Ernestine moved furtively to Julot's side, and affecting to be interested only in the argument going on between Geoffroy and Benoît, said without looking at him:
"The pale man, with the greenish complexion, said to the man with the guitar, 'It's he, all right, because of the burn in the palm of his hand.'"
Julot choked back an oath, and instinctively clenched his fist, but Ernestine already had moved on and was huskily chaffing the young man with the budding beard. Julot sat with sombre face and angry eyes, only replying in curt monosyllables to the occasional remarks of his next neighbour, Billy Tom. Marie, the waitress, was passing near him and he signed to her to stop.
"Say, Marie," he said, nodding towards the window that was behind him, "what does that window open on to?"
The girl thought for a moment.
"On to the cellar," she said; "this hall is in the basement."
"And the cellar," Julot went on; "how do you get out of that?"
"You can't," the servant answered; "there's no door; you have to come through here."
Momentarily becoming more uneasy, Julot scrutinised the long tunnel of a room at the extreme end of which he was sitting; there was only one means of egress, up the narrow corkscrew staircase leading to the ground-floor, and at the very foot of that staircase was the table occupied by the green man and the man with the guitar.