairway was in front of him, and he could get to his room without the clerk or the detective seeing him.

As he started up the stairs, intending to go to his apartment and hide, for he had left the key in the lock, the boy-porter called after him:

"Why don't you take the cage?"

"The elevator's too slow," Ned answered, trying to keep his voice from trembling. He was afraid the men might hear him. But they did not, and, walking swiftly he was soon in his room.

"What shall I do?" poor Ned asked himself. He seemed hounded on every side. "I must get away from here," he thought. "The clerk suspects me!