Hanaud disagreed. "This is a night for alibis," he returned, lowering his voice; "good, sound, incontestable alibis. All but those engaged will be publicly with their friends, and those engaged do not know how near we are to their secrets."
They turned into a narrow street and kept on its left-hand side.
"Do you know where we are?" Hanaud asked. "No? Yet we are near to the Maison Crenelle. On the other side of these houses to our left runs the street of Charles-Robert."
Jim Frobisher stopped dead.
"It was here, then, that you came last night after I left you at the Prefecture," he exclaimed.
"Ah, you recognised me, then!" Hanaud returned imperturbably. "I wondered whether you did when you turned at the gates of your house."
On the opposite side of the street the houses were broken by a high wall, in which two great wooden doors were set. Behind the wall, at the end of a courtyard, the upper storey and the roof of a considerable house rose in a steep ridge against the stars.
Hanaud pointed towards it.
"Look at that house, Monsieur! There Madame Raviart came to live whilst she waited to be set free. It belongs to the Maison Crenelle. After she married Simon Harlowe, they would never let it, they kept it just as it was, the shrine of their passion—that strange romantic couple. But there was more romance in that, to be sure. It has been unoccupied ever since."
Jim Frobisher felt a chill close about his heart. Was that house the goal to which Hanaud was leading him with so confident a step? He looked at the gates and the house. Even in the night it had a look of long neglect and decay, the paint peeling from the doors and not a light in any window.