Freaks of Fortune by Oliver Optic

Doubtless a person with Mr. C. Augustus Ebenier's pretensions to gentility should have sent down his card to the individuals engaged in conference below before he went down himself; but the circumstances did not permit the exercise of this degree of courtesy. In fact the steward had no intention forcibly to intrude himself upon the persons below; only to obtain a glance at them. He was a man of intelligence, and the arrest of his captain, in whose character he had a becoming interest, was enough to assure him that something was wrong. He had listened patiently to the details of the examination, and while he was willing to admit that the old man had been robbed of his gold, it never entered his head that Levi was guilty of the crime.

The muffled speech of the two men in the Hotel de Poisson, and the unseemly hour they had chosen for their conference, suggested to the steward that they had something to do with this robbery. He had vainly endeavored to identify their voices, and as a last resort, failing to obtain any information by other means, he decided to obtain one glance at them at all hazards. Perhaps it was well for him that the timbers broke beneath his weight, for the men, not relishing the intrusion, might have subjected him to much bodily harm.