Chapter 21

Throwing one last brief glance back at the parked carriage and confirming to his satisfaction that the shutters over the passenger windows had been lowered, Javert rapped thrice on the door with his knuckles.

A shuffle was soon heard on the other side. The peephole glowed briefly with a soft orange light, then darkened again beneath a black eye.

"Who comes at this hour?" groused an old woman's voice.

"Mother Cibot, let me in for a drink of water, for I'm so famished that I've got no place to spend the night," replied Javert with a smile.

Several bolts slid out of their sockets, and the door was opened by a hunch-backed crone well on the other side of eighty. One of her withered hands grasped closed the shawl bundled around her frail throat; the other held high a minutely trembling saucer with a dripping candle stub.

"Took your time, you did, monsieur Javert," she grumbled in way of greeting, standing aside to let Javert through.

"Busy day, Mother Cibot," said Javert, quitting his cap and inclining his head as he stepped over the raised threshold. "Is Bernard up?"

"Still up, still at his desk, still scritch-scratching away... Go on up to him. But look that the two of you don't dally until dawn like last time!"

The last admonition was spoken already to Javert's back as he took the stairs to the second story, trailing his fingers along the wall in search of the door handle he knew to be there. All of a sudden he found himself lurching forward into nothingness as the door was jerked open from within. A scant moment later, a small dense head butted him in the stomach and almost knocked the wind out of him.

"Whoa!" exhaled Javert, grasping a curly head by the ears. "Dame! Jacques, don't run on the stairs!"

"M'sieur Javert!" squeaked the head and buried itself once again in Javert's stomach, this time with affectionate intent.

"How are you, soldier?" murmured Javert patting the boy on the curly head awkwardly. "And where are you headed at such a speed?"

"The water closet," admitted the boy sheepishly.

Javert nodded with a solemn face.

"Well, far it be from me to detain you. March on. I'll find you afterwards."

At the other side of the corridor, Javert ascended yet another staircase, this time a spiral one. The door to the office was propped ajar by a bronze doorstop and the office itself illuminated with two small desk lamps. Bernard seemed to be getting his money's worth out of the midnight oil being burned - Javert heard the rapid scratching of his pen already from the anteroom.

Upon seeing him, Bernard moved to stand and greet him, but Javert raised his hand in warning and Bernard's hand, which had been reaching for the cane propped up against the mahogany desk, stilled on the desk.

"You had me worried, monsieur," said Bernard after Javert took his usual seat in the armchair near the window.

"There was a minor altercation," said Javert. "But it is of no matter. How's your leg?" he added, remembering his manners.

"Foretelling rain, but otherwise no worse than usual - much obliged for your asking. Have you seen Jacques yet?"

"I ran into him on the stairs, but he was rushing to the loo."

"You know, I do not like to stick my nose into secret police affairs, but that boy has been walking up walls ever since he came home," said Bernard. "He is bursting with news of some sort."

"That is good," said Javert, quelling a surge of disquiet in his stomach. "He's a brave and capable boy. You should be proud."

Bernard flushed with pride but waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, don't let him hear you talk so, monsieur. I've had my hands full with him as of late! He can hardly keep his mind off adventures and conspiracies, to the neglect of both school work and his catechism. Father Bordin is becoming rather cross with him."

"I believe this will be the last time I will trouble you both," said Javert. "With respect to this affair, anyway. But do dissuade him from this 'adventures' business. The police is no place for a good boy who can read Latin."

"I would not keep him from it if he insisted," said Bernard kindly. "It's pointless to slander your profession to a man who profited so much by it, monsieur. It is a vocation no less honorable than priesthood. The call to protect the innocent can be louder than the one to pray for the guilty."

"To protect the innocent..." Javert stretched out his legs languidly. "We had a fellow turn up at the Prefecture a while ago. Perfectly tailored coat, gold watch chain; a private carriage with a coat of arms dropped him off at the door. And this clearly titled and moneyed specimen - a young man, to be sure, but old enough to have legal freedom with respect to his person and property - demanded to be taken on as an agent! The secretary was stunned. 'What? monsieur wants this job?' Apparently, the milksop had read Vidocq's memoirs and was overcome with visions of daring rescues and clever interrogation tricks. 'Why shouldn't I do this?' he asked himself. 'Phooey on public opinion; phooey on Papa's coffers; to the devil with Maman's matchmaking. I'm young and strong, without occupation, with money enough of my own. I hit an ace four times out of five at twenty paces; I can grapple with the best of them; I am fond of English boxing. Why seek glory on foreign battlefields when there are battlefields aplenty under our own windows? Is killing Berbers in Algeria nobler than apprehending murderers and house-breakers in Saint-Antoine?'"

"Perhaps that is exactly the kind of man that ought to join the profession," pointed out Bernard.

Javert half-shrugged. "He applied himself with enough vigor, it's true. Volunteered for everything. Drunk patrol? Here he is, use him. A domestic brawl? Here he comes to rescue Madame. Child crying in the street? Give a stern lecture to the cab-driver who crushed the child's cat and slap him with a fine. Even the hardest work can be good sport if you seek nothing from it except the experience. I know a viscount who drives a cab some nights a week; you should see how proud he is of his commendation book!"

"You disapprove," smiled Bernard.

Javert snorted. "Of course I disapprove. It is folly. What is the use of a rich man taking a poor man's job? He wants to amuse himself, but the poor man wants to eat."

"Perhaps he will set up a cab company in later days. Then this experience will serve him and his future employees well. Same as that young nobleman - time spent in the police will be useful, should he become a lawyer or a legislator. Is he still working?"

"Sadly, no," said Javert without particular sadness. "A few months into his new career, there was a night of sleet and biting wind; then another; then a third. Unaccustomed to such shabby treatment by the elements, the poor thing caught a cold, and his family promptly shipped him off south to recuperate. So much for his vocation. Life can be unkind even to those with both ability and opportunity. I would spare Jacques this. To be a policeman is bad enough, but to be one in inclement weather is insult to injury. The very heavens spit on you."

"Ah, so that is why you exchanged places with me in my cell that night - to keep yourself out of the cold." Bernard smiled faintly. "How inconsiderate of you, to kick a condemned man out of his state-provided refuge and take his place therein." He sighed. "To this day I do not know what you were thinking."

"I knew you were innocent. There was nothing to think."

"No one else believed me."

"There was nothing to believe, either. There was proof. That bloody thumb-print exonerated you. It did not last to see the trial, but I had seen it perfectly. None of your fingers bear that oval whorl pattern. You did not wield the knife. Your innocence was written in the slain man's blood. What was I supposed to do? I was the one who arrested you. Your death would have been on my conscience. I made my statement to the investigating magistrate about the knife; he did not believe me, and the trace was long smudged away. Well! I wasn't going to become a murderer for his lack of belief."

"How did you know they would exonerate you of conspiracy?"

Javert rose from the armchair.

"Well, I hoped, certainly," he said evasively. "But what difference would it have made? Praise doesn't make a wrong into a right, and censure cannot turn a right into a wrong. I had exhausted my legal options. The man you really ought to thank is Vidocq. He's the one who found the real killer. All I did is buy us a few days. Without him, we'd have both been lost."

"If you say so."

"I do say so." Javert stretched. "Right. I'm off to get the front-line dispatches. Good night, Bernard."

"Good night, monsieur," said Bernard, but the door had already closed behind Javert.