“Gentlemen,” said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, “good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here,” pointing with his hand, “near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!”

I had been wondering why rental arrangements were important to the story. I guess the Jacques thing is some kind of secret password?

Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years

Lots of cultural knowledge taken for granted in that paragraph. I think Mrs. Southcott is Joanna Southcott, a woman in England who started her own religious cult. Life Guards are the senior cavalry regiment of the British Army. The Cock-lane ghost was a famous hoax in England when a family created a fake ghost to accuse their dead daughter’s husband of murder.