Ferragut advanced through the solitary street between two rows of freshly transplanted trees that were just sending forth their first growth. He looked at the façades of the torres made of blocks of cement imitating the stone of the old fortresses, or with tiles which represented fantastic landscapes, absurd flowers, bluish, glazed nymphs.
Upon getting out of the street car he made a resolution. He would look at the outside only of the house. Perhaps that would aid him in discovering the woman! Then he would just continue on his way.
But on reaching the torre, whose number he still kept in mind, and pausing a few seconds before its architecture of a feudal castle whose interior was probably like that of the beer gardens, he saw the door opening, and appearing in it the same woman that had talked with him in the flower Rambla.
"Come in, Captain."
And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the cook.
He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the façade with a Gothic fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls. Various wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame.
The house appeared uninhabited. Heavy soft curtains deadened every sound. The corpulent go-between had disappeared with the lightness of an immaterial being, as though swallowed up by the wall. While scowling at the portrait of the Kaiser, the sailor began to feel disquieted in this silence which appeared to him almost hostile…. And he was not carrying arms.
The smiling woman again presented herself with the same slippery smoothness.
"Come in, Don Ulysses."
She had opened a door, and Ferragut on advancing felt that this door was locked behind him.