Having in this conversation broken the ice (and almost every rule of French grammar), Maitland began to lead up craftily to the great matter—the affair of the bearskin coat. Did many English use the hotel? Had any of his countrymen been there lately? He remembered that when he left England a friend of his had asked him to inquire about an article of dress—a great-coat—which he had left somewhere, perhaps in a cab. Could monsieur the Porter tell him where he ought to apply for news about the garment, a coat in peau d’ours?
On the mention of this raiment a clerkly-looking man, who had been loitering in the office of the concierge, moved to the neighborhood of the door, where he occupied himself in study of a railway map hanging on the wall.
The porter now was all smiles. But, certainly! Monsieur had fallen well in coming to him. Monsieur wanted a lost coat in skin of the bear? It had been lost by a compatriot of monsieur’s? Would monsieur give himself the trouble to follow the porter to the room where lost baggage was kept?
Maitland, full of excitement, and of belief that he now really was on the trail, followed the porter, and the clerkly man (rather a liberty, thought Maitland) followed him.
The porter led them to a door marked “private,” and they all three entered.
The clerkly-looking person now courteously motioned Maitland to take a chair.
The Englishman sat down in some surprise.
“Where,” he asked, “was the bearskin coat?”
“Would monsieur first deign to answer a few inquiries? Was the coat his own, or a friend’s?”
“A friend’s,” said Maitland, and then, beginning to hesitate, admitted that the garment only belonged to “a man he knew something about.”