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.

Shelton produced the letter.

“Ah! now I know you”—­a pale smile broke through the Frenchman’s crow’s-feet—­“he spoke of you.  ‘If I can only find him,’ he used to say, ’I ‘m saved.’  I liked that young man; he had ideas.”

“Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?”

The Frenchman shook his head.

“Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea.”

“Do you think he will come back here?  But by that time I suppose, you’ll hardly be here yourself?”

A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman’s teeth: 

“I?  Oh, yes, sir!  Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging; I no longer have illusions.  I shave these specimens for a living, and shall shave them till the day of judgment.  But leave a letter with me by all means; he will come back.  There’s an overcoat of his here on which he borrowed money—­it’s worth more.  Oh, yes; he will come back—­a youth of principle.  Leave a letter with me; I’m always here.”

Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, “I’m always here,” touched him in their simplicity.  Nothing more dreadful could be said.

“Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?” he asked; “please keep the change for the trouble I am giving you.”

“Thank you,” said the Frenchman simply; “he told me that your heart was good.  If you don’t mind the kitchen, you could write there at your ease.”

Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen in company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to himself; and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention, suspecting that he was not sober.  Just as he was about to take his leave, however, the old fellow thus accosted him: