All of this time there was the lock with the key on the inside. Without being a spiritualist, Jean felt that nobody but spirits could come out of a room leaving the doors locked and the keys on the inside. But for that lock, he might have even set it down to optical illusion and have persuaded himself that perhaps she had really never entered that place at all.
As Jean Marot was not wholly given to illusions or superstitions, he logically concluded that there was some other outlet to that closet.
"And why such a thing as that?" he asked himself. What could it be for? Was it a trap? Perhaps it was a police souricière? He remembered the warning of Benoit.
Jean hesitated,—quite naturally, since he was up to the tricks of the political police. If this were a trap, why, Mlle. Fouchette must have known all about it! Yet that would be impossible.
Then he thought of M. de Beauchamp, and his brow cleared. Whatever the arrangement, it could have never been designed with regard to the present occupant of the appartement,—and M. de Beauchamp had escaped.
He lighted a cigarette and took a turn or two up and down,—a habit of his when lost in thought.
"Ah! it is a door of love!" he concluded. "Yes; that is all. Well, we shall find out about that pretty soon."
The more he thought of the handsome, godlike artist who had so mysteriously fled, why, the more he recalled Mlle. Fouchette's confusion on a certain evening when he first called on her, and her recent disinclination to discuss his disappearance. He was now certain that this mysterious exit emptied into her room. He smiled at his own sagacity. His philosophy found the same expression of the cabman of Rue Monge,—
"Toujours de même, ces femmes-là!"
He laughed at the trick she had played him; he would show her how quickly he had reached its solution. He went outside and tapped gently on her door.