st. M. Etienne, coughing,
pursued his inquiries:

"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a
friend, then, in the building?"

"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."

"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Etienne
persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M.
Bernet?"

"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of
chattering here all day."

"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Etienne, lightly setting foot
on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to
break your head, mon vieillard."

We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the
back, whereon M. Etienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and
heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be
knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it
again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while
we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden
wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the
marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a
market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne
away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking,
as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him
pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real
creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.

It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened,
letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood
a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.

"Madame," M. Etienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess,
"I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you
could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"

"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and
manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not
believe he has been in since. He went out about nine--or it may have
been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till
after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much
as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last nig