Black Eyed Susan first passed me in the corridor, just after the old woman had pushed me into it. Black Eyed Susan’s eyes were black as ink from outer space, and she stared a moment, coldly with them, at me. But the old woman was still there, poking the twigs of her fingers into my side.

“What? What is it?” I mumbled to her. I had become confused, but already Black Eyed Susan had turned the corridor corner and was lost to view.

“In there,” rasped the old woman.

“Where? Why?”

“There, there.”

Across the corridor was a door, one of many. “There?”

Like a mouse all in black, though not a black like Black Eyed Susan’s, the old woman continued to push me forward as if I were on wheels, towards the door. It was marked Private.

“But—” I said.

Sharply, leaning past me, she rapped on the door with her horn-rimmed knuckles. For a mouse, the old woman was quite large, but for a woman quite small, shriveled down nearly to a husk, but a hard one.

From within the room a male voice said, “Enter. If you must.”

The old woman turned the handle of the door, thrust me through, and slammed it at my back. A big, warm room, fi re in its grate, armchairs strewn about. Behind a polished desk piled with ledgers and papers, a man of average age and some indications of wealth, eyed me over his spectacles.

“Who are you?” he inquired, without interest.

“My name is Esther Garber.”

“And?”

“I’ve come to work at the hotel.”

“And so?”

“Monsieur, I was pushed into this room by an old woman.”

“Ah!” A bark of laughter burst, beneath his narrow mustache.

“Granny at her old tricks.”

“Oh, was it your grandmother then, Monsieur?”

He drew himself up, removed his glasses, and scanned me intently. “I am the Patron. Th is hotel is mine. Normally you’d have no dealings with me. All that is seen to by Madame Ghoule, whom, I assume, you have already met when hired. However, the old lady you refer to, Madame Cora, will tend to drag to my notice any new girl on the staff I might, she supposes, fancy.”

My face became blank. I met his eyes with all the hauteur of Black Eyed Susan’s. Knowing, nevertheless, that if he must have me, then he must, since it was generally the safest way. Besides. I needed the job here, lowly as it was. My money had run out; and beyond the clean windows of the Patron’s boudoir, light snow was already falling on the little French town.

He said, smiling with disdain, “Well, what do you think?”

“I’m surprised,” I said, manifesting I hoped a halfway ordinary feminine reaction.

“Don’t be,” said the Patron. “My grandmother is mad, of course. Anyway, you’re not my type—” what he actually said was, not my bite of biscuit.