“Who are his friends?” he inquired.

But the concierge could tell him nothing useful.

“He had no friends in the house,” she said.  “Our poor honest people—­ he treated them with contumely.  I do not know his friends, M’sieur.”

“Ah, well,” said Rufin, “I shall come across him somehow.”

He saluted her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up to.  He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate by the stridency of her gratitude.

A man—­even a man of notable attributes and shocking manners—­is as easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows.  At the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled.  His man had vanished effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture.  It was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some garret, making the mean place wonderful.  He obtained the unofficial aid of the police and of many other people whose business in life is with the underworld.  He even caused a guarded paragraph to appear in certain papers, which spoke temperately of a genius in hiding, for whom fame was ripe whenever he should choose to claim it.  But Paris at that moment was thrilled by a series of murders by apaches, and the notice passed unremarked.

In the end, therefore, Rufin restored himself to his work, richer by a memory, poorer by a failure.  Not till then came the last accident in the chain of accidents by which the matter had presented itself to him.

Some detail of quite trivial business took him to see an official at the Palais de Justice, In the great Salle des Pas Perdus there was, as always, a crowd of folk, jostling, fidgeting, making a clamor of mixed voices.  He did not visit it often enough to know that the crowd was larger than usual and strongly leavened with an element of furtive shabby men and desperate calm women.  He found his official and disposed of his affair, and the official, who was willing enough to be seen in the company of a man of Rufin’s position, rose politely to see him forth, and walked with him into the noisy hall.

“You are not often here, Monsieur Rufin?” he suggested.  “And yet, as you see, here is much matter for an artist.  These faces, eh?  All the brigands of Paris are here to-day.  In there”—­and he pointed to one of the many doors—­“the trial is proceeding of those apaches.”

“A great occasion, no doubt,” said Rufin.  He looked casually towards the door which his companion indicated.  “Of course I have read of the matter in the newspapers, but——­”

He ceased speaking abruptly.  A movement in the crowd between him and the door had let him see, for a space of seconds, a girl who leaned against the wall, strained and pale, as though waiting in a patient agony for news, for tidings of the fates that were being decided within.  From the moment his eyes rested on her he was sure; there was no possibility of a mistake; it was the girl whose face, reproduced, interpreted, and immortalized, looked forth from the canvas he had seen in the Montmartre tenement.