The door closed upon his dark, eager face, and he was gone. A moment later there was a sharp ringing of the bell of No. 92, the next room to that occupied by Mme. Devarges.
The truculent porter knocked at the door, and entered this room respectfully. There was no suspicion attached to the character of _its_ occupant. _He_ was well known as Mr. Jack Hamlin, a gambler.
"Why the devil did you keep me waiting?" said Jack, reaching from the bed, and wrathfully clutching his boot-jack.
The porter was about to hurriedly withdraw, when Jack stopped him with an oath.
"You've been long enough coming without shooting off like that. Who was that man that just left the next room?"
He flung a gold piece at the man, beat up his pillow, and turned his face to the wall. The porter still lingered, and Jack faced sharply round.
"Beg your pardon, sir; do you know anything about her?"
"No," said Jack, raising himself on his elbow; "but if I catch you hanging round that door, as you were five minutes ago, I'll"----.
Here Mr. Hamlin dropped his voice, and intimated that he would forcibly dislodge certain vital and necessary organs from the porter's body.
After the door closed again, Mr. Hamlin lay silent for an hour. At the end of that time he got up and began to dress himself slowly, singing softly to himself the while, as was his invariable custom, in that sweet tenor for which he was famous. When he had thus warbled through his toilet, replacing a small ivory-handled pistol in his waistcoat-pocket to one of his most heart-breaking notes, he put his hat on his handsome head, perhaps a trifle more on one side than usual, and stepped into the hall. As he sharply shut his door and locked it, the slight concussion of the thin partitions caused the door of his fair neighbour's room to start ajar, and Mr. Hamlin, looking up mechanically, saw the lady standing by the bureau, with her handkerchief to her eyes. Mr. Hamlin instantly stopped his warbling, and walked gravely downstairs. At the foot of the steps he met the porter. The man touched his hat.
"Who doesn't belong here?" asked Mr. Hamlin, coldly.
Mr. Hamlin quietly took out a cigar, lit it, and after one or two puffs, looked fixedly in the man's eyes, and said--