The Golden Web by E. Phillips Oppenheim — Read

It was three o'clock in the morning when Deane softly opened the door of his bedroom in the Hotel Universal, and looked up and down the side corridor. There was no one in sight, no sound of any one passing in the main corridor, a few yards away. For several moments he stood and listened intently. Then he moved a few yards to the left, and stopped opposite another door. He scrutinized the number, -- 27. It was the number he sought. He felt in his pocket for the keys which he had collected from various sources. One by one he tried them in the lock. In vain! Not one fitted. He tried the handle of the door softly. There was no doubt about it. The door was securely fastened. He recognized at once the failure of his first attempt, and returned to his room. His bed was as yet undisturbed. He had not even changed the tweed travelling suit in which he had journeyed up from Rakney. It was a fool's errand, after all, he thought, on which he had come.

Yet somehow or other, after his conversation with Ruby Sinclair, after he had realized how thorough her search would indeed be, how convinced she was that somewhere amongst the effects of the dead man lay the secret of wealth, he had realized more completely than ever before the danger in which he stood. Granted, even, that no suspicion of complicity with Rowan attached to him, his financial ruin would be none the less complete if that paper should ever come into the hands of people who understood its worth. Never had the situation seemed so clear, so dangerous, as that night after he had walked home with the girl and turned his face again toward the sea. Something in the very desolation of the marshes seemed to help thought, perhaps by the absence of any distracting object. There was a sense of breadth about the place. As he walked, with only the murmur of the sea in his ears, he saw things clearly.