"Come, you expect us to believe that? You were aiming your pistol at the good doctor here. You had it cocked."

Well, they made him mad, that was all. Resisting like that. Wasn't gentlemanly.

"So your instructions were to scare them?"

And put 'em on the next carriage, and then he'd be done. And then that bitch came along and ruined everything. Two more days, and Herbaux and Wettu would've been clear of town and another fifty francs richer. You can do a lot with fifty francs.

"You certainly can."

At last Vidocq rises. Tucks his chair under the table and beckons me to follow. His hand is almost to the doorknob when he wheels round.

"Oh, I almost forgot! Tell me about the fingernails, Herbaux."

The what?

"Monsieur Leblanc. You separated him from his fingernails, remember? I'm just wondering where you got the idea."

Herbaux shrugs. He saw it done to a squealer once in Toulon. You never heard such a hollering.

F if teen minu tes late r, Vidocq and I are standing in the rear courtyard of Number Six, watching the staff carriage trundle toward us across the cobbles.

"You're to go right home, do you hear?" he says. "And you're to stay there. Neither you nor Charles is to set a single foot outside until I tell you. Is that clear?"

Waving away the coachman, Vidocq opens the door himself. "Meantime, we'll try to find a little bit more about our Monsieur. If he knew where to find Herbaux, chances are good he's made other inquiries in the neighborhood. I wouldn't be surprised if-oh, for Christ's sake, Hector! If you've got something on your mind, then out with it."

Here's the funny part. I nearly do tell him. The words have been piled up for so long that, with just the slightest pressure, they could come tumbling out. . . .

Charles knows now. He knows who he is.

But I know something, too. If I seek to persuade Vidocq, I will have to do better than epiphanies in the Tuileries gardens.

"I just remembered," I say. "I never gave Jeanne-Victoire her cloak back."

CHAPTE R 37.

The Proper Disposal of Worms Th at night, I'm sitting in the chair by Charles' door, watching him arrange his pillows . . . and before I even realize it, I've nodded off, and I'm back in that alleyway, and Herbaux is leveling the pistol at me, and my heart actually stops in anticipation of the end to come, and then I hear . . .

"Hector? "

Charles is sitting up in bed.

"May I ask you something?" he says.

" 'Course," I mumble, rubbing myself awake.

"Last night-when that man was chasing us-it wasn't really a

game, was it?"

"No. No, it wasn't."

"So you were protecting me."

"Well, yes."

"Because you didn't want me to be frightened."

"Something like that."

Frowning, he traces a half-moon on his bedspread.

"It was very kind of you, Hector, but I don't think you should do that.

I can't be treated like a child anymore. If I'm to be that, I mean . . ." Which is as far as he can go to naming the thing that hovers over us.

And bless me, I can't go much further.

"Well," I say, "if you're to be that-then you can be whatever you

want to be. And everyone else will just have to accommodate you." He doesn't sound persuaded. And for that matter, neither am I.