“You charge a tenant?”
“I charge nobody. It is you that charge, monsieur. I did not know that you possessed to be stolen. A thief of a tenant? But certainly. One cannot inquire the business of one’s tenants. What house is without a little thief?”
“I believe you did it!” said Cartaret.
Refrogné whistled, in the darkness, a bar of “Margarita.”
Houdon was passing by. He made suave enquiries.
“But not Refrogné,” he assured Cartaret. “You do an injustice to a worthy man, my dear friend. Besides, what is a box of strawberries to you?”
Cartaret felt that he was in danger of making a mountain of a molehill; he had the morbid fear, common to his countrymen, of appearing ridiculous. It occurred to him that it would not have been beyond Houdon to appropriate the berries, if he had happened into the room and found its master absent; but to bother further was to be once more absurd.
“I don’t suppose it does matter,” he said; “but my supplies have been going pretty fast lately, and if I was to catch the thief, I’d hammer the life out of him.”
“Magnificent!” gurgled Houdon as he passed gesturing into the street.
Cartaret returned toward his room. The dusk had fallen and, if he had not known the way so well, he would have had trouble in finding it. He was tired, too, and so he went slowly. That he also went softly he did not realize until he gently pushed open the door to his quarters.