The buxom-looking woman who appeared in answer to his
summons, informed them that her master would receive them, although
he was confined to his bed. "However, the doctor is with him now," she
added. "But perhaps the gentlemen would not mind waiting until he has
gone?" The gentlemen replying in the affirmative, she then conducted
them into a handsome library, and invited them to sit down.
The person whom Lecoq had come to consult was a man celebrated for
wonderful shrewdness and penetration, well-nigh exceeding the bounds of
possibility. For five-and-forty years he had held a petty post in one of
the offices of the Mont de Piete, just managing to exist upon the meagre
stipend he received. Suddenly enriched by the death of a relative, of
whom he had scarcely ever heard, he immediately resigned his functions,
and the very next day began to long for the same employment he had so
often anathematized. In his endeavors to divert his mind, he began
to collect old books, and heaped up mountains of tattered, worm-eaten
volumes in immense oak bookcases. But despite this pastime to many
so attractive, he could not shake off his weariness. He grew thin and
yellow, and his income of forty thousand francs was literally killing
him, when a sudden inspiration came to his relief. It came to him one
evening after reading the memoirs of a celebrated detective, one of
those men of subtle penetration, soft as silk, and supple as steel, whom
justice sometimes sets upon the trail of crime.
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