"Can I keep my pipe?"

"Of course, my friend, of course. And I'll tell you what, on Sundays, I'll send over Agnes. Or else Lise. She's good for cheering a fellow up, isn't she? And you know what else? I'll look in on Jeanne-Victoire when I can. And the baby."

"You can have 'em," growls Poulain. "That slut's more than a man can bear."

Something stirs now behind Vidocq's eyes as he stares the thief down.

"She always spoke highly of you, Arnaud."

Who can say why, at this moment, I should feel obliged to speak- for the first time since coming here?

"The baby," I say. "Tell me the baby's name."

Scowling, Poulain spits it out like a seed.

"Arnaudine."

The sight of our faces carves the scowl deeper.

"It was her idea. She couldn't give me a boy, so she figured 'Arnaudine' was next best. She's soft that way, if you must know. I always say it'll be the death of her."

"Very wise," says Vidocq.

He pushes back his glass and staggers out of his chair-and, before anyone can draw another breath, tips Poulain's chair over.

The thief, bound at the ankle, meets the f loor with every last bone in his body. A stif led cry, a tremor of doubt. Vidocq stands over him, serene.

"Skulls are soft, too, aren't they, Poulain? You'd be amazed."

And then, stepping over the thief 's supine figure, he graces me with a smile.

"That's enough for today, Doctor."

CHAPTE R 8.

A Spy Unmasked I t's n e arly si x in the evening when Vidocq brings me home. He has borrowed from Allard an overcoat with a triple cape. From a secondhand clothes dealer, he has acquired (without in any obvious way paying for it) a hat, broken near the band. He has run some spit through his hair.

What better signal that we are returning to civilization? To my own, my native clime, though I no longer recognize it so well. I turn the corner of the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, I pass the old condemned well where Bardou used to sit, I hear the rhythmic grunts of Monsieur Tripot's pigs, running loose in the gutters. I stand on the front step of my very own home, and still I can't help thinking I've taken a wrong turn.

But then the door is swung open by Charlotte, parched and freckled, and there can no longer be any doubt.

"He's home! " she calls back down the hall. "Madame Carpentier, he's home ! "

Mother is hanging back by the drawing room doors: a shivery black spectacle in her tulle cap and woolen petticoat. The skirt has been refashioned from an old dress. The slippers have long pulled away from her feet, they seem bound to her now only by habit. Her hands form a funnel round her mouth. She says:

"Oh."

"Monsieur Hector." Charlotte is charging toward me. "Are you-"

"He is quite unharmed, ladies," answers Vidocq, stepping out from behind. "As you can see."

I will never be certain which part of him Mother fastens onto first. The shabby hat? The tufts of spit-slicked hair or the bullying breast? I tend to think it's the confounding bulk of him-the hole he makes in his surroundings.

"I was about to send for the police," she says in a thin voice.

"But there was no need, Madame! The police have already sent for your Hector." Vidocq takes the back of my neck in a loose, proprietary grip. "This very afternoon, your son has demonstrated exceptional mettle in an inquiry of unspeakable urgency."

"Inquiry?"

"He would be only too glad to tell you, I'm sure, but he has been sworn to secrecy. By the Prefect himself."

"By the-"

"Oh, he's got a brilliant mind, your son. All of Paris seems to chant his praise! Just the other evening, you know, I was passing an hour or two in the library of the Duchesse de Duras, and she said to me-perhaps you know the Duchess, Madame?-she pulled me by the sleeve, and in that charmingly raspy voice of hers, she said, 'You must introduce me to the marvelous Dr. Carpentier!' "

It is those last two words that change the tenor of the conversation. For Mother is even less accustomed to hearing me called Doctor than I am. Her mouth shrinks into a black line.

Vidocq pauses to puzzle out his offense. "A thousand pardons, Madame. I neglected to introduce myself. I am Vidocq."

It's quite something, the bow he tenders her. Not the gently toppling head of your average Parisian gentleman but something explosive and battle-bred. (I will later learn he was a sergeant-major.) It all but finishes off poor Charlotte, who is rubbing her ears in wonder.