“And, according to you, what is to be done?”

“Nothing; that is, wait, since there are a thousand chances against one for our uneasiness, and we exaggerate those that may never be realized.”

“Well, let us wait,” he said.  “Moreover, I like that; at the least, I have no responsibilities.  What can happen will happen.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR

In order to put the button found at Caffies on the track of the assassin, it required that it should have come from a Parisian tailor, or, at least, a French one, and that the trousers had not been sold by a ready-made clothing-house, where the names of customers are not kept.

The task of the police was therefore difficult, as weak, also, were the chances of success.  As Saniel had said, it was like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, to go to each tailor in Paris.

But this was not their way of proceeding.  In place of trying to find those who used these buttons, they looked for those who made them or sold them, and suddenly, without going farther than the directory, they found this manufacturer:  “A.  Pelinotte, manufacturer of metal buttons for trousers; trademark, A.P., crown and cock; Faubourg du Temple.”

At first this manufacturer was not disposed to answer questions of the agent who went to see him; but when he began to understand that he might reap some advantage from the affair, like the good merchant that he was, young and active, he put his books and clerks at his disposition.  His boast was, in effect, that his buttons, thanks to a brass bonnet around which the thread was rolled instead of passing through the holes, never cut the thread and could not be broken.  When they came off it was with a piece of the cloth.  What better justification of his pretensions, what better advertisement than his button torn off with a piece of the trousers of the assassin?  The affair would go before the assizes, and in all the newspapers there would be mention of the “A.  P. buttons.”

He was asked for his customers’ names, and after a few days the search began, guided by a list so exact that useless steps were spared.

One morning a detective reached the Avenue de Clichy, and found the tailor Valerius in his shop, reading a newspaper.  For it was not only when the country was in danger that Valerius had a passion for reading papers, but every morning and evening.

Nothing that was published in the papers escaped him, and at the first words of the agent he understood immediately about what he was to be questioned.

“It is concerning the affair in the Rue Sainte-Anne that you wish this information?” he said.

“Frankly, yes.”

“Well, frankly also, I do not know if the secrets of the profession permit me to answer you.”

The agent, who was by no means stupid, immediately understood the man’s character, and instead of yielding to the desire to laugh, caused by this reply honestly made by this good-natured man, whose long, black, bushy beard and bald head accentuated his gravity, he yielded to the necessity of the occasion.