"We went back….
"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for the fiftieth time…. Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'…
"'Mais tiens,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. 'Si c'est possible… si c'est possible… a double door with a grille? But perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies…. Come this way.'
"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted ruelle, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered old porte-cochère with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.
"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.
"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll … and off we started again….
"But another half-hour brought us back to the same place, and Carroll scratched his head.
"'Who lives there, anyway?' he said, glowering at the porte-cochère, chin forward, hands in pockets.
"'Nobody,' says Rangon, as much as to say 'look at it!' 'M'sieu then meditates taking it?'…
"Then I struck in, quite out of temper by this time.