“Then it is vacant?”
“Naturally,” replied the old man, with disagreeable brevity, and Fernet walked quickly up to his room.
“Why do I live in such a place?” he asked himself, surveying the four bare walls. “Everything about it is abominable, and that beggar, Pollitto, is a scoundrel. I shall move next week.”
He crossed over to the window and flung it open. The pepper-tree lay before him, crouching in the moonlight. He thought at once of Flavio Minetti.
“He is like this pepper-tree,” he said, aloud, “beautiful even in his deformity. No, I would not trade this pepper-tree for a dozen of the straightest trees in the world.” He stepped back from the window, and, lighting a lamp, set it upon a tottering walnut table. “Ah, André Fernet,” he mused, chidingly, “you are always snared by what is unusual. You should pray to God that such folly does not lead you to disaster.”
He went to the window and looked out again. The pepper-tree seemed to be bending close to the ground, as if seeking to hide something. Presently the wind parted its branches and the moonlight fell at its feet like a silver moth before a blackened candle.
André Fernet shivered and sighed. “Yes,” he repeated, again and again, “they are alike. They both are at once beautiful and hideous and they have strange secrets.... Well, I shall go on Thursday again, and maybe I shall see him. Who knows, if I am discreet he may tell me who killed this ridiculous musician Suvaroff.”
And with that he suddenly blew out the light.
On the next Thursday night, when Fernet entered the dining-room of the Hôtel de France his glance rested immediately upon Flavio Minetti. To his surprise the hunchback rose, drawing a chair out as he did so, and beckoning Fernet to be seated next him. For a moment Fernet hesitated, Berthe was just bringing on the soup.
“What! Are you afraid?” she said, mockingly, as she passed.