There are, besides, other and no less serious difficulties in the way of arrest for debt—difficulties which tend to temper the severity of legislation, and public opinion not infrequently makes a dead letter of the law. In great cities there are poor or degraded wretches enough; poverty and vice know no scruples, and consent to play the spy, but in a little country town, people know each other too well to earn wages of the bailiff; the meanest creature who should lend himself to dirty work of this kind would be forced to leave the place. In the absence of recognized machinery, therefore, the arrest of a debtor is a problem presenting no small difficulty; it becomes a kind of strife of ingenuity between the bailiff and the debtor, and matter for many pleasant stories in the newspapers.
Cointet the elder did not choose to appear in the affair; but the fat Cointet openly said that he was acting for Métivier, and went to Doublon, taking Cérizet with him. Cérizet was his foreman now, and had promised his cooperation in return for a thousand-franc note. Doublon could reckon upon two of his understrappers, and thus the Cointets had four bloodhounds already on the victim’s track. At the actual time of arrest, Doublon could furthermore count upon the police force, who are bound, if required, to assist a bailiff in the performance of his duty. The two men, Doublon himself, and the visitors were all closeted together in the private office, beyond the public office, on the ground floor.
A tolerably wide-paved lobby, a kind of passageway, led to the public office. The gilded scutcheons of the court, with the word “Bailiff” printed thereon in large black letters, hung outside on the house wall on either side the door. Both office windows gave upon the street, and were protected by heavy iron bars; but the private office looked into the garden at the back, wherein Doublon, an adorer of Pomona, grew espaliers with marked success. Opposite the office door you beheld the door of the kitchen, and, beyond the kitchen, the staircase that ascended to the first story. The house was situated in a narrow street at the back of the new Law Courts, then in process of construction, and only finished after 1830.—These details are necessary if Kolb’s adventures are to be intelligible to the reader.
It was Kolb’s idea to go to the bailiff, to pretend to be willing to betray his master, and in this way to discover the traps which would be laid for David. Kolb told the servant who opened the door that he wanted to speak to M. Doublon on business. The servant was busy washing up her plates and dishes, and not very well pleased at Kolb’s interruption; she pushed open the door of the outer office, and bade him wait there till her master was at liberty; then, as he was a stranger to her, she told the master in the private office that “a man” wanted to speak to him. Now, “a man” so invariably means “a peasant,” that Doublon said, “Tell him to wait,” and Kolb took a seat close to the door of the private office. There were voices talking within.
“Ah, by the by, how do you mean to set about it? For, if we can catch him tomorrow, it will be so much time saved.” It was the fat Cointet who spoke.
“Nothing easier; the gaffer has come fairly by his nickname,” said Cérizet.
At the sound of the fat Cointet’s voice, Kolb guessed at once that they were talking about his master, especially as the sense of the words began to dawn upon him; but, when he recognized Cérizet’s tones, his astonishment grew more and more.
“Und dat fellow haf eaten his pread!” he thought, horror-stricken.
“We must do it in this way, boys,” said Doublon. “We will post our men, at good long intervals, about the Rue de Beaulieu and the Place du Mûrier in every direction, so that we can follow the gaffer (I like that word) without his knowledge. We will not lose sight of him until he is safe inside the house where he means to lie in hiding (as he thinks); there we will leave him in peace for awhile; then some fine day we will come across him before sunrise or sunset.”
“But what is he doing now, at this moment? He may be slipping through our fingers,” said the fat Cointet.
“He is in his house,” answered Doublon; “if he left it, I should know. I have one witness posted in the Place du Mûrier, another at the corner of the Law Courts, and another thirty paces from the house. If our man came out, they would whistle; he could not make three paces from his door but I should know of it at once from the signal.”
(Bailiffs speak of their understrappers by the polite title of “witnesses.”)
Here was better hap than Kolb had expected! He went noiselessly out of
