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Although these last months had been full of terrible agitation for him, on account of everything connected with the affair of Caffie and Florentin, and above all, on account of the fatigue, emotion, and the fever of his 'concours', yet he had not interrupted his special works for a day or even an hour, and his experiments followed for so many years had at length produced important results, that prudence alone prevented him from publishing.
Talking to Caffie, who was placed between him and this window, Saniel suddenly perceived that on the other side of the court, in the second wing of the building, on the second story, were two lighted windows directly opposite to the office, and that from there any one could see everything that occurred in the office.
He waited several minutes, and in his nervous impatience walked restlessly up and down the court. At last an old woman appeared carrying a small wax taper. She was feeble and bent, and began to excuse herself; she was alone and could not be everywhere at the same time, in her lodge and lighting the lamps on the stairways. Caffie lived on the first floor, in the wing on the street.
There were a name and a phrase that recurred to him mechanically from time to time. The name was Caffie, and the phrase was, "Nothing easier." Why should this hypothesis to strangle Caffie, of which he had lightly spoken, and to which he had attached no importance at the moment when he uttered it, return to him in this way as a sort of obsession? Was it not strange?
"No; it was three months after he left Caffie, and he was with another man of business of whom I have never spoken to you, and now you understand why. The money he expected failed him; his fault was discovered, and his employer lodged a complaint against him." "We made him withdraw his complaint, never mind how, and Florentin went to America to seek his fortune.
"Then you wish me to leave Paris?" "Certainly not; but I wish you to be on your guard against Caffie, whom you do not know, but I do, through what Florentin told us when he was with him. However secret a man may be, he cannot hide himself from his clerk. He is not only guilty of rascalities, but also of real crimes. I assure you that he deserves ten deaths.
Thus, he had not hesitated to kill this child, who had, perhaps, sixty or seventy years of happy life before it, and he hesitated at the death of Caffie, to whom remained only a miserable existence of a few weeks. The interests of a poor, weak, stunted woman had decided him; his, those of humanity, left him perplexed, irresolute, weak, and cowardly. What a contradiction!
They will look well in my report and will prove that I pushed my investigations thoroughly." "One is a merchant in the Rue Truffant, and is called Monsieur Blanchet; the other is a young man just arrived from America, and his name is Monsieur Florentin Cormier." "You say Florentin Cormier?" the agent asked, who remembered this name was that of one who had seen Caffie on the day of the crime.
Talking to Caffie, who was placed between him and this window, Saniel suddenly perceived that on the other side of the court, in the second wing of the building, on the second story, were two lighted windows directly opposite to the office, and that from there any one could see everything that occurred in the office.
Then he built up an arrangement which appeared ingenious to him, when it occurred to him to remember that he had gone to Caffie to borrow three thousand francs. Why would he not lend it to him, if not the first day, at least the second? With this loan he paid his debts, if he were questioned on this point.
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