Crevel's little house, for he owned it, had
additional rooms with a glass skylight, built out on to the adjoining
plot, under conditions that it should have no story added above the
ground floor, so that the structure was entirely hidden by the lodge
and the projecting mass of the staircase.
This back building had long served as a store-room, backshop, and
kitchen to one of the shops facing the street. Crevel had cut off
these three rooms from the rest of the ground floor, and Grindot had
transformed them into an inexpensive private residence. There were two
ways in--from the front, through the shop of a furniture-dealer, to
whom Crevel let it at a low price, and only from month to month, so as
to be able to get rid of him in case of his telling tales, and also
through a door in the wall of the passage, so ingeniously hidden as to
be almost invisible. The little apartment, comprising a dining-room,
drawing-room, and bedroom, all lighted from above, and standing partly
on Crevel's ground and partly on his neighbor's, was very difficult to
find. With the exception of the second-hand furniture-dealer, the
tenants knew nothing of the existence of this little paradise.
The doorkeeper, paid to keep Crevel's secrets, was a capital cook.
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