Success seemed hardly possible, for the house was isolated. There were neither any neighbours nor any janitor to question, and for nothing in the world would I have gone to call on Hélène. I decided, though, to carry out my plan.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE EXHIBITION
The means I employed in finding out who was Hélène's husband were very simple, and a lucky chance helped me to the discovery. The next morning I went in a cab, whose blinds I carefully closed, to a point just opposite the little house of the Beaumarchais garden, to see if some unforeseen circumstance would not help me in my projects. I did not have to wait long; about nine o'clock a man, carrying a package of newspapers, knocked at the green door and handed a paper to an elderly woman, whom I recognised as having been in my aunt's service.
I ordered my driver to follow the news-carrier; and when, after having distributed three or four other papers to several houses on the boulevard, he went off into a side street, I got out of the cab and accosted him:
"Tell me the names of the five people to whom you have just left your papers. You will earn two louis."
The man looked at me stupefied.
"I am asking you this because it is a bet I have made," said I. "Besides, this information, which you can give me if you choose, can't make any possible difference to you," and I put the two louis in his hand.
"My faith, monsieur, I'll give it to you willingly; as the bands of my papers are all printed, it will not be any great harm in showing them to you."
I took a pencil, and wrote down the names as he read them off to me. He named three or four which were perfectly uninteresting to me, and, finally, giving the number of Hélène's house, said, "M. Frank, artist." I asked him, in order to put him on a false track, if, in the list of his subscribers who lived on the boulevard, there was not a M. de Verneuil.