They found themselves in a narrow passage, and immediately to their left was a glass window like the window of a conciergerie, one panel of which was open and looked into a dingy office lit by a single gas jet. There was nothing in the office but a safe, a desk round the wall, and some high stools, while a cheap French clock ticked from a bracket upon the wall.
"At any rate, whoever they are, they have not gone," said Deschamps with satisfaction. "Now we shall be all right," and as he said it he rapped loudly with his knuckles upon the little counter in front of the glass partition. They waited for nearly half a minute, but there was no response. Finally Gregory took his walking stick and beat a tattoo upon the counter. The sound of his knocking had hardly died away when footsteps were heard in the distance. They grew nearer, and a door leading into the office behind the partition was pushed open, and a strange and rather startling figure entered.
This was a little man not more than four feet high, wearing a round black cap of alpaca, a green baize apron, and a huge circular pair of spectacles. His face was brown and shrivelled. A fine network of wrinkles was all over it, and beneath the alpaca cap were straggling locks of dingy white. The nose which supported the pair of grotesque horn spectacles was large and bird-like, the mouth below was innocent and kindly.
The little man, in short, looked exactly like the traditional toy or clock maker of Nuremberg in a comic opera, stepping clean off the stage to greet the new-comers.
He looked up at them with a courteous but inquiring glance as he turned up the gas jet and they saw him more clearly. Then, placing two soiled and wrinkled, but delicate and capable, hands upon the counter, he made an odd bow.
"Messieurs?" he said, in a thin, piping voice.
Deschamps raised his hat. "I am sorry to say that my friend and I have lost our way," he began. "The fog is very thick to-night, and it is growing thicker and thicker. We have come quite out of our route, and do not know where we are. We are trying to get to the Latin Quarter, where we live."
The little man raised his hands, and as he did so, both young men noticed how prehensile and delicate they were—the hands of a master workman.
"Mon Dieu!" he said, "but you are very far out of your way, indeed, gentlemen. This is the Rue Petite Louise. It is not a thoroughfare at all. It is only a cul-de-sac, which winds among the wood-yards. Between here and the Latin Quarter the district is very congested, and you might walk about all night in a fog like this unless you could find a taxi-cab."