The landlord blew a cloud of smoke from his lips, and stared round at the speaker as if he had been a ghost.
“Why do you ask me that? ’Amlet! Can I forget it?”
Here was a bolt out of the blue! The tutor’s eye-glass dropped with a clatter against his cup, and Roger fetched a breath half gasp, half sigh.
“You remember it!” exclaimed he, seizing the man’s hand; “do you know, we have been a fortnight in Boulogne trying to find some one who did!”
“Would not you remember it,” replied the Frenchman, with a gesticulation, “if ’Amlet had put up at your inn and gone away without paying his bill?”
“Did one of the actors stay here, then?”
“One? There was twenty ’Amlets, and Miladi ’Amlets, and Mademoiselle ’Amlets. They all stay here, en famille. The house is full of ’Amlets. The stable is full. They bring with them a castle of ’Amlet, and a grave of ’Amlet. My poor house was all ’Amlet!”
“And,” inquired Mr Armstrong, flushed with the sudden discovery, but as cool as ever, “you had a pass to see the play, of course?”
“Mon dieu! it was all the pay I got. ’Amlet come to my house with his twenty hungry mouth, and eat me up, flesh and bone. He sleep in my beds, he sleep on my roof, he sleep in my stable. The place is ’Amlet’s. And all my pay is one piece of card bidding me see him play himself.”
“And was it well played?” Asked Mr Armstrong.