'No. I'm the landlady, and she'd have told me if she told anyone.'
'Thank you,' he said, and turned to pass down the staircase.
'Stay, though,' he said; 'have you any Frenchmen lodging here?'
'I don't want no dratted furriners here, and I haven't got none, thank God!'
'Of course not,' said Ferrier to himself, and strode downstairs.
'No foreigners here? Don't be too sure, my good woman,' Litvinoff muttered to himself, as he heard the landlady's door close to a continued accompaniment of reiterated objections in that lady's shrill treble. 'I'd better get out of this house of mystery at once. I trust that the outraged female proprietor of this staircase will not demand my blood. Well, whatever happens, I suppose we shall not see the amiable brothers to-night, and that will mean a tête-à-tête,' he added, as he came out from his dusty retirement, and carefully removed all traces of the same from his clothes. When he found himself once more in the chill, foggy, outside air, he looked up and down the court, and smiled.
'The situation becomes interesting,' he said to himself, 'and demands another of these very excellent cigars.'