The clerk led him to the commissary's office. A very tall man was leaning here against the fender of a stove, and holding up with both hands the skirts of a mighty coat with three capes. He had a square face, thin and firm lips, thick grayish whiskers, and a look of turning your pockets inside out. Of this look you might have said, not that it penetrated, but that it searched. This man did not appear much less ferocious or formidable than Jondrette; for sometimes it is just as dangerous to meet the dog as the wolf. "What do you want?" he asked Marius, without adding, "sir." "The police commissary." "He is absent, but I represent him." "It is a very secret affair." "Then speak." "And very urgent." "In that case speak quick." This man, who was calm and quick, was at once terrifying and reassuring. He inspired both fear and confidence. Marius told him of his adventure; that a person whom he only knew by sight was to be drawn that very evening into a trap; that he, Marius Pontmercy, lawyer, residing in the next room to the den, had heard the whole plot through the partition; that the scoundrel's name who invented the snare was Jondrette; that he would have accomplices, probably prowlers at the barrières, among others one Panchaud, _alias_ Printanier, _alias_ Bigrenaille; that Jondrette's daughters would be on the watch; that there were no means of warning the threatened man, as not even his name was known; and that, lastly, all this would come off at six in the evening, at the most deserted spot on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, in the house No. 50-52. At this number the Inspector raised his head, and said coldly,-- "It must be in the room at the end of the passage." "Exactly," Marius replied; and added, "do you know the house?" The Inspector remained silent for a moment, and then answered, while warming his boot-heel at the door of the stove,-- "Apparently so." He went on between his teeth, talking less to Marius than his cravat. "Patron Minette must be mixed up in this." This remark struck Marius. "Patron Minette!" he said; "yes, I heard that name mentioned." And he told the Inspector of the dialogue between the hairy man and the bearded man in the snow behind the wall in the Rue du Petit Banquier. The Inspector growled,-- "The hairy man must be Burgon, and the bearded man, Demi-liard, _alias_ Deux Milliards." He was again looking down and meditating. "As for Father What's-his-name, I guess who he is. There, I have burnt my great-coat; they always make too large a fire in these cursed stoves. No. 50-52, formerly the property of one Gorbeau." Then he looked at Marius. "You only saw the hairy man and the bearded man?" "And Panchaud." "You did not see a small dandy prowling about there?" "No." "Nor a heavy lump of a fellow resembling the elephant in the Jardin-des Plantes?" "No." "Nor a scamp who looks like an old red-tail?" "No."