“What!” he exclaimed. “You know Cavaillon?”
“So it seems,” answered M. Verduret with a smile, “but we have no time to talk; come on, hurry!”
“Where are we gong now?”
“You will soon know; walk fast!”
And he set the example by striding rapidly toward the Rue Lafayette. As they went along he continued talking more to himself than to Prosper.
“Ah,” said he, “it is not by putting both feet in one shoe, that one wins a race. The track once found, we should never rest an instant. When the savage discovers the footprints of an enemy, he follows it persistently, knowing that falling rain or a gust of wind may efface the footprints at any moment. It is the same with us: the most trifling incident may destroy the traces we are following up.”
M. Verduret suddenly stopped before a door bearing the number 81.
“We are going in here,” he said to Prosper; “come.”
They went up the steps, and stopped on the second floor, before a door over which was a large sign, “Fashionable Dressmaker.”
A handsome bell-rope hung on the wall, but M. Verduret did not touch it. He tapped with the ends of his fingers in a peculiar way, and the door instantly opened as if someone had been watching for his signal on the other side.