CHAPTER 18 QUESTIONS AND CLUES

“Good morning,” stammered Penny, backing from the door. “Were you wanting to get into this room?”

“No, I never clean in there,” answered the maid, still watching the girl with suspicion. “You’re looking for someone?”

Penny knew that she had been observed listening at the door. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

She answered frankly: “No, I was passing through the corridor when I heard a strange sound in this room. Do you hear it?”

The maid nodded and her distrustful attitude changed to one of indifference.

“It’s a machine of some sort,” she answered. “I hear it running every once in a while.”

Penny was afraid to loiter by the door any longer lest her own voice bring Ralph Fergus to investigate. As the cleaning woman picked up her mop and started on down the hall, she fell into step with her.

“Who occupies Room 27?” she inquired casually.

“No one,” said the maid. “The hotel uses it.”

“What goes on in there anyway? I thought I heard teletype machines.”

The maid was unfamiliar with the technical name Penny had used. “It’s just a contraption that prints letters and figures,” she informed. “When I first came to work at the hotel I made a mistake and went in there to do some cleaning. Mr. Fergus, he didn’t like it and said I wasn’t to bother to dust up there again.”

“Doesn’t anyone go into the room except Mr. Fergus?”

“Just him and George Jewitt.”

“And who is he? One of the owners of the hotel?”

“Oh, no. George Jewitt works for Mr. Fergus. He takes care of the machines, I guess.”

“You were saying that the machine prints letters and figures,” prompted Penny. “Do you mean messages one can read?”

“It was writing crazy-like when I watched it. The letters didn’t make sense nohow. Mr. Fergus he told me the machines were being used in some experiment the hotel was carrying on.”

“Who occupies the nearby rooms?” Penny questioned. “I should think they would be disturbed by the machines.”

“Rooms on this corridor are never assigned unless everything else is full up,” the maid explained.

Pausing at a door, the cleaning woman fitted a master key into the lock.

“There’s one thing more I’m rather curious about,” said Penny quickly. “It’s this Green Room I hear folks mentioning.”

The maid gazed at her suspiciously again. “I don’t know anything about any Green Room,” she replied.

Entering the bedroom with her cleaning paraphernalia, she closed the door behind her.

“Went a bit too far that time,” thought Penny, “but at least I learned a few facts of interest.”

Turning, she retraced her steps to Room 27, but she was afraid to linger there lest Ralph Fergus should discover her loitering in the hall. Miss Miller had not put in an appearance when she returned to the elevators. She decided not to wait.

Scribbling a brief note of explanation, Penny left the paper in a corner of the sofa and hobbled down the stairway to the first floor. She let herself out the back way without attracting undue attention. Safely in the open once more she retreated to her bench under the ice-coated trees.

“I need to give this whole problem a good think,” she told herself. “Here I have a number of perfectly good clues but they don’t fit together. I’m almost as far from getting evidence against Fergus and Maxwell as I was at the start.”

Penny could not understand why the hotel would have need for teletype machine service. Such machines were used in newspaper offices, for railroad communication, brokerage service, and occasionally in very large plants with widely separated branch offices. Suddenly she recalled that her father had once told her Mr. Maxwell kept in touch with his chain of hotels by means of such a wire service. Surely it was an expensive and unnecessary means of communication.

The cleaning woman’s information that messages came through in unintelligible form convinced Penny a code was being used—a code to which she had the key. But why did Maxwell and Fergus find it necessary to employ one? If their messages concerned only the routine operation of the various hotels in the chain, there would be no need for secrecy.

The one message she had interpreted—“No Train Tomorrow”—undoubtedly had been received by teletype transmission. But Penny could not hazard a guess as to its true meaning. She feared it might be in double code, and that the words did not have the significance usually attributed to them.

“If only I could get into Room 27 and get my hands on additional code messages I might be able to make something out of it,” she mused. “The problem is how to do it without being caught.”

Penny had not lost interest in the Green Room. She was inclined to believe that its mystery was closely associated with the communication system of the hotel. But since, for the time being at least, the problem of penetrating beyond the guarded Green Door seemed unsolvable, she thought it wiser to center her sleuthing attack elsewhere.

“All I can do for the next day or so is to keep an eye on Ralph Fergus and Harvey Maxwell,” she told herself. “If I see a chance to get inside Room 27 I’ll take it.”

Penny arose with a sigh. She would not be likely to have such a chance unless she made it for herself. And in her present battered state, her mind somehow refused to invent clever schemes.

The walk back up the mountain road was a long and tiring one. Finally reaching the lodge after many pauses for rest, Penny stood for a time watching the skiers, and then entered the house.

Mrs. Downey was not in the kitchen. Hearing voices from the living room, Penny went to the doorway and paused there. The hotel woman was talking with a visitor, old Peter Jasko.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Penny apologized for her intrusion. She started to retreat.

Peter Jasko saw her and the muscles of his leathery face tightened. Pushing back his chair he got quickly to his feet.

“You’re the one who has been trespassing on my land!” he accused, his voice unsteady from anger. “You’ve been helping my granddaughter disobey my orders!”

Taken by surprise, Penny could think of nothing to say in her own defense.

After his first outburst, Peter Jasko ignored the girl. Turning once more to Mrs. Downey he said in a rasping voice:

“You have my final decision, Ma’am. I shall not renew the lease.”

“Please, Mr. Jasko,” Mrs. Downey argued quietly. “Think what this means to me! If I lose the ski slopes I shall be compelled to give up the lodge. I’ve already offered you more than I can afford to pay.”

“Money ain’t no object,” the old man retorted. “I’m against the whole proposition.”

“Nothing I can say will make you reconsider?”

“Nothing, Ma’am.”

Picking up his cap, a ridiculous looking affair with ear muffs, Peter Jasko brushed past Penny and went out the door.