"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M. Étienne, coughing, pursued his inquiries:
"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a friend, then, in the building?"
"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."
"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Étienne persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M. Bernet?"
"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of chattering here all day."
"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Étienne, lightly setting foot on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to break your head, mon vieillard."
We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the back, whereon M. Étienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.
It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened, letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.
"Madame," M. Étienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess, "I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"
"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not believe he has been in since. He went out about nine—or it may have been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last night, the day was so hot, and I was a long time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it must have been after ten, because they were asleep, and the man stumbling on the stairs woke Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't you, my angel?"