To Whom It May Concern: You may verify the merchandise via the following particular: a mole, black-brown, 1 half-inch in diameter, located between 4th and 5th toe, on right foot.

Yours,

Dr. Hector Carpentier

Vidocq's eyes are hard. His mouth is a thin black line. "Is this your father's hand?" he asks.

"Yes."

"You can positively identify it?"

"Yes."

He slams his fists on the breakfast table. So hard that the book

jumps toward the ceiling and the coffee spoons shriek and the maid comes running, starchy with terror.

"Where's Monsieur Charles?" he bellows at her.

"Still in bed."

"All the better."

H e's jus t as I left him. The head wafting on pillows, the breath rolling out. We yank open the curtains, and the inrushing light picks out faint deltas of saliva at the corners of his mouth.

"Sleeps like a fucking angel, doesn't he?" mutters Vidocq, snatching the covers away.

The bare feet twitch, as if stunned by the light, then fall still again.

Vidocq drops to one knee. With the same delicacy he showed Leblanc's corpse in the morgue, he pries apart the fourth and fifth toes.

"Hector," he whispers. "Bring the lamp."

But it's already visible in the morning light. A brown-and-black mole, of irregular proportions, roughly one-half inch in diameter.

The bedclothes rustle; the mattress creaks. From the mesa of his pillows, Charles Rapskeller gazes down at us through half-open lids- perfectly agreeable, as if this were how every day began.

For several seconds, Vidocq hovers on the brink of a choice. And in the end, he decides to remain on bended knee. And to angle his head toward the f loor. The very image of subjection.

"I will not call you Majesty," he says. "Not yet. But if all goes well, I hope you will have occasion to recall my humble service."

He raises his head now. All traces of subjection are gone.

"We've more in common than you know, Monsieur Charles. They locked me away, too. They tried to extinguish me, just as they tried with you. And they couldn't. And they won't."

How to describe this next moment? With great care and patience, he pulls the coverlet and sheets back over Charles, tucks them round so that only the sweat-tousled head is still visible. I have never seen Vidocq so tender-or so strategic.

"Tomorrow morning," he announces, "we shall call on the minister of justice. May heaven help us all."

CHAPTE R 4 3.

The Dead Moth Vi d o c q i s true to his word. Before twenty-four hours have passed, he has secured the promise of an audience with the Duchesse d'Angouleme. A day later, he has a time.

"Thursday afternoon," he announces. "One o'clock. At the hotel of the Marquis de Monfort."

"Who?"

"You've already met him, Hector. In the crypt of Saint-Denis. He was the fellow threatening your life."

At once it comes back to me: the voice of civilization. Move another inch, and you will die.

"The Marquis is a bosom companion of the minister of justice," adds Vidocq. "And a ferocious defender of the Duchess. And just so you don't get your balls in a cinch, a bitter enemy of the Comte d'Artois. Oh, don't think I've forgotten your grand conspiracy theory. Now we'll need to find our boy Charles some nice clothes. Nothing too grand, we don't want him looking presumptuous. But we don't want him looking like a peasant, either. You might have a go at those nails of his. And for the love of God, Hector, get him to take a bath, will you?"

Prefecture funds are appropriated for Charles' new suit and polished boots and doeskin gloves. As for me . . . well, one of Vidocq's old black suits is speedily adapted to my frame, but without the original owner's heft to cling to, the fabric falls away in pouches of protest. I am deeply conscious of these pouches as the carriage pulls into the porte cochere of the Hotel de Monfort. I am even more conscious of them when a servant in dove gray livery shows us into an interior apartment, walled round in Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries. A tapestried armchair, a velvet settee. Voluptuous curtains, folded as elegantly as women's gowns. By the fireplace, an epic screen with nine panels of Attic warfare.

"Is this a museum?" asks Charles.

"You might say," says Vidocq.

He turns in that instant to find the museum keeper himself, with a fresh vest of white pique and two diamond pins on his frill. If the Marquis recognizes Vidocq from their previous meeting, there is no sign of it. No sign of anything, really, but distaste. Warring with duty.