I awoke with a start and looked about me, but could discern nothing, for the darkness was absolute, impenetrable. What it was that had disturbed me I could not guess. I was about to tell myself I had been dreaming, when I heard a stealthy footstep on the stair. A second followed. Some one was mounting cautiously. With heart leaping at promise of adventure, I grasped my sword and sat upright, noiselessly. The steps drew near and nearer; they were at the top of the stair—and in an instant some one had stumbled over my extended legs and come down with a crash upon the floor. I was upon the intruder in a flash, and was astonished to find it was a woman.
“Who are you?” I whispered fiercely, between my teeth. “And what seek you here?”
“Rather tell me what you seek here, Monsieur,” answered a voice twisted and quivering with rage and malice, but which I nevertheless recognized as that of the concierge. “You have rented the apartment, but not the landing in front of it.”
“I will occupy the landing no longer than to-night,” I said. “But you have not yet told me your business here.”
“I am going to bed,” she answered sullenly. “My room is the one at the end of the corridor.”
“Go, then,” I said, loosing my hold of her, my suspicions not yet allayed. “But remember that I shall still be here and it would be well for you to remain in your room till morning. Another fall such as that might snap some of your dry, old, rotten bones.”
The woman got slowly to her feet and I could hear her cursing softly to herself. She took a step away from me and paused. I could guess what her face was like!
“Since when has it been the fashion,” she snarled, “for a young man to give up his bed to a pretty girl and himself sleep without the door? It was not so in my day.”
“I can well believe it!” I retorted. “Begone!”
She shuffled slowly down the passage. I heard the opening and closing of a door and all was still.