The next day, Combeferre arrives at the Café Musain an hour early. He carries a bag that clinks as he moves, and he drops it onto a table with a loud crash and starts unloading it.
It is full of pieces of wood, metal scraps, and assorted sizes and types of wire. This is what he will use to build his communication device. They were not easy to get. He was unwilling to take anything he found in the street, but most scrap shops didn't sell the wide variety of things that he felt he would need. It has been a long day of combing Paris.
Sticking his head into the bag, he takes a battery out of the bottom. This was the hardest to procure, though Combeferre thinks himself brilliant for remembering the lecture on the electric fluid several weeks ago, and going to the professor to see if he still had the battery.
He selects several pieces of metal and wire at random, and connects them to the battery. He puts his ear to it, listening for a signal.
Nothing happens. He realizes that Feuilly, Prouvaire, Enjolras, and Grantaire are staring at him as if at a madman.
