“When you give up your keys, would you mind[105] asking the clerk to send them up to me?” pursued the colonel. “Room three twenty-seven.” [105] “Certainly,” replied the young man, “or would you like to look at them a moment now?” “Why—if it wouldn’t detain you,” hesitated Winter; he was hardly prepared for the offer of admittance. “Get the elevator and hold it a minute, Colvin,” said the young man, and he instantly fitted the key to the door, which he flung open. “Excuse me,” said he, as they stood in the room, “but aren’t you the Colonel Winter who held that mountain pass to let the other fellows get off, after your ammunition was exhausted?” “I seem to recall some such episode, only it sounds rather gaudy the way you put it.” “I read about you in the papers; you swam a river with Funston; did all kinds of stunts—” “Or the newspaper reporter did. You don’t happen to know anything about the price of these rooms, I suppose?” The young man did not know, but he showed the colonel through all the rooms with vast civility. He seemed quite indifferent to the colonel’s interest in closets, baths and wardrobes; he only wanted to talk about the Philippines. [106]The colonel, who always shied like a mettled horse from the flutter of his own laurels, grew red with discomfort and rattled the door-knobs. [106] “There the suite ends,” said the young man. “Oh, we don’t want it all, only a room or two,” Colonel Winter demurred. “Any one of these rooms would do. Well, I will not detain you. The elevator boy will be tired, and Mr. Keatcham will grow impatient.” “Not at all; he will have gone. I—I’m so very glad to have met you, Colonel—” In this manner, with mutual civilities, they parted, the young man escorting the colonel to his own door, which the latter was forced to enter by the sheer demands of the situation. But hardly had the door closed than he popped out again. The young man was swinging round the corner next the elevator. “Is he an innocent bystander or what?”
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