All the same, one person there was whose interest
was thoroughly aroused, and this was Madame
Roustan. She had chanced to look out of her bedroom
window and had seen the four men examining the
shop next her own, the shop that had belonged to
a grocer but was now up for sale, he having retired
— and a fine shop it was too, just on the corner.
Then the very next morning they had entered the
shop, having doubtless obtained the key from the
baker; and that same afternoon a fifth man had
arrived bringing with him a long foot-rule and a
note-book. He had also brought many patterns of
paint — little bright-coloured strips on a bit of card-
board. The strangers had stood together in the street
pointing at the premises of her ex-neighbour, making
notes, holding patterns of paint against the door,
measuring the frontage, and the Lord knew what-all!
After which they had turned and strolled off down the
quay apparently engaged in earnest conversation.
Presently it was said between coffee and cognac,
between slicing onions and frying potatoes, that the
property was sold to that man who has stayed for a
week at the hotel —there would be a new grocer.
Bien, they hoped that he was honest and above all
cheap, not a usurer like his predecessor. Who was he?
Well, his name was Anatole Kahn — he had told the
baker that he was an Alsatian. Where was he? Ah,
$a . . . very possibly in Toulon arranging about the
title-deeds which was always a long and fatiguing
business. Then yawns, and the matter was melted
from their minds by the well-nigh intolerable heat
of the weather.
Workmen carne and began to torment the old shop;
its protests could be heard from morning till evening
as they tore down its groaning interior walls, ripped
up boards and laid pipes for a water supply which
was destined to feed nothing less than a bathroom.
232