“But we are in the way of these ladies; suppose we go down and take
something? We can come back when the child is comfortably put to bed.”
The good man lived, to tell the truth, in the same rooms in which the
thousand and one things he was continually buying were piled up in vast
heaps. There was no fixed place for his bed even. He slept where he
could, or, rather, wherever an accidental sale had cleared a space for
the time,--one night in a costly bed of the days of Louis XIV., and the
next night on a lounge that he would have sold for a few francs. Just
now he occupied a little closet not more than three-quarters full; and
here he asked the concierge to enter.
He poured some brandy into two small wineglasses, put a teakettle on the
fire, and sank into an arm-chair; then he said,--
“Well, M. Chevassat, what a terrible thing this is!”
His visitor had been well drilled by his wife, and said neither yes nor
no; but the old merchant was a man of experience, and knew how to loosen
his tongue.
“The most disagreeable thing about it,” he said with an absent air, “is,
that the doctor will report the matter to the police, and there will be
an investigation.”
Master Chevassat nearly dropped his glass.
“What? The police in the house? Well, good-by, then, to our lodgers; we
are lost. Why did that stupid girl want to die, I wonder! But no doubt
you are mistaken, my dear sir.”
“No, I am not. But you go too fast. They will simply ask you who that
girl is, how she supports herself, and where she lived before she came
here.”
“That is exactly what I cannot tell.”