the viewpoint, he focused on three... no, four doors on his left that were possible. Beginning with the second door from the staircase, one-third the distance to the elevators.
Which one?
McAuliff began walking noiselessly on the thick carpet down the corridor, hugging the left wall. He paused before each door as he passed, his head constantly turning, his eyes alert, his ears listening for the sound of voices, the tinkling of glasses. For anything.
Nothing.
Silence. Everywhere.
He looked at the brass numbers. 218, 216, 214, 212. Even 210. Any farther would be incompatible with what he remembered.
He stopped at the halfway point and turned. Perhaps he knew enough. Enough to tell Westmore Tallon. Alison had said that the tolerance range for the electronic bugs was one hundred yards from first positioning to the receiving equipment. This floor, this section of the hotel, was well within that limit. Behind one of those doors was a tape recorder activated by a man in front of a speaker or with earphones clamped to his head.
Perhaps it was enough to report those numbers. Why should he look further?
Yet he knew he would. Someone had seen fit to intrude on his life in a way that filled him with revulsion. Few things caused him to react violently, but one of them was the actual, intended invasion of his privacy. And greed. Greed, too, infuriated him. Individual, academic, corporate.
Someone named Craft - because of his greed - had instructed his minions to invade Alex's personal moments.
Alexander Tarquin McAuliff was a very angry man.
He started back towards the staircase, retracing his steps, close to the wall, closer to each door, where he stopped and stood immobile. Listening.
214, 216, 218...
And back once again. It was a question of patience. Behind one of those doors was a man in a yellow shirt. He wanted to find that man.
He heard it.
Room 214.
It was a radio. Or a television set. Someone had turned up the volume of a television set. He could not distinguish the words, but he could hear the excitement behind the rapid bursts of dialogue from a clouded speaker, too loud to avoid distortion.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a harsh, metallic crack of a door latch. Inches away from McAuliff someone had pulled back the bolt and was about to open the door.
Alex raced to the staircase. He could not avoid noise, he could only reduce it as much as possible as he lurched into the dimly lit concrete foyer. He whipped around, pushing the heavy steel door closed as fast and as quietly as he could; he pressed the fingers of his left hand around the edge, preventing the door from shutting completely, stopping the sound of metal against metal at the last half second.
He peered through the crack. The man in the yellow shirt came out of the room, his attention still within it. He was no more than fifty feet away in the silent corridor - silent except for the sound of the television set. He seemed angry, and before he closed the door he looked inside and spoke harshly in a Southern drawl.
'Turn that fuckin' thing down, you goddamn ape!'
The man in the yellow shirt then slammed the door and walked rapidly towards the elevators. He remained at the end of the corridor, nervously checking his watch, straightening his tie, rubbing his shoes over the back of his trousers until a red light, accompanied by a soft, echoing bell, signalled the approach of an elevator. McAuliff watched from the stairwell two hundred feet away.
The elevator doors closed, and Alex walked out into the corridor. He crossed to Room 214 and stood motionless for a few moments. It was a decision he could abandon, he knew that. He could walk away, call Tallon, tell him the room number, and that would be that.
But it would not be very satisfying. It would not be satisfying at all. He had a better idea: He would take whoever was in that room to Tallon himself. If Tallon didn't like it, he could go to hell. The same for Holcroft. Since it was established that the electronic devices were planted by a man named Craft, who was in no way connected with the elusive Halidon, Arthur Craft could be taught a lesson. Alex's arrangements with Holcroft did not include abuses from third and fourth parties.
It seemed perfectly logical to get Craft out of the chess game. Craft clouded the issues, confused the pursuit.
McAuliff had learned two physical facts about Arthur Craft: