the railing of the gardens. It never entered our
heads to make use of these conveyances. She was too hurried, perhaps,
and as to myself--well, she had taken my arm confidingly. As we were
ascending the easy incline of the Corraterie, all the shops shuttered
and no light in any of the windows (as if all the mercenary population
had fled at the end of the day), she said tentatively--

"I could run in for a moment to have a look at mother. It would not be
much out of the way."

I dissuaded her. If Mrs. Haldin really expected to see Razumov that
night it would have been unwise to show herself without him. The sooner
we got hold of the young man and brought him along to calm her mother's
agitation the better. She assented to my reasoning, and we crossed
diagonally the Place de Theatre, bluish grey with its floor of slabs of
stone, under the electric light, and the lonely equestrian statue
all black in the middle. In the Rue de Carouge we were in the poorer
quarters and approaching the outskirts of the town. Vacant building
plots alternated with high, new houses. At the corner of a side street
the crude light of a whitewashed shop fell into the night, fan-like,
through a wide doorway. One could see from a distance the inner wall
with its scantily furnished shelves, and the deal counter painted brown.
That was the house. Approaching it along the dark stretch of a fence
of tarred planks, we saw the narrow pallid face of the cut angle, five
single windows high, without a gleam in them, and crowned by the heavy
shadow of a jutting roof slope.

"We must inquire in the shop," Miss Haldin directed me.

A sallow, thinly whiskered man, wearing a dingy white collar and a
frayed tie, laid down a newspaper, and, leaning familiarly on both
elbows far over the bare counter, answered that the person I was
inquiring for was indeed his _locataire_ on the third floor, but that
for the moment he was out.

"For the moment," I repeated, after a glance at Miss Haldin. "Does this
mean that you expect him back at once?"

He was very gentle, with ingratiating eyes and soft lips. He smiled
faintly as though he knew all about everything. Mr. Razumov, after being
absent all day, had returned early in the evening. He was very surprised
about half an hour or a little more since to see him come down again.
Mr. Razumov left his key, and in the course of some words which passed
between them had remarked that he was going out because he needed air.

F