Perhaps he was even a little theatrical in his fancies, and remembered the crashes of sheet-iron thunder and the blinding blaze of the gunpowder lightning, that always accompanied the shot-cylinder rain when Macbeth was seeking the weird sisters for the second time—when the fearful incantations of "Der Freischutz" were about to be commenced—or when the ever-ready demon was invoked by Faust, the first printer-devil. If he had any of these fancies he was in a fair way of being accommodated; for casting a glance up at the heavens as they approached the house, he saw that the obscurity was becoming still denser; and more than once, above the rumble of the carts and omnibuses that made Broadway one wide earthquake of subterranean noises, he caught a far-off booming that he knew to be the thunder of the advancing storm, already playing its fearful overture among the mountains of Pennsylvania.
His companions were too much absorbed by the novelty of their errand, and a little expressed apprehension on the part of Bell that if the rain came on and the carriage should not be ready at the exact moment when it was wanted, her costly summer drapery might run a chance of being wetted and disordered,—to make any close examination of the outside of the building at the door of which Leslie rang; and indeed they had not the same reason for remarking any peculiarities. Leslie saw that it was certainly the same at which Harding and himself had stood two nights before—that the tree (his tree, for had he not "hugged" it?—and who shall dare, in this proper age, to "hug" what is not his own?)—that the tree stood in the relation he remembered, to the window—and that at that window the same white curtain was visible, though not swept back, and now covering all the sash completely. He almost thought that he could distinguish the flag in the pavement on which he must have struck the hardest when tumbling down from the tree, and his vivid imagination would not have been much surprised to see a slight dint there, such as may be made on a tin pot or a stovepipe by the iconoclastic hammer in the hand of an exuberant four-year-old.
On one of the lintels of the door, as he had not noticed on the previous visit, was a narrow strip of black japanned tin, with "Madame Elise Boutell" in small bronze letters, of that back-slope writing only made by French painters, and which can only be met with, ordinarily, in the French cities or those of the adjacent German provinces. It seems unlikely that any particular attention should have been paid to the latter unimportant detail at that moment; but the detail was really not an unimportant one. Among the half-working amusements of his idle hours in youth, Leslie had indulged in a little amateur sign-painting, and he boasted that he could distinguish one of the cities of the Union from any other, by the styles of the signs alone, if he should be set down blindfold in the commercial centre, and then allowed the use of his eyes. In the present instance, by the use of his quick faculty of observation, he saw that the lettering of the sign was no American imitation, but really French. The deductions were that it had been done in Paris—that it had been used there—that "Madame Elise Boutell" had used it for the same purpose there. Was not here a corroboration of the theory of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard?
All these observations, of course, had been made very briefly—in the little time necessary for Bell Crawford finally to congratulate herself that the ribbons of her hat would at least be sheltered by the house for a time, and for Joe Harris to remark what a dirty and tumble-down precinct Prince Street seemed to be, altogether. By this time, the ring was answered and the door opened by a neatly dressed negro girl, who seemed to have none of the peculiarities of the race except its color, and of whom Leslie asked:
"Madame Boutell? Can we see her?"
"If Monsieur and Mesdames will have the goodness to step into this room," was the reply of the servant, opening the door of the parlor, "Madame Boutell will have the honor of receiving them in a few moments."
"Aha!" said Leslie to himself, as they entered the room, the door closed and the negro-girl disappeared. "Aha! 'Monsieur' and 'Mesdames,' besides being marvellously correct in her speech and polite enough for a French dancing master! All this looks more and more suspicious."
"Nothing so very terrible here," remarked Josephine Harris, at once addressing her attention to some excellent prints, commonly framed, hanging on the wall. "Some of these pictures are very nice, and as I could throw away the frames, I should not much mind hooking them if I had a good opportunity."
"But the piano is shockingly out of tune," remarked Bell, who had immediately commenced a listless kind of assault on that ill-used indispensable of all rooms in which people are expected to wait.
"Bell, for conscience sake leave that piano alone! You have nearly murdered the one at home, and I do not see why you should be the enemy of the whole race!" was the complimentary reply of Josephine, which caused Bell, with a little pout on her lip, to leave the piano and commence tapping the cheap bronzes on the mantel with the end of her parasol, by way of discovering whether they were metal or plaster.