The agent was going, but he thought better of it.
"You said that you had made three suits of this cloth?"
"Yes, but there is only this Fritzner who counts. The two others are honest men, well known in the quarter, and they paid me honestly."
"Since they have no cause for alarm, you need have no scruples in naming them. It is not in the name of justice that I ask their names, but for myself. —They will look well in my report and will prove that I pushed my investigations thoroughly."
"One is a merchant in the Rue Truffant, and is called Monsieur Blanchet; the other is a young man just arrived from America, and his name is Monsieur Florentin Cormier."
"You say Florentin Cormier?" the agent asked, who remembered this name was that of one who had seen Caffie on the day of the crime. "Do you know him?"
"Not exactly; it is the first time that I have made clothes for him. But I know his mother and sister, who have lived in the Rue des Moines five or six years at least; good, honest people, who work hard and have no debts."
The next morning about ten o'clock, a short time after Phillis's departure, Florentin, who was reading the newspaper in the dining-room, while his mother prepared the breakfast, heard stealthy steps that stopped on the landing before their door. His ear was too familiar with the ordinary sounds in the house to be deceived; there was in these steps a hesitation or a precaution which evidently betrayed a stranger, and with the few connections they had, a stranger was surely an enemy—the one whom he expected.
A ring of the doorbell, given by a firm hand, made him jump from his chair. He did not hesitate; slowly, and with an air of indifference, he opened the door.
He saw before him a man of about forty years, with a polite and shrewd face, dressed in a short coat, and wearing a flat hat.