"Look here, old fellow, something unexpected has happened.... I must go to the Palais de Justice ... you don't want me for anything else this morning, do you?"
"No, go along! But what's up?"
"Oh ... this Jacques Dollon, you know, the assassin of the rue Norvins? Well, this imbecile has gone and hanged himself in his cell!"
At the exit door of La Capitale, in the noisy rue Montmartre, crowded with costermongers' barrows, Jérôme Fandor hailed a taxi.
"To the Palais!"
Some minutes later he was crossing the hall of the Wandering Footsteps (as it is called), giving rapid, cordial greetings to all the barristers of his acquaintance—one never knew when they might impart a special piece of information which let an enterprising journalist into the know, or put him early on to a good thing—and finally reached the lobbies of the Law Courts proper. He was saying to himself as he went along:
"He is a good fellow, Jouet! The news is not known yet! He telephoned me first!"
His friend Jouet met him, with a warm handshake:
"You did not seem to be in a good temper at the telephone just now, although I was giving you a nice bit of information!"