CHAPTER XXVI.
AT THE GRAND TURK.
Tantaine took a cab, and, promising the cabman a handsome gratuity if he would drive fast, stopped at the spot where the Rue Blanche intersects the Rue de Douai, and told the coachman to wait for him, and entered the house where the younger Gandelu had installed the fair Madame de Chantemille.

It was some time before his ring at the door was answered, but at last the door was opened by a stout, red-faced girl, with an untidy cap.

Upon seeing Tantaine, she uttered an exclamation of delight, for it was the cook that had been placed in Zora's employment by M.
Mascarin's agency.
"Ah, Daddy Tantaine," said she, "you are as welcome as the sun in winter." "Hush, hush," returned the old man, gazing cautiously round him.
"Don't be frightened," returned the girl.

"Madame has gone to a place from when there is no return ticket, at least, for some time.

You know the greater the value of an article the closer we keep it under lock and key." Tantaine gathered from this that Rose had been arrested, and his astonishment appeared to be unmeasured.
"Surely you don't mean that she has gone to quod ?" said he.
"It is as I tell you," answered she; "but come in, and have a glass of wine, while you hear all about it." She led the old man into the dining-room, round the table in which a half dozen guests were seated, just concluding a late breakfast.
Tantaine at once recognized four of the several guests as servants whom he knew from their having applied for situations at the office, and there were two men of a very unprepossessing exterior.
"We are having a regular spree to-day," observed the cook, handing a bottle to Tantaine; "but yesterday there was not much of a jollification here, for just as I was setting about getting the dinner two fellows came in and asked for my mistress, and as soon as they saw her they clapped their hands on her and said that she must come to the stone jug.
When madame heard this she shrieked so loud as to have been heard in the next street.