"All that is easy," replied La Couteau, "I understand perfectly, and you can rely on me. I shall need a little time, however, and the best plan will be for me to tell you of the result of my researches when I next come to Paris. And if it suits you you will find me to-day fortnight, at two o'clock, at Broquette's office in the Rue Roquépine. I am quite at home there, and the place is like a tomb."
Some days later, as Mathieu was again at the Beauchêne works with his son Blaise, he was observed by Constance, who called him to her and questioned him in such direct fashion that he had to tell her what steps he had taken. When she heard of his appointment with La Couteau for the Wednesday of the ensuing week, she said to him in her resolute way: "Come and fetch me. I wish to question that woman myself. I want to be quite certain on the matter."
In spite of the lapse of fifteen years Broquette's nurse-office in the Rue Roquépine had remained the same as formerly, except that Madame Broquette was dead and had been succeeded by her daughter Herminie. The sudden loss of that fair, dignified lady, who had possessed such a decorative presence and so ably represented the high morality and respectability of the establishment, had at first seemed a severe one. But it so happened that Herminie, a tall, slim, languid creature that she was, gorged with novel-reading, also proved in her way a distinguished figurehead for the office. She was already thirty and was still unmarried, feeling indeed nothing but loathing for all the mothers laden with whining children by whom she was surrounded. Moreover, M. Broquette, her father, though now more than five-and-seventy, secretly remained the all-powerful, energetic director of the place, discharging all needful police duties, drilling new nurses like recruits, remaining ever on the watch and incessantly perambulating the three floors of his suspicious, dingy lodging-house.
La Couteau was waiting for Mathieu in the doorway. On perceiving Constance, whom she did not know, for she had never previously met her, she seemed surprised. Who could that lady be? what had she to do with the affair? However, she promptly extinguished the bright gleam of curiosity which for a moment lighted up her eyes; and as Herminie, with distinguished nonchalance, was at that moment exhibiting a party of nurses to two gentlemen in the office, she took her visitors into the empty refectory, where the atmosphere was as usual tainted by a horrible stench of cookery.
"You must excuse me, monsieur and madame," she exclaimed, "but there is no other room free just now. The place is full."
Then she carried her keen glances from Mathieu to Constance, preferring to wait until she was questioned, since another person was now in the secret.
"You can speak out," said Mathieu. "Did you make the inquiries I spoke to you about?"
"Certainly, monsieur. They were made, and properly made, I think."
"Then tell us the result: I repeat that you can speak freely before this lady."
"Oh! monsieur, it won't take me long. You were quite right: there were two apprentices at the wheelwright's at Saint-Pierre, and one of them was Alexandre-Honoré, the pretty blonde's child, the same that we took together over yonder. He had been there, I found, barely two months, after trying three or four other callings, and that explains my ignorance of the circumstance. Only he's a lad who can stay nowhere, and so three weeks ago he took himself off."