The Orphan's Tale (7 page)

"Why, yes," de Saint
-Légère said. "How - how did you know?"

"He's tethered right outside
.  In the care of a guttersnipe. Obstructing traffic and causing quite a snarl."

"What!"

"Outside the Prefecture itself, no less!" Malet said through his teeth, his voice taking on a note of thunder. "Take sanctuary in the Cathedral and they'll stable him in the choir! They certainly are persistent! This touches my honor! What do they think we are? Stupid criminals really infuriate me!" he set his hat squarely on his head, took up his walking stick and started toward the door.

"But M. l'Inspecteur - "

Malet turned at the door. "Come along!" he snapped. He waited until Saint-Légère had donned his hat, then stalked across the waiting room. He nodded curtly to the constables in the anteroom and went out the double doors. He went straight across the congested street, narrowly avoiding being struck by two carriages, and up to the horse, who eyed him mildly and then, recognizing Saint-Légère, nickered at him.

"You, boy," said Inspector Malet to the urchin who, from grinning at the snarled traffic, was showing a sudden tendency to sidle away.

The child did not stop. Malet's thumb and forefinger caught him by the ear and brought him to a halt, yelling with pain.

"I
t isn't polite to leave when a grown-up is speaking to you," Malet said with awful gentleness, showing his teeth.

The urchin, a boy all of seven years old, struggled like a wildcat and swore with more force and venom than Inspector Malet had heard since his prison days.
He subsided after his ear was roughly shaken.

"You see this horse?" asked Malet.

The boy's eyes traveled eloquently up the horse's legs to his ears and back down again. "Yes, Monseigneur," he said with elaborately sarcastic politeness. "I had noticed him."

"Who left him here?" Malet persisted.
He released the ear but held his cane like a cudgel.

The boy rubbed his earlobe and grimaced.
"Can't say," he replied. "Fellow gave me a sou and asked me to hold him for a minute or two."

Malet held out his hand.
"Show me this sou," he said through the edge of an ominous smile.

The boy stared up at him and then thrust his grimy hands into his pockets.
He turned one out, then the other, then rooted through the rest of his threadbare clothing, even going so far as to take off his cap. "It must have fallen out, Monseigneur," he said without even pretending to be dismayed.

Malet scowled down at the boy, who returned the scowl with one of his own.

"You're lying," Malet growled. "You know who it was and he's paying you to report what happens to this animal. Very well, you shall earn your pay. Tell the man that he left this beast on municipal property without a permit. Tell him, further, that the creature has fouled that property and obstructed the flow of traffic along a city street and created a public nuisance. Do you understand me so far?"

The child stared up at him and finally nodded.

"Excellent," said Chief Inspector Malet. "Then you shall tell him, further, that I am confiscating this horse and impounding him. If your employer wishes to pay a fine of fifty francs plus the beast's keep for two days, he can get the horse back two days from now. Otherwise he goes to the city stables for auction to the highest bidder in three weeks' time. Now be off with you and don't let me see you here again!"

The boy took off at a run, pausing as he rounded the corner of the Rue de Lutèce to thrust out a licorice
-stained tongue at Malet and de Saint-Légère.

Malet ignored him and unknotted the lead rope, looping it around one hand.
"Now to the stables," he said. He hesitated a moment, though, and took out a plain metal snuffbox from his coat pocket. He shook out a palm full of - not tobacco, to Saint-Légère's surprise, but small toffee candies - and offered them to the stallion.

The horse lowered his head and lipped at them.
Malet smoothed the arched neck and said quietly, "I can understand the temptation. If you were in the army with Christien L'Eveque, then you were a cuirassier, weren't you? And he certainly is a beauty."

Saint
-Légère nodded wistfully and stroked the stallion's soft, black nose with a fingertip. "Best horse I have ever seen," he said.

Malet said nothing, and they walked along in silence to the police stables.

The stallion was turned over to the care of a delighted hostler - Malet fed him another palm full of candy - and was led away.

Malet took his handkerchief and wiped his hand.
He was frowning thoughtfully, and he said nothing as they headed back to the Prefecture.

The traffic had resolved itself, and the urchin was nowhere to be seen.
Malet nodded and then turned to Saint-Légère. "That leaves you," he said abruptly.

"Me?"

"Have you any idea what was going to happen, or even when?"

"
No, sir. I had nothing more specific than a vague hunch. But I think something is coming very soon, and I suspect it's something very important."

Malet frowned down at his hands again. 
"Since this is a question of ethics, I will handle it myself in behalf of the Prefecture. I am taking you out of that quarter for the time being. That little brat saw you go into the Prefecture, and it might spoil things - "

"
The boy!" said Saint-Légère.

"
I beg your pardon?"

"
Forgive me, M. l'Inspecteur," said Saint-Légère. "But he looked familiar, and I just remembered why."

"
Indeed?"

"
Yes, sir! I have seen that child in Constant Dracquet's household time out of number! I told you I don't live far from there. The lad's always there - I am sure of it, it's the same boy!"

Malet's hand half
-raised and then lowered again. "Well, well, well..." he said through a dawning smile. "You're certain of this, then? The boy's a member of the household? You'd know him again if you saw him?"

"
I certainly would," Saint-Légère said. "He may not live there, but he's been there every time I have gone by. And it was he who was holding the horse."

Malet's smile was almost blazing, but he spoke quietly.
"The Gendarmerie needs a man at the Bois de Boulogne," he said. "They have a mounted patrol and they're short an officer. They wrote the Prefect yesterday requesting the loan of an inspector who can ride. They'll be astonished to find that we have a Major of Cuirassiers here. You'll report there for the next few weeks. I will tell them to keep you as long as they need you."

"
Thank you, sir!"

Chief Inspector Malet shrugged off the man's gratitude.
"Don't thank me," he said. "You're an honorable man. You like horses: well, then, go ride them. I will handle Dracquet and his intrigues, myself. In fact, I think I will take a direct hand in this. I am getting curious: I wonder what bribe he will find to tempt me."

Malet's smile altered after a moment and became kinder.
"Come back with me to the Prefecture and tell me all that you can think of regarding this bribe as well as the other incidents while you were patrolling," he said. "Write up everything you can remember, and then relax. Tomorrow you go to the Bois de Boulogne - unless you need a little more time."

Saint
-Légère said, "I am at the Chief Inspector's service, of course." His voice dropped slightly and he said, "But what'll I tell Elise?"

He seemed to have been talking to himself.

"Elise?" Malet repeated.

Saint
-Légère blushed and laughed. "My-my landlady, M. l'Inspecteur."

The landlady of a bachelor's lodgings.
Malet knew all about such women. "I see," he said, dismissing the subject and then pausing. Saint-Légère lived near Dracquet, after all, and his proximity had probably sparked Dracquet's interest in the first place...

"O
h not at all!" said Saint-Légère. "She's the loveliest lady in Paris - and she is a lady!"

"I see," Malet said again, caught by the nudge of a developing idea.
"Perhaps I will be meeting her soon..."

THE WRATH OF LAROUCHE

Inspector Malet might have laughed at the thought, but he had had between his thumb and forefinger, for a little over a minute, the ear of one of the uncrowned kings of
Paris. As he was leading the stallion to the stables, the boy was heading back to his haunts with his emotions in a state of turbulence that was unusual for him, cannonballing into pedestrians and returning their insults with pungent ones of his own.

This little urchin was a member of the class of true freemen.
He was completely free of money, debts, obligations, and comforts. He was what is called a gamin. He did not know exactly how old he was, though he guessed he was seven years old, more or less. He had no family, and no memory of ever having had one. He had been left in the streets in the wake of a cholera epidemic, and he had somehow managed to live out his seven years in defiance of all the odds.

He knew all the alleyways, all the convolutions of the sewers, the places where food was left out for cats, and the houses where soft
-hearted people might give him a handout. He had also encountered those who preyed on children. He had escaped those pleasure-merchants partly through luck and partly through the fact that the only attractive thing about him were his large, bright gray eyes.

His eyes, black
-lashed and very clear, were set in a pinched brown face with a pointed chin, and they sat beneath quirky brows and a thatch of bleached brown hair that stood out in spikes because it was cut, when it was cut at all, with a knife. The eyes missed nothing and understood almost everything, and the wiry little body in which they were set was filled with the restless energy of having nothing to do and nowhere to go.

He could steal anything that could be lifted, from rags to food, and he was a master at swinging up on the backs of hackney coaches and riding all over
Paris. His crowning triumph had been the time that he had jumped up behind a colonel of cavalry during a grand review and rode with him under the Arc de Triomphe before the sniggering of the troopers behind him had alerted the colonel to the fact that something was amiss.

He had spent the night in jail for that little escapade, but it had not troubled him: the jail was a roof over his head, and he had had enough to eat, an uncommon occurrence.
He had trouble finding places to sleep. He generally preferred stables to anywhere else, but his luck finding accommodations did not match his luck in other matters.

He was always sneaking into the Opera-he liked the tragic operas-to the Ballet, and to various performances throughout the city.
He was adept at squirming in through adults' legs and hiding under seats and behind pillars. He watched fireworks on holidays and saw soldiers drilling and dreamed of one day becoming a soldier, himself.

He liked to attend mass at the Cathedral, too.
The music and the colors and the lights were magnificent, and they whirled him up and away, beyond the confines of his hungry, cold little life and into a vast place where no one was hungry, where everyone smiled, and where there never was any darkness.

He knew how to read and write, due to the kindness of an old priest in one of the poorer quarters.
Père Louis had baptized him-Larouche hadn't understood what had happened-and then had taught him in the hope of eventually coaxing the wild little boy into his home to live. He had almost succeeded, but he died before that could be done, and the boy, mourning him, had not come back.

The child had a vast capacity for love, but he was very cautious about the people whom he chose to love.
He could count them on his fingers. The boy's one ambition was never to be hungry again, and he longed to have someone who would tuck him into a warm, soft bed, say his name, kiss him good night, and tell him a bedtime story.

The name was a very important part of the longing, for he had none.
He was called 'Larouche' by those who knew of him, for what reason he couldn't guess. He answered to it for want of something better, but he longed for a real name. Nothing came of this yearning; people went on calling him Larouche, and he went on answering to the name.

Now he made his way back to M. Dracquet's house, simmering with annoyance.
The anger faded after reflection: whatever had happened had been the fault of the police, not him. Dracquet had promised him five francs for holding that horse-he'd been a beauty, that one!-and five francs would buy a lot of food and even an almost new pair of shoes.

He came to Dracquet's house and rapped on the door of the servants' entrance.
He was admitted and ushered into Dracquet's presence. Ten minutes later he was ushered out and shown through the door without the five francs.

"
Don't come back!" said the junior footman, and slammed the back door behind him.