"Seven!" answered the man's voice. Then the outer door opened, all went in, the doors closed and were locked, the footsteps in the hall died away, and the friends heard no more.
Very gingerly, as if some depredation on personal property had lately been committed, the two volunteer midnight guardians of the public weal climbed again over the area railings, after all had been still for a moment. Not a word passed between them. Harding stepped softly up the stone steps to the door and noted the number on it, then down again, as if he was treading on eggs. Leslie counted the number of houses from the corner, with steps not more sonorous, and looked around to see whether they could possibly not have been watched by a policeman, when getting into and out of the area, because they did not intend to steal. All these things accomplished, and apparently nothing more to be done, they went quietly down 5— Street to Lexington Avenue and sought their carriage.
CHAPTER V.
The Mystery of the Red Woman—Another of Tom Leslie's long Stories—An Incident of Paris in 1860—The Vision ofmthe White Mist—Two Men with one Wonder and one Purpose.
"And who was the red woman?"
It has been indicated in a former chapter that both Tom Leslie and Walter Lane Harding intended, at one period of the night, to go to bed as soon as possible. The event was that neither found that luxury until the milkman was bawling under the windows. Harding had contrived to raise a large amount of curiosity, especially about the "red woman" and her possible connection with the events of the evening, and Leslie tired and satisfied him, collectively and at intervals, with another long story before they separated. Only in his own words can that story be so conveyed as to be intelligible.
"I had returned from Vienna to Paris," he said, "late in 1860. No matter what I was doing in Paris; and as we are upon a serious subject, don't let me hear a word about 'grisettes' or the 'back room of a baker's shop.' I lodged in the little Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or three minutes' walk from the Louvre, for the long picture galleries of which I had an unfortunate weakness. I had a tradesman with a pretty wife for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit down comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space was three quarters of the time more than I needed.
"One of my intimates, a young Prussian by the name of Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hall-way, that night, well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow candle in a tin sconce was burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.
"My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered table in the hall (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to all appearance), and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the way, without a word, to the same room she had herself just quitted. There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that apartment sacred to the divine mysteries.