Each time the astonished doorkeeper replied:  “No one has been here, and there is no letter for you.”

Five identical negative answers to the same inquiries only increased the magistrate’s wrath and impatience.  “It is inconceivable!” he exclaimed.  “Here I am upon coals of fire, and that man dares to keep me waiting.  Where can he be?”

At last he ordered a messenger to go and see if he could not find Lecoq somewhere in the neighborhood; perhaps in some restaurant or cafe.  “At all events, he must be found and brought back immediately,” said he.

When the man had started, M. Segmuller began to recover his composure.  “We must not lose valuable time,” he said to his clerk.  “I was to examine the widow Chupin’s son.  I had better do so now.  Go and tell them to bring him to me.  Lecoq left the order at the prison.”

In less than a quarter of an hour Polyte entered the room.  From head to foot, from his lofty silk cap to his gaudy colored carpet slippers, he was indeed the original of the portrait upon which poor Toinon the Virtuous had lavished such loving glances.  And yet the photograph was flattering.  The lens had failed to convey the expression of low cunning that distinguished the man’s features, the impudence of his leering smile, and the mingled cowardice and ferocity of his eyes, which never looked another person in the face.  Nor could the portrait depict the unwholesome, livid pallor of his skin, the restless blinking of his eyelids, and the constant movement of his thin lips as he drew them tightly over his short, sharp teeth.  There was no mistaking his nature; one glance and he was estimated at his worth.

When he had answered the preliminary questions, telling the magistrate that he was thirty years of age, and that he had been born in Paris, he assumed a pretentious attitude and waited to see what else was coming.

But before proceeding with the real matter in hand, M. Segmuller wished to relieve the complacent scoundrel of some of his insulting assurance.  Accordingly, he reminded Polyte, in forcible terms, that his sentence in the affair in which he was now implicated would depend very much upon his behavior and answers during the present examination.

Polyte listened with a nonchalant and even ironical air.  In fact, this indirect threat scarcely touched him.  Having previously made inquiries he had ascertained that he could not be condemned to more than six months’ imprisonment for the offense for which he had been arrested; and what did a month more or less matter to him?

The magistrate, who read this thought in Polyte’s eyes, cut his preamble short.  “Justice,” said he, “now requires some information from you concerning the frequenters of your mother’s establishment.”

“There are a great many of them, sir,” answered Polyte in a harsh voice.

“Do you know one of them named Gustave?”

“No, sir.”

To insist would probably awaken suspicion in Polyte’s mind; accordingly, M. Segmuller continued:  “You must, however, remember Lacheneur?”