Dusk fell very quickly, gloom descending onto the Hotel du Vieux Saule so that the unlit marquis could not be read from beyond twenty meters’ distance. The streetlamps as usual lent their charming ambiance to Paris-after-dark, but they were useless for anything else. Illumination on the sidewalk outside the hotel was confined to the pool of light spilling through the glass door of the lobby.
A dark, slender figure moved quickly into this pool, opened the door, and disappeared into the hotel, the early night returning to undisturbed quiet except for the motor traffic flowing by in either direction. Shops were closed, and there were few pedestrians about. But after perhaps five minutes, another dark figure moved into the light, this one big, heavy. Nobody was watching, but if they had been, they would have seen the big man look deliberately through the door and into the hotel lobby, pausing very slightly for a good look, before he resumed his brisk walk and passed on into the deepening Paris night.