"Did you see him leaving with anyone? Perhaps he spoke to someone privately." Enjolras had years of practice in showing or not showing emotion in his voice, as he chose. He needed all his experience to control any signs of his annoyance now.
"No, I didn't. I don't care about him, or you." The man returned his attention to his half-empty bottle, but continued muttering, "Interfering busybodies always into everyone's business..." Enjolras stood and anxiously searched the room for another familiar face.
He was on the verge of offering to stand the domino player a refill to get more information out of him, when he was approached by a lanky man with luxurious, shoulder-length black hair and hands large enough to strangle a bull. Those hands drew immediate attention, and Enjolras could not help noticing the clay lining the man's fingernails.
"Are you a friend of that fellow from last night?" the man, whom Enjolras judged to be a potter, asked.
Another deep breath for patience, while Enjolras forced himself to nod a confirmation. "He came on my behalf," he explained.
The potter stepped toward Enjolras and tugged him into the far right corner. "You'd have done better to come yourself."
"My time is finite. I cannot be everywhere." Enjolras carefully shrugged away the man's touch, and stood back with arms crossed.
The man half smiled, then backed away, hands outstretched disarmingly.
"There's no need to take my head off. I may not be your best friend, but I'm no cop either."
Enjolras relaxed his pose, letting his arms rest against his sides. "Fine. Do you know what happened to my friend?"
"I know where he went after leaving here."
"Where?" Enjolras demanded.
"Not so fast. He's obviously valuable to you. How much so?"
Not believing what he heard, Enjolras blinked but decided in the next heartbeat that he needed to know this at any cost. "Enough. What do you want of me?"
"It's not so much you, as your organization." The man looked meaningfully toward the door. Enjolras didn't follow his gaze, but wrinkling his high brow in a scowl, kept his eyes rigidly on the man before him.
"Tell me what you require."
The potter cut the air with his dangerously large hand. "Leave us alone. Your revolutionary game is getting too dangerous."
"It's not a game!" Enjolras clenched a fist behind his back to still his temper.
"Perhaps for you it isn't. But these men, some of them have families to support, they need their lives and their livelihoods."
He smiled without humor, shaking his head. "Not everyone can afford lofty ideals."
"But you'd benefit from what needs to be done."
A finger thrust toward Enjolras' chest. "Only if you do it! This endless talking has gotten people's hopes up, and I can feel it in the air - don't deny that you're going to try soon! The cholera, the fear... but if I can feel it, so can the King. And so can his soldiers."
"The time is not far off now." Enjolras let his fist, back, and shoulders relax, trying yet again to seem less rigid. His muscles were beginning to ache.
The potter leaned against the wall, still looking down his long, chiseled nose at Enjolras, and crossed his own arms. "And can you guarantee success? How many men do you have? Weapons? Have you anyone on your side in a government office, in the Guard?"
"There's General LaMarque," Enjolras said, meeting the man's eyes. "And some of the masons are rather high-ranking, I believe. I can't give you exact numbers. They grow every day, and I'm not the only person whose counting heads. It would be too dangerous for one man to possess all that knowledge."
"Dangerous," the potter hissed as he leaned forward. "Yes, that's it. And you want us in danger with you."
Enjolras backed away from the man's anger. "Do you speak for all the men here?" He began to see that it was nearly time to resign the field.
"Assume that I do." His eyes glinted as if he'd already sensed his victory.
"Then my men will leave you alone, for now. But don't think we'll forget you. And I don't speak for every Republican in Paris."
His adversary nodded, smiling knowingly.
"Now where is Grantaire?" Enjolras asked firmly. He'd paid enough for the information.
The potter shrugged and waved negligently toward the door. "Last night, he left with two young apprentices who were rather irate with him. I think he may have been too drunk to notice. I'm not sure what they did, but they didn't show up this evening, and I heard tell of a police raid and a fight at one of their other watering holes last night."
"Where is that?" Somehow, Enjolras feared that the answer to this second question would cost as much as the first. The potter identified a restaurant not five streets over from Richefeu's, a name which chilled Enjolras to the pit of his stomach. "You're sure?" has asked more quietly.
"I wasn't there." The potter seemed unnaturally cheerful at Enjolras' discomfort. "But the arrival of an inept loud-mouthed revolutionary and the police involvement are probably related." Before Enjolras could form another question in his mind, the potter said, "Goodnight, monsieur," and strode away.
His pride stung from his loss, Enjolras swung around to follow the potter, but saw Combeferre out of the corner of his eye. His frustration focused on the new target, and he swept over to his friend and dragged him back out onto the street. "What are you doing here?"