Like someone who had been running at top speed Cranajour, who had been gone about an hour on his newspaper-buying errand, drew up panting before the dark little entry leading from the rue de Harlay to the den of Mother Toulouche. He slipped into the passage; but instead of rejoining the old storekeeper he began to mount a steep and tortuous staircase, which led up to the many floors of the house. He climbed up to the seventh story; turned the key of a shaky door, and entered an attic whose skylight window opened obliquely in the sloping roof.
This poverty-stricken chamber was the domicile of the queer fellow who passed his daylight hours in the company of Mother Toulouche, hobnobbing with a hole-and-corner crew, cronies of the old receiver of stolen goods.
Overheated with running, Cranajour unbuttoned his coat, opened his shirt, sprinkled his face and the upper part of his body with cold water, sponged the perspiration from his brow, and brushed the dust off his big shoes.
It was a clear starlight night. To freshen himself up still more he put his head and shoulders out of the half-opened window. He was gazing at the roofs facing him; suddenly he started, and his eyes gleamed. They were the roofs, outlined against the night sky, of the Palais de Justice. There was a shadow on the roof of the great pile, a shadow which moved to and fro, passing from one roof ridge to another, now vanishing behind a chimney, now coming into view again. Anxiously Cranajour followed the odd movements of the mysterious individual who was making his lofty and lonely promenade up above there.
"What the devil does it mean?" soliloquised the watcher. Whoever could have seen Cranajour at this moment would have been struck by the marked change produced in his physiognomy. This was not the Cranajour of the wandering eye, the silly smile, the stupid face, known to Mother Toulouche and her cronies; it was a transformed Cranajour, mobile of feature, lively of movement, a sharp, keen-witted Cranajour! Veritably another man!
Puzzled by the vagaries of the promenader on the Palais roofs, Cranajour followed his movements intently for a few minutes longer. He would have remained at the window the whole night long had the unknown persisted in his peregrinations; but Cranajour saw him climb to the top of a chimney, a wide one, lower himself slowly into the opening of it, and then vanish from view!
Cranajour waited a while in hopes that the unknown would not be long in coming out of his mysterious hiding-place again. He waited and expected in vain: the roofs of the Palais resumed their ordinary aspect: solitude reigned there.
Not long afterwards Cranajour re-entered the back store.
"What a time you have been!" cried Mother Toulouche: "You've brought the newspaper, haven't you?"