'There's a young person named Hatfield in the front attic,' was the reply, as the informant stared with all her eyes at the Count, who was certainly an unusual sort of apparition in Spray's Buildings.
As he strode up the dirty, rotten stairs, stumbling more than once, he thought to himself, as Dick had done, that Alice did not make her new life profitable, whatever it was.
'Poor girl!' he thought; 'if she's of the same mind now as she was when I saw her last, I suppose I must find an opportunity of doing good by stealth.'
The house, though poor enough, did not seem to be one of those overcrowded dens of which we have heard so much lately, and which a Royal Commission is to set right, as a Royal Commission always does set everything right. Or perhaps the lodgers were birds of prey, who only came home to roost at uncertain hours; or beasts of burden, who were only stabled at midnight to be harnessed again at sunrise. At anyrate, the Count saw no one on the stairs, and he saw no one in the front attic either. Not only no one, but no thing. The door and window were both open. The room appeared to have been swept and garnished, but was absolutely empty of everything but fog. There was another door opposite, but it was closed and locked.
'She's evidently not here. We'll try lower down.' But before he had time to turn he heard a foot on the stairs, coming up with the light and springy tread which is the result of good and well-fitting boots, and which does not mark those who walk through life, from the cradle to the grave, shod in boots several sizes too large and several pounds too heavy.
He glanced over the broken banisters, and recoiled hastily.
'The gentle Roland, by all that's mysterious!' he said, 'Now, what on earth can he want here? At anyrate, he'd better not see me.'
The landing on which he stood was very dark, and there was a heap of lumber, old boxes, a hopelessly broken chair, a tub, and some boards. Litvinoff crept behind them, and in his black coat and the obscurity of the dusky landing and the dark afternoon he felt himself secure. He had hardly taken up this position when Roland Ferrier's head appeared above the top stair, to be followed cautiously by the rest of him. He cast a puzzled look round the empty attic, tried the closed door, and, turning, went downstairs again.
Litvinoff was just coming out of his not over savoury lurking-place when he heard a voice on the landing below, which was not Roland's.
'Parbleu!' he said to himself; 'it rains Ferriers here this afternoon. Here's the engaging Richard, and evidently not in the best of tempers.'