“Bless my soul! what else did we come here for? Did you think it was a pleasure-trip, merely to enjoy this lovely weather?” he said in a bantering tone.
“But we might be discovered.”
“Suppose we are? If the least noise betrays our presence, you have only to advance boldly as a friend come to visit a friend, and, finding the door open walked in.”
But unfortunately the heavy oak door was locked. M. Verduret shook it in vain.
“How foolish!” he said with vexation, “I ought to have brought my instruments with me. A common lock which could be opened with a nail, and I have not even a piece of wire!”
Thinking it useless to attempt the door, he tried successively every window on the ground-floor. Alas! each blind was securely fastened on the inside.
M. Verduret was provoked. He prowled around the house like a fox around a hen-coop, seeking an entrance, but finding none. Despairingly he came back to the spot in front of the house, whence he had the best view of the lighted window.
“If I could only look in,” he cried. “Just to think that in there,” and he pointed to the window, “is the solution of the mystery; and we are cut off from it by thirty or forty feet of cursed blank wall!”
Prosper was more surprised than ever at his companion’s strange behavior. He seemed perfectly at home in this garden; he ran about without any precaution; so that one would have supposed him accustomed to such expeditions, especially when he spoke of picking the lock of an occupied house, as if he were talking of opening a snuff-box. He was utterly indifferent to the rain and sleet driven in his face by the gusts of wind as he splashed about in the mud trying to find some way of entrance.
“I must get a peep into that window,” he said, “and I will, cost what it may!”