Duroy has taken rooms, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you show me to them, if you please.”
The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of the long range of keys, said: “You are Monsieur Duroy?”
“Yes, certainly.”
The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wallpaper of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor could be felt through it, had mahogany furniture, upholstered in green rep with a yellow pattern. The bedroom was so small that the bed three-parts filled it. It occupied the further end, stretching from one wall to the other—the large bed of a furnished lodging-house, shrouded in heavy blue curtains also of rep, and covered with an eiderdown quilt of red silk stained with suspicious-looking spots.