- Thornhill's apparently paid the fine and managed to leave court.
- He's decided the only thing to do is to take matters into his own hands and go looking for George Kaplan—and answers—himself.
- Thornhill learns that Kaplan hasn't answered his hotel phone in two days.
- He convinces his mother, who's come to the Plaza Hotel with him, to ask for a key to Kaplan's room. She's more innocent-looking than he is, Thornhill says.
- They go upstairs to the room together but find that things aren't as they should be. For one thing, no one has slept in Kaplan's bed.
- There are clothes and a few other odds and ends in the room but otherwise no sign of Kaplan. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
- The hotel staff is acting strange as well, as though no one had really seen Kaplan during his stay. The maid says Kaplan's "never around."
- And a valet who brings a suit to Kaplan's room says that he got the suit not from Kaplan directly, but from the room after Kaplan called the front desk the night before.
- The phone in Kaplan's hotel room rings, and Thornhill answers it, only to find that it's one of the men who abducted him from the hotel the previous day.
- When Thornhill says again that he's not Kaplan, the man on the phone says, "You answer his telephone and you live in his hotel room, and yet you are not Mr. Kaplan."
- The man hangs up, and when Thornhill asks, the operator informs him that the call was made from the lobby. Thornhill knows he'd better get out of there fast.