“Poof!” said Houdon, dismissing the argument with a trill upon his invisible piano. “La-la-la!”
“Without doubt to mark the event you will give a dinner?” suggested Garnier.
“Without doubt,” said Houdon.
Cartaret said that he would give a dinner that very evening if Pasbeaucoup would strain the Median laws of the establishment so far as to trust him for a few days, and Pasbeaucoup, receiving the necessary nod from Madame, said that they would be but too happy to trust M. Cartarette for any sum and for any length of time that he might choose to name.
So Cartaret left them for a few hours and went back to his room at the earliest possible moment for finding Vitoria returned from her class. This time he not only knocked: he tried, in his haste, the knob of the door, and the door, swinging open, revealed an empty room, stripped of even its furniture.
He nearly fell downstairs to the cave of Refrogné.
“Where are they?” he demanded.
Had monsieur again been missing strawberries? Where were what?
“Where is Mlle. Urola—where are the occupants of the room across from mine?” Cartaret’s frenzied tones implied that he would hold the concierge personally responsible for whatever might have happened to his neighbors.
“Likely they are occupying some other room by this time,” growled Refrogné. “I was unaware that they were such great friends of monsieur.”