This is weird, take note!
Apologies to Victor Hugo, AmZ and Geoffrey Rush!
The first thing that Javert did after his escape from the barricade at the rue Mondetour was to go to Gisquet and make his report.
The second thing he did was go home. This step had been suggested by Gisquet, who had thought that the inspector might want to compose himself before returning to his duties. Javert, being Javert, took this friendly suggestion on behalf of the prefect as a direct order, and went.
Although he was a Spartan man who liked to consider himself indefatigable, Javert was also honest enough to admit that he was glad to be returning home, if only for half an hour or so. A little peace and quite, he reflected, could do him nothing but good since he was bone tired and could feel his feet drag like sandbags as he walked up the stairs of his tenement building.
He closed the door softly behind him, not bothering to lock it, and sank into the old cane chair by the fireplace. He must have sat there for a good ten minutes, deep in a weary stupor, before he became aware of a faint noise coming from his bedroom, a sort of scraping, scratching noise. At first he dismissed it as a mouse scuttling behind the wainscoting, but the more he listened, the more it sounded like the scratch of a badly trimmed pen accompanied by a hand tapping in an unsteady rhythm upon the desk.
He became increasingly convinced that there was someone in the room and so he got up, picked up his cane from where he had set in to rest by the fire, and walked slowly towards the door.
He pushed it open slowly with the lead tip of the cane. He had been right, there was an intruder. Javert drew himself up to his full height, and one might have sworn that his whiskers bristled like a bellicose alley cat.
"What are you doing in here?" he growled.
The stranger, a thin man with small sideburns, a sharp nose and pale, piercing eyes, looked up from Javert's desk, at which he had been writing on Javert's paper and with Javert's pen, and said in a cold, clipped voice: "I'm trying to track down Jean Valjean". Then he took a dainty pinch of snuff and returned to his work.
Javert, had he not been such a master of self-discipline, would have visibly started at the intruder's remark. As it was, the question he had been about to ask ("How did you get into my flat?") died on his lips to be instantly replaced by another.
"Who are you?"
"Inspector Javert of the Paris Prefecture," answered the intruder, "Do you wish to examine my papers?"
"Give them here!" Javert snapped, snatching the stranger's passport and peering at it intently, reasoning that an official government document would be sure to reassert Order's primacy over Chaos.
"But this is nonsense . . . These must be forged . . . I know for a fact that there is only one man named Javert serving with the Paris Force, and I am that man. I am inspector Javert."
"I'm afraid you're both wrong!" came an ironical voice from the doorway.
Javert wheeled about to get a view of this new interruption. He saw a tall, thin Roma of middle years leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, one stork's leg crossed over the other, and a most unpleasant smile upon his face.
Javert, who was rapidly losing his patience, stamped his foot and advanced on the new arrival. The lanky gypsy merely held out his hand and purred, "I'm Inspector Javert, pleased to meet you both. Now, please explain what you are doing in my apartment."