“Just left,” replied Simon. “He had a last look at Capet just before my wife locked the brat up in the inner room. Now he’s gone back to his lodgings.”
A man carrying a chest, empty of its drawers, on his back now came stumbling down the tower staircase. Madame Simon followed close on his heels, steadying the chest with one hand.
“We had better begin to load up the cart,” she called to her husband in a high-pitched querulous voice; “the corridor is getting too much encumbered.”
She looked suspiciously at Chauvelin and at Armand, and when she encountered the former’s bland, unconcerned gaze she suddenly shivered and drew her black shawl closer round her shoulders.
“Bah!” she said, “I shall be glad to get out of this God-forsaken hole. I hate the very sight of these walls.”
“Indeed, the citizeness does not look over robust in health,” said Chauvelin with studied politeness. “The stay in the tower did not, mayhap, bring forth all the fruits of prosperity which she had anticipated.”
The woman eyed him with dark suspicion lurking in her hollow eyes.
“I don’t know what you mean, citizen,” she said with a shrug of her wide shoulders.
“Oh! I meant nothing,” rejoined Chauvelin, smiling. “I am so interested in your removal; busy man as I am, it has amused me to watch you. Whom have you got to help you with the furniture?”
“Dupont, the man-of-all-work, from the concierge,” said Simon curtly. “Citizen Heron would not allow any one to come in from the outside.”