"Nothing could be more discreet than that," said Trotter, getting up to pace the floor. He was frowning.
"It's quite cosy in our little dining-room upstairs. If you prefer, I'll ask Mirabeau to clear out and let us have the place to ourselves while—"
"Not at all. I'll stop with you, but I will not have poor old Mirabeau evicted. We will show the letter to him. He is a Frenchman and he can read between the lines far better than either of us."
At twelve-thirty, Mr. Bramble stuck a long-used card in the front door and locked it from the inside. The world was informed, in bold type, that he had gone to lunch and would not return until one-thirty.
In the rear of the floor above the book-shop were the meagrely furnished bedrooms and kitchen shared by J. Bramble and Pierre Mirabeau, clock-maker and repairer. The kitchen was more than a kitchen. It was also a dining-room, a sitting-room and a scullery, and it was as clean and as neat as the proverbial pin. At the front was the work-shop of M. Mirabeau, filled with clocks of all sizes, shapes and ages. Back of this, as a sort of buffer between the quiet bedrooms and the busy resting-place of a hundred sleepless chimes, was located the combination store-room, utilized by both merchants: a musty, dingy place crowded with intellectual rubbish and a lapse of Time.
Mirabeau, in response to a shout from the fat Irishwoman who came in by the day to cook, wash and clean up for the tenants, strode briskly into the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He was a tall, spare old man with uncommonly bright eyes and a long grey beard.
His joy on beholding the young guest at their board was surpassed only by the dejection communicated to his sensitive understanding by the dismal expression on the faces of J. Bramble and Thomas Trotter.
He broke off in the middle of a sentence, and, still grasping the hand of the guest, allowed his gaze to dart from one to the other.
"Mon dieu!" he exclaimed, swiftly altering his tone to one of the deepest concern. "What has happened? Has some one died? Don't tell me it is your grandfather, my boy. Don't tell me that the old villain has died at last and you will have to go back and step into his misguided boots. Nothing else can—"
"Worse than that," interrupted Trotter, smiling. "I've lost my situation."