Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week
ago. The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking,
sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly,
the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his
memories of Antonia. It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres
to London that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.

He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row. Dismissing his cab at
the corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in
question. It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in other
words, a "doss-house." By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with
a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with
soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking
for had gone without leaving his address.

"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make inquiry?"

"Yes; there's a Frenchman." And opening an inner door she bellowed:
"Frenchy! Wanted!" and disappeared.

A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and
stood, sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular
impression of some little creature in a cage.

"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto. What do you
want with him, if I may ask?" The little man's yellow cheeks were
wrinkled with suspicion.