“Look, do you see the taller of those two there? That’s Sylvestre Lampron.”
“Prix du Salon two years ago?”
“A great gun, you know.”
“He looks it.”
“To the left,” said Lampron.
We turned to the left, and found ourselves in the Rue Hautefeuille, before a shabby house, within the porch of which hung notices of apartments to let; this was the framemaker’s. The passage was dark, the walls were chipped by the innumerable removals of furniture they had witnessed. We went upstairs. On the fourth floor a smell of glue and sour paste on the landing announced the tenant’s profession. To make quite certain there was a card nailed to the door with “Plumet, Frame-Maker.”
“Plumet? A newly-married couple?”
But already Madame Plumet is at the door. It is the same little woman who came to Boule’s office. She recognizes me in the dim light of the staircase.
“What, Monsieur Lampron, do you know Monsieur Mouillard?”
“As you apparently do, too, Madame Plumet.”