In the hall below a surprise and a disappointment were in store for me. I had reached the bottom of the stairs when the shrill feminine accents of Mme. the proprietress struck unpleasantly on my ear.
“No! no! I tell you!” she was saying. “This man is not my lodger. He never came here with a dog. There,” she added volubly, and pointing an unwashed finger at Carissimo who was struggling and growling in my arms, “there is the dog. A gentleman brought him with him last Wednesday, when he inquired if he could have a room here for a few nights. Number twenty-five happened to be vacant, and I have no objection to dogs. I let the gentleman have the room, and he paid me twenty sous in advance when he took possession and told me he would keep the room three nights.”
“The gentleman? What gentleman?” the gendarme queried, rather inanely I thought.
“My lodger,” the woman replied. “He is out for the moment, but he will be back presently I make no doubt. The dog is his. . . .”
“What is he like?” the minion of the law queried abruptly.
“Who? the dog?” she retorted impudently.
“No, no! Your lodger.”
Once more the unwashed finger went up and pointed straight at me.
“He described him well enough just now; thin and slouchy in his ways. He has lank, yellow hair, a nose perpetually crimson—with the cold no doubt—and pale, watery eyes. . . .”
“Theodore,” I exclaimed mentally.