The only answer was the deep and regular breathing of the young girl, indicating heavy and profound sleep.
Then he took a sudden resolution, and with an agility worthy of a youth of twenty, leaped to the ground and ran in the direction of the restaurant. A satchel like his, filled with money in its various and most seductive forms—gold, silver, bills, letters of exchange—was not to be lost in this way. Miranda flew.
Most of the lights in the restaurant were by this time extinguished; one lamp only still burned in each of the four-armed chandeliers; the waiters sat chatting together in corners or carried lazily to the kitchen obelisks of greasy plates and mountains of soiled napkins. On the large table, now almost empty, the two tall vases stood in solitary state, and in the dim light the white expanse of the table cloth had the lugubrious aspect of a winding sheet. On the counter a kerosene lamp shed around a circumscribed circle of yellowish light, by which the master of the establishment—the marble slab serving him for a desk—was making entries in a large account book. Miranda, still under the influence of his recent fright, went up to him quite close, touching him almost.
“Have you noticed—” he began breathless—“has any of the waiters found——”
“A satchel? Yes, Señor.”
The friend of Colmenar once more breathed freely.
“Is it yours?” asked the landlord, suspiciously.
“Yes, it is mine. Give it to me at once; the train is just going to start.”
“Have the goodness to give me some details that may serve to identify it.”
“It is of Russian leather—dark red—with plated clasps.”