ll look beyond. He will
suppose that you wish to deceive him, and he will suspect you. In that
case, would he not go and tell all to the police commissioner of our
quarter? As for me, I think it is a danger that it would be foolish to
risk."

"And, according to you, what is to be done?"

"Nothing; that is, wait, since there are a thousand chances against one
for our uneasiness, and we exaggerate those that may never be realized."

"Well, let us wait," he said. "Moreover, I like that; at the least, I
have no responsibilities. What can happen will happen."

CHAPTER XIX

THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR

In order to put the button found at Caffies on the track of the assassin,
it required that it should have come from a Parisian tailor, or, at
least, a French one, and that the trousers had not been sold by a
ready-made clothing-house, where the names of customers are not kept.

The task of the police was therefore difficult, as weak, also, were the
chances of success. As Saniel had said, it was like looking for a needle
in a bundle of hay, to go to each tailor in Paris.

But this was not their way of proceeding. In place of trying to find
those who used these buttons, they looked for those who made them or sold
them, and suddenly, without going farther than the directory, they found
this manufacturer: "A. Pelinotte, manufacturer of metal buttons for
trousers; trademark, A.P., crown and cock; Faubourg du Temple."

At first this manufacturer was not disposed to answer questions of the
agent who went to see him; but when he began to understand that he might
reap some advantage from the affair, like the good merchant that he was,
young and active, he put his books and clerks at his disposition. His
boast was, in effect, that his buttons, thanks to a brass bonnet around
which the thread was rolled instead of passing through the holes, never
cut the thread and could not be broken. When they came off it was with a
piece of the cloth. What better justification of his pretensions, what
better advertisement than his button torn off with a piece of the
trousers of the assassin? The affair would go before the assizes, and in
all the newspapers there would be mention of the "A. P. buttons."

He was asked for his customers' names, and after a few days the search
began, guided by a list so exact that useless steps were spared.

One morning a detective reached the Avenue de Clichy, and found the
tailor Valerius in his shop, reading