THE LONG ARM
OF FANTÔMAS
A NEW FANTÔMAS DETECTIVE NOVEL
THE LONG ARM
OF FANTÔMAS
BY
PIERRE SOUVESTRE
AND
MARCEL ALLAIN
CREATORS OF “FANTÔMAS”
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
_Translated into English by_
A. R. ALLINSON
Copyright, 1924,
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Promising Job 7
II. A Night Affray 23
III. Shady Schemes 32
IV. An Epileptic Seizure 37
V. Disappointed Hopes 46
VI. Prisoner of the Lantern 57
VII. Fantômas’ Ultimatum 66
VIII. A Wireless from Mid-Atlantic 72
IX. The “Blue Chestnut” 77
X. Tom Bob on the Spot 88
XI. Mad as a Hatter 102
XII. A Stroke of Genius 115
XIII. The Wall that Bled 129
XIV. In the Bois de Boulogne 141
XV. In a Private Room 157
XVI. Next Morning! 168
XVII. Fantômas Meets Fantômas 182
XVIII. “Fantômas Speaking!” 196
XIX. The Prisoner of the _Santé_ 210
XX. A Woman’s Self-Sacrifice 220
XXI. Joy Can Kill 230
XXII. A Volunteer Waiter 239
XXIII. The Wedding Breakfast 249
XXIV. Plots and Counterplots 258
XXV. Assault and Battery 270
XXVI. Juve Hears Confessions 278
XXVII. Juve’s Bag 290
XXVIII. The Decoy 297
XXIX. The “Ever-Evasive” Escapes Again 309
THE LONG ARM OF FANTÔMAS
CHAPTER I
A PROMISING JOB
“... Six, seven, eight, nine, ten; there you are!”
“And there’s your bill back in exchange; Monsieur Moche, I thank you.”
“It’s _I_ should thank _you_!”
“Not at all, not at all!... Your leave, Monsieur Moche, to count them
over again on my side? Ten thousand francs, quite a sum of money!”
“My word, yes, my man; so that clears your budget, eh?”
“Please don’t think I mistrust you because I check the notes; it’s the
usual thing.”
“Go on, go on; don’t apologise.”
The bank collector deposited his peaked cap on a straw-bottomed chair
beside him, mopped his streaming brow, and moistening his thumb with a
rapid, eminently professional movement, passed one by one between his
fingers the ten big blue bank notes his debtor had just paid over to
him.
The heat was stifling; it was the 15th of May—settling day, and about
four o’clock of the afternoon.
Bernard, an employé at the Comptoir National, was nearly at the end of
his day’s round when he reached M. Moche’s abode, which lay at the far
end of the _quartier_, No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau.
The man had climbed the stairs slowly. On the fourth floor right was a
door with a brass plate on which was inscribed:
_Moche, Advocate_
The description was only roughly indicative of the professional status
of the tenant of the fourth floor. M. Moche was indeed an advocate,
but not an advocate borne on the rolls of the Cour d’Appel, a pleader
affiliated to the Paris bar and consequently bound by the strict rules
of the profession; he was an _advocate_ in the bare, literal sense of
the word, leading persons of some perspicacity to surmise that M. Moche
was in actual fact merely an ordinary business agent.
Nor was the impression produced on a visitor entering M. Moche’s
domicile such as to modify the supposition. A real barrister’s chambers
are in the main very much like any middle-class private house, whereas
M. Moche’s office, or to be more precise, M. Moche’s offices, bore the
unmistakable stamp of a place of business.
The first room you entered was divided in two by a partition pierced
by wicket-windows, the lower portion being solid, the upper consisting
of a lattice-work of stout bars. Behind could be seen rows and rows of
deed-boxes and bundles of papers ranged on big shelves. In this room
M. Moche generally sat, and whenever the outer door opened he would
follow suit by throwing open a little window and popping out his head
to take stock of the visitor.
Anyone who had ever seen M. Moche, or even his head only framed in the
window opening, could never forget the man, for the advocate of the Rue
Saint-Fargeau possessed a physiognomy that was highly characteristic.
His features, prematurely wrinkled, betrayed his age to be a good
fifty. Following the fashion of ministerial officers of former
days, M. Moche wore on his cheeks a pair of short, bushy whiskers,
of a reddish hue that made them strongly resemble a rabbit’s paws.
His rather prominent nose, under which a black smudge of snuff was
invariably to be found, carried a pair of enormous, round, gold-rimmed
spectacles. Atop of his skull, which one guessed to be completely bald,
was perched a badly made, badly kept wig, ragged at the temples and
unduly flattened at the crown, whereon the wearer found it necessary
from time to time to balance a little velvet skull-cap.
Had it not been for the shifty eyes that were never at rest for an
instant, M. Moche might have been taken for a perfectly honest man; yet
his old-maidish manner, his soft, silky address, his often exaggerated
politeness, his trick of rubbing his hands and bending his back before
visitors, somehow modified any such favourable impression.
Still, as a matter of fact, despite his unpleasing exterior, M. Moche
had earned an excellent reputation in the _quartier_. He was a
serviceable, obliging old fellow, occasionally over inquisitive about
other folks’ business, but as a rule ready enough to do a kindness.
Many a one in the neighbourhood had had recourse to him at one time or
another for little loans of money, granted, it is fair to say, at quite
reasonable rates of interest, and none had come to any harm at the
hands of the old man of business.
The truth is, M. Moche was richer than people might suppose, judging
by the appearance of his abode on the fourth floor, a quite modest set
of apartments. Apart from the outer room with the barred and windowed
partition, the accommodation included a second apartment, a trifle
larger, a trifle more pretentious, which was honoured with the title
of drawing room. One or two armchairs of worn and faded leather and a
round table with a gas chandelier over it made up the furniture. The
room had two windows looking on the street, and affording a superb view
over the northern parts of the city and the fortifications running
parallel with the Boulevard Mortier.
The third room of the flat was M. Moche’s bedroom, a chamber rarely
occupied, however, for its tenant frequently slept from home, and
appeared to utilize his quarters in the Rue Saint-Fargeau merely as a
place for interviewing callers and conducting his business affairs in
general. M. Moche, in fact, was entitled to use more than one address,
and it was matter of common knowledge that he was owner of a house in
the La Chapelle district.
... The collector had finished his verification of the total, and
declared it to be correct. Then he added, as he turned to take leave of
M. Moche:
“There, my day’s work’s done, or as good as done; I’ve only another
flight to climb in your house, and then back to the bank as fast as I
can go, for I’m behind my time already.”
At the words, M. Moche looked at the man with an air of surprise.
“You have a payment to collect on the floor above,” he asked, “and from
whom, pray?”
Bernard consulted a little memorandum book dangling by a string from a
button of his uniform.
“From a M. Paulet.”
“Oh, ho!” laughed M. Moche.
“Yes, that’s so,” affirmed the other; “... oh, a mere trifle, a matter
of 27 francs!”
“Well, good luck to you,” concluded the old man philosophically,
closing the wicket, as the bank employé took his leave with a bow and a
final word of politeness:
“Hoping to meet you again, sir!”
Left alone—he kept neither housekeeper nor office-boy—the old fellow
stretched himself in one of the old leather-covered armchairs in
the dining room. Through the open window came a breath of cool air.
M. Moche sat in his shirt sleeves, enjoying the evening freshness, and
presently took advantage of his momentary leisure to inhale a huge
pinch of snuff. Not a sound came from without—vehicles are few and far
between in the Rue Saint-Fargeau—and only faint and far away in the
distance could be caught the occasional tinkle of the bells of the
electric trams that, in this remote quarter of Paris, link up the outer
suburbs with the central districts of the capital.
Suddenly, M. Moche started violently; from the floor above a dull,
heavy thud reached his ear. He found no difficulty in identifying the
sound—it was that of some heavy object falling on the floor above his
head. The old man scratched his chin and muttered half aloud:
“It’s a piece of furniture overset ... or a body!”
For a minute or two he stood hesitating, but M. Moche was a man of a
curious and inquiring turn of mind.
Abandoning the siesta he was proposing to enjoy, he crept cautiously
from the salon, and crossed the outer room of the flat, which opened
directly on the landing; then, stepping noiselessly in his felt
slippers, he climbed the stairs leading to the upper floor without a
sound.
On the fifth floor of No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau, there had been
residing for some weeks, in a pretty enough, albeit cheap, set of
rooms, two individuals who appeared at first blush to be just an
amiable pair of turtle-doves.
They were quite young; the united ages of the two would barely have
equalled that of M. Moche! The man looked twenty-three at most; his
companion, a dainty, slim little person, a brunette with great dark
eyes, had seen some sixteen summers at the outside.
They were lover and mistress, their names, his Paulet, hers Nini. The
pair had set up house together in the Rue Saint-Fargeau after their
union one Easter eve in the tenderest, but unconsecrated bonds of love.
The two had known each other from childhood. Paulet was the son of a
worthy woman who kept the porter’s lodge at a big house in the Rue de
la Goutte-d’Or. Nini lived in the same house, whither she had come as
quite a child with her mother, a respectable working woman, Mme. Guinon
by name, widow of an employé on the railway.
Nini was the youngest of a large family; they had been five brothers
and sisters, but two having died at an early age, Mme. Guinon had only
three surviving children. The two elder, Firmaine and Alfred, were in
regular employment, the former at a mantua-maker’s in the Rue de la
Paix, the latter with a bookbinder in the Rue des Grands-Augustins;
but Nini, a child of an uncontrolled and capricious temper and a
venturesome and vicious disposition, could never acquire the habit
of regular work, no matter how light. Instead of going apprentice,
the girl had preferred to run the streets in company with the most
outrageous young scamps, boys and girls, of the _quartier_.
This was the very thing to attract and fascinate Paulet, the
concierge’s son, who, too, as the phrase goes, had a wild “bee in his
bonnet,” and who from his teens upwards had been over and over again
told by the flash girls of La Chapelle that he was far too pretty a lad
ever to do any work.
For all that, Paulet was scarcely to be styled an Adonis; slenderly
built and under the middle height, he had into the bargain a pasty
complexion, colourless hair and a pair of pale, watery eyes. Still, the
features were well cut, almost refined. It was a common saying in the
Rue de la Goutte-d’Or that for sure his mother must have gone wrong
one day with a man of quality to have brought such a piece of goods
into the world.
In a word, Paulet was the women’s darling, because not only had the lad
pretty manners of his own, but an inexhaustible fund of high spirits
and an amazing gift of the gab—a typical “ladies’ man” in all the
abomination of the term ... and in all its beauty!
The whole La Chapelle quarter was stirred to its depths when Paulet
seduced little Nini Guinon, and had there and then resolved to set
up house with the girl. There had been some violent scenes with the
child’s family; Mme. Guinon, in particular, had been profoundly grieved
at the catastrophe. But there, one must learn to take things as they
come—and she had resigned herself to the inevitable.
As a matter of fact, for the two months the pair had been living
together as man and wife, the lovers appeared to have grown quite well
behaved. Nini kept her little home in decent order, Paulet worked now
and then at his trade of stone-mason, which he had learnt once upon a
time in a mighty haphazard fashion. Such at any rate was the official,
ostensible occupation of the tenant of the fifth floor. But his real
business, one which sometimes of evenings he constrained his pretty
mistress to follow, was, may we surmise, of a less reputable sort.
An angle in the line of house-front enabled anyone looking out from the
staircase window to see what was going on in the kitchen of the flat
occupied by this dubious couple. At the moment M. Moche reached this
window, Paulet and Nini were engaged in a highly animated conversation;
and, be sure, the old man looked on and listened with all his eyes and
ears.
M. Moche was lost in astonishment at the strange attitude of the two
and the amazing things they were saying! Bending down over the sink,
Nini and Paulet were letting the water pour over each other’s hands,
which they were soaping in feverish haste, while red soapsuds dripped
between their fingers into the trough.
Paulet was saying:
“Buck up, Nini! Don’t let the flies grow on you ... once the stuff
dries on our fingers, there’d be the devil’s own job to get it off
afterwards!”
“I know that,” muttered Nini in a trembling voice. Then she added:
“But, look, I’ve got some on my apron, too.”
“Lather it well,” her lover told her, “and if it _won’t_ come off,
we’ll chuck the thing in the fire.”
Paulet half turned round and reached down from a shelf a heavy hammer
stained with blood, which he set to work to sponge carefully.
“That’s mighty dangerous, too,” he observed, “if it’s not wiped clean.”
M. Moche could form a pretty shrewd notion of what had occurred before
he arrived. Mechanically he mounted the three or four steps that still
separated him from the landing of the floor occupied by Paulet and Nini.
The door stood ajar—a crazy piece of imprudence! M. Moche pushed it
open softly and made his way stealthily along the little passage at the
end of which was the kitchen.
Suddenly, in the half dark, his foot struck against something.
M. Moche, his sight getting accustomed to the dim light, gazed down at
this “something” with haggard eyes—it was the body of a man lying quite
still, face downwards on the floor!—the body of the bank collector! At
the back of the neck showed a fearful wound.
The thing was beyond a doubt—Paulet had murdered the employé from the
Comptoir National.
The unfortunate man’s wallet lay beside him, wide open, and M. Moche
could see that its contents had not yet been touched. The bank notes
stuck half out of the case, like the contents of a parcel that has been
ripped up; you had only to stoop to help yourself. It was plain Paulet
and Nini, their victim once dead, had merely shut to the door, without
making sure it was fastened, calm and confident in their conviction
that nobody in the house, empty at this hour of the day, would come in
to surprise them.
The deed once done, they had deemed the most urgent thing was to set to
work instantly to cleanse their hands and clothes in order to get rid
of the evidences of their guilt at the earliest possible moment. The
corpse lay absolutely motionless. Not a doubt the bank employé had been
killed outright with one blow.
During the few seconds M. Moche stood hesitating before the ghastly
sight, he could still hear the two accomplices minutely discussing
the details of their cleansing operations. But there was something
else that, even more than his curiosity to overhear what they were
saying, held the old advocate’s attention—to wit, the bank notes that
overflowed the wallet, that were all but out of their receptacle,
that seemed to be actually offering themselves to whosoever cared to
appropriate them.
It was a strong temptation—and M. Moche did not resist it!
Creeping like a cat, hiding in the semi-darkness of the little passage,
with a thousand precautions, he advanced step by step; he reached out
his hairy hand, his fingers shook as they touched the brass fittings of
the open wallet; then his hand fell on the bundle of notes. Suddenly
he sprang back in alarm—Paulet and Nini had stopped talking. Had they
heard him?
But presently the same excited conversation began again. Whereupon
M. Moche, with an ugly smile on his face, crept down again to his own
floor, bolted his door and counted his spoils. Yes, it was a fine
stroke of business; not only did he recover his own ten thousand-franc
notes, but with them were ten others of the same denomination!
“Ha, ha! Money well invested and that brings in cent. per cent. on the
nail, or I don’t know what I’m talking about!” M. Moche muttered in
delight, his eyes sparkling with greed.
But next moment, the old man turned ghastly pale. The front-door bell
had rung! Instinctively, M. Moche crammed into his pocket the notes he
had just stolen so audaciously, and with the aplomb of a hardened thief.
Then he stood stock still, waiting. Would the visitor insist? Yes, he
would; the ring was repeated. M. Moche had nothing to fear, for the
moment at any rate; had he not taken the precaution to double lock the
door? Still, he must find out what was afoot. In one second the old
fellow had plotted the whole plan of the line of behaviour he must
adopt.
“Bless my soul,” he thought to himself, “it can only be a caller, a
client, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t receive him; if by any
chance it were Paulet, I need only refuse to open and leave him to kick
his heels till the police arrive.”
At the third repetition of the summons, M. Moche put the tentative
question:
“Who is it? What do you want?”
Through the door the old advocate caught the sound of a fresh young
voice asking timidly:
“Is this M. Moche’s?”
“Yes, madame ... mademoiselle; but I don’t know if he can be seen. What
is it about?”
“A lady wishes to speak to him—about a flat to let in the Rue de
l’Evangile.”
_Rue de l’Evangile_, that was where M. Moche owned a property. Most
certainly it would never do to send away this inquirer who appeared
anxious to take rooms in his house.
So M. Moche turned the key in the lock and half opened the door to make
sure his visitor was alone, and that no one suspicious accompanied her.
Evidently there was no cause for alarm, and the old man stepped back
and threw the portal wide open.
“Pray come in, mademoiselle,” he said with a bow, and ushered her into
the little salon.
His visitor was a young woman, quietly but elegantly dressed.
Twenty-four at the outside, she was a tall, fair, pretty girl; a heavy
veil partly masked the brilliance of her complexion of lilies and
roses; she wore mourning weeds.
Moche, after a brief survey, pointed to a chair and invited her to
state her business.
“Sir,” began the unknown, “at present I am living in the Rue
des Couronnes, but on account of my work—I am employed in the
correspondence office of a factory at Aubervilliers—I am anxious, very
naturally, to make my home nearer the place where I work. Well, I have
been to see a flat in your house in the Rue de l’Evangile that would
suit me, provided you would consent, as the concierge led me to hope
you would, to make a trifling alteration.”
The girl spoke simply, equally without exaggerated timidity and undue
assurance.
Moche looked at her with interest, preoccupied as he was; still he
forced himself to attend to the conversation. Meantime, to gain time
and recover his equanimity, he asked:
“Whom have I the honour to address?”
“True,” the young woman apologized, “I have not told you my name yet; I
am called ... Elisabeth Dollon.”
The girl had pronounced the name only after a momentary hesitation, a
fact which did not escape M. Moche’s perspicacity. He said nothing, but
cast a long, scrutinizing glance at his visitor. He saw that she was
colouring.
“_Mademoiselle Elisabeth Dollon_,” he repeated the name; “now it’s a
curious thing, but somehow the name strikes me as not unfamiliar.”
The young woman had risen, and her brows contracted; she seemed
agitated and spoke with difficulty.
“Forgive me, sir; but I always feel strangely moved whenever I have
occasion to mention my name.”
“Why, pray?” demanded M. Moche, courteously.
“Why? Oh, sir! some years ago my name acquired a sad notoriety through
the tragic, the lamentable deaths of the dearest of my family. First,
my father was murdered under mysterious circumstances in a railway
carriage; then it was my brother who disappeared, struck down by an
odious criminal, who furthermore caused him to be accused, even after
his death, of the commission of atrocious crimes.”
These statements, succinct as they were, sufficed to reanimate
M. Moche’s recollection.
“I have it,” he cried, “yes, I know ... Dollon ... the Dollon case ...
Jacques Dollon ... so he was your brother? Jacques Dollon, whom they
called the ‘Messenger of Evil.’”
The girl, greatly agitated by this reminder of a terrible past, merely
nodded her head affirmatively, while great tears filled her eyes.
M. Moche expressed his sympathy: “I am truly sorry, mademoiselle,” he
said, “to have recalled such mournful memories to your mind; but as
landlord of the house where you wish to take rooms, I was bound to know
your name; but I assure you that from henceforth ...”
He broke off, but presently resumed:
“You spoke just now of a small alteration in the flat you wish to
rent.” He had guessed from the first what it was and was quite ready to
agree.
“You think, mademoiselle, that the five rooms of the vacant flat
are really more than you require, and you are asking me, I feel
convinced of it, to divide the premises in two by having a party-wall
constructed?”
Elisabeth Dollon assented: “That, sir, is what the concierge led me to
expect.”
“Consider the matter settled,” declared M. Moche; “and accordingly, the
premises being only one half as big, the rent will be proportionately
less—I will ask you 400 francs. When do you wish to move in?”
“As soon as possible.”
“The rooms are empty; as soon as ever the partition is built, you can
take possession.”
Moche went into the adjoining room and returned with a form of contract
he had taken from one of the pigeonholes.
“Sign this paper, mademoiselle, if you please.”
Elisabeth Dollon was preparing to do so when he asked another question
in a tone of fatherly interest: “You are alone, eh? quite alone?”
“Why, of course,” replied the girl, whose look of surprise clearly
showed that she failed to understand what her prospective landlord
would be at.
The latter explained: “The house in the Rue de l’Evangile is let out to
very desirable tenants—only respectable families.... It is not for me
to judge your character, my dear young lady, but if you did happen to
have a ‘friend,’ or several ‘friends,’ why, you must not let them come
to see you—or not too often, at any rate.”
Mademoiselle Dollon drew herself up.
“Sir,” she declared, a good deal offended, “I don’t know what you take
me for, but I am an honest woman—”
“Well, well, I felt sure of it the moment I set eyes on you; but there,
it’s as well to understand one another from the beginning ... So please
sign your name there, mademoiselle”—and with his great hairy finger,
M. Moche pointed out the place.
This formality completed, she bade a hasty farewell to M. Moche, who
escorted her politely to the door.
* * * * *
“Brigand, scoundrel, blackguard, thief!”—a torrent of insults, followed
by a torrent of blows ... M. Moche was on the point of recrossing his
threshold when he was struck full in the face and felled to the ground.
As he lay there, he felt the weight of a man’s body crushing him,
holding him forcibly down.
But Moche, for all his years, was a wonderfully active man, and quite
unexpectedly nimble. In one second he had shaken off the incubus and
leapt to the other end of the room, where he stood glaring at his
assailant.
It was Paulet he saw, but Paulet changed beyond recognition—eyes
starting out of his head, mouth set hard, features convulsed, muscles
taut.
The lover of Nini Guinon, knife in hand, was for hurling himself at
M. Moche, when suddenly he stopped dead. The sharp click of a cocked
pistol had struck him motionless where he stood.
Moche, quick as lightning, had not only dodged the villain’s furious
onslaught, but had whipped a revolver from his pocket and pointed the
weapon straight at the scoundrel’s breast—
“Not another step,” he vociferated, “or I shoot you like a dog!”
At the same moment a cry of anguish rang out. Behind Paulet appeared
the face of Nini Guinon, pale and agonized; her two hands clutched her
lover, whom she was holding back with all her strength.
But the man had realized the risk involved in a fresh attack, and was
ready to parley. The voice shook that came from between his clenched
teeth: “Brigand!” he repeated, looking furiously at Moche, “brigand,
give me back my money!”
For a moment the old advocate entertained the idea of shamming
ignorance, pretending not to know what the murderer meant by the
demand. But a half-dozen words that fell from Nini’s lips decided him.
“I saw you fumbling in the money-bag,” she declared, and he knew at
once that dissimulation was useless. The wisest policy was to take the
bull by the horns there and then—and he had his plan all ready, cut and
dried. Best to play the game cards face upwards on the table.
“No,” he declared, grimly, “I will not give you back the money.”
“Ruffian!”
“One minute...!”
A sardonic smile curled the old man’s lips; he cast a searching glance
at Nini, questioning with which of his adversaries he should open the
attack. They were two to one—was it not judicious to win one of them
over to his side so as to reverse the superiority of numbers?
“Poor little Nini,” M. Moche murmured in softened, honeyed tones, “my
poor little girl, you’re in a nasty hole; what ever is to become of
you?”
The girl looked superciliously at the old man: “I don’t understand,”
she told him.
“Oh, yes! you do,” returned the advocate; “nothing easier to
understand, my dear child; you’ll be left all alone in life now, it is
only a question of days, perhaps of hours—your lover will be arrested
by the police and in six months from now guillotined at the back of the
prison of La Santé. To do a man in to steal his money is always a bad
business!”
Beside himself with rage, Paulet screamed:
“But it was _you_ who stole the money, _you_ will be turned off, too.”
But Moche, in the same quiet voice, yet all the while keeping his
revolver levelled at the scoundrel’s breast, retorted:
“Impossible! How prove it? Bank notes can be made to disappear; there’s
nothing more like a thousand-franc note than another thousand-franc
note, while the dead body of a bank messenger, a body stretched on
the floor of a lodging, fifth floor No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau, the
residence of one Paulet by name, that’s a thing it’s not so easy to
stuff away in a pocket-book ... Now, what are you proposing to do with
the corpse in question, eh, my young friend?”
Paulet turned ghastly pale. Since he had done the deed, and especially
since he had discovered there was nothing to be gained by it, the money
having vanished, the scoundrelly apache had completely lost his head.
If only things had gone according to plan, the affair might well have
been highly advantageous. Paulet had arranged it all with Nini—to kill
the collector, to appropriate his takings and fly right away to foreign
parts. It was good business, a job well worth the trouble. But, lo and
behold! the unlucky and unexpected interference of old Moche upset all
their plans, for the old ruffian had left in the wallet nothing but a
few small notes—just enough and no more, to pay for a little spree.
It was M. Moche, not a doubt of it, who had stolen the money ... Paulet
was to pull the chestnuts out of the fire and the other was to reap the
benefit ... Nini, in fact, had actually seen the man making off! If at
that very moment the old man had not had a visitor, Paulet would have
hurried down at once and had it out with him there and then.
In broken phrases and a breathless voice, Paulet detailed all this to
the old advocate, who only smiled enigmatically. After a pause, the
latter spoke again:
“You are a fine, brave fellow, Paulet—a bit of a scamp, too, but who
can blame you? It’s just your little way, you know.... Now, my man, I’m
going to make an offer; put your knife back in your pocket, I will clap
my revolver in its case—we shall be more comfortable so for talking;
let’s sit down one on either end of the table, and perhaps we can come
to some arrangement.”
The young brigand was at a loss, as he gazed alternately at the old
lawyer with the sharp eyes and at Nini, who was prompting him in
hurried, urgent tones:
“Don’t be a fool, Paulet; do what the old ape says. He’s an artful,
knowing beggar, certain sure he’ll find the trick to get us out of the
hole we’re in....”
Moche had caught what Nini said. He stepped up boldly to Paulet, with
outstretched hands, though the young man had not yet pocketed his
weapon:
“There, you see, I trust you,” he declared. “I offer you my hand, mate,
as a good comrade—shake, my man, we’ll fix up things yet.”
Paulet gave in. Ten minutes later, seated at the round table in
M. Moche’s dining room, the advocate and his two visitors, Paulet and
Nini, were just finishing a bottle of wine together.
They clinked glasses for the last time:
“Well, then,” demanded Paulet, “it’s a sure thing, Moche, old man,
you’re going to help me?”
Moche, with a superb and impressive gesture, laid his heavy, hairy hand
on Nini’s touzled curls, where she sat beside him:
“I swear it, on your lady-love’s glorious tresses, Paulet, and that’s
as binding as the Blessed Sacrament!”
“All the same,” Paulet warned his mistress with an air at once
peremptory and timid, “you’ll have to shut your jaw tight and not go
gassing about the job in hand.”
Nini nodded, laid a finger on her lip, and with a shrug and a look of
scorn:
“D’you really suppose,” she scoffed, “I should be such a silly goose as
all that?”
She said no more, for the two men were deep in confabulation.
Moche was asseverating:
“I tell you this, Paulet, we’re in for a gorgeous fine thing; don’t you
imagine I’ve come to my present respectable and respected age without
seeing a thing or two and learning pretty thoroughly what’s what in
this world of ours! A smart customer like you, with a smart chap like
me to help him, why, we’ll play some fine games together!”
Paulet agreed, smiling a well satisfied smile. But one detail still
troubled him:
“The body,” he asked, “the fellow’s body ... upstairs; what’s to be
done with it, eh?”
“Never you worry, Paulet, there’s more tricks than one in papa Moche’s
pack, trust him for that. If you do what I tell you, the ‘cold meat’
upstairs in your passage will be fixed up, never fear, so he’ll never
come back again: it’ll take a mighty clever devil to find him, I can
tell you!”
“But I don’t understand,” objected Paulet.
“What’s that matter?” snapped the other.
The old scamp got up, stuffed his hands in his pockets—an ordinary
enough gesture seemingly, but in reality to make sure his revolver was
still safe in the inside-pocket of his breeches.
Paulet had risen, and he, too, thrust his hands in his pockets, in one
of which he mechanically felt for his knife, which lay there open. All
very well to have made peace, to have concluded a treaty of alliance
over a bottle of wine—prudence is a virtue all the same!
But neither Paulet nor M. Moche had any warlike intentions; the two
malefactors had made up their minds it was to their mutual advantage to
help one another.
“As a fact, you are a mason by trade, Paulet, aren’t you?”
“H’m, that depends ...”
“Could you undertake to build a wall, a stone wall, a brick wall, a
lath and plaster partition, any guess contraption of the sort?”
“Bless my soul, yes,” laughed Paulet, “provided you give me the needful
supply of stone or brick or plaster and lime for the job.”
Moche clapped his arm on Paulet’s shoulder:
“Well, my boy, that settles it; there’s not a minute to lose, I engage
from to-night.”
Nini Guinon, who had been waiting the result of the colloquy with no
small anxiety, Nini, whose gaze fixed first on one, then on the other
of the speakers, tender and passionate on Paulet, questioning and
admiring on M. Moche, and who had kept her curiosity forcibly in check
for all this time, could no longer restrain the question:
“But what are you going to do?”
Moche looked first at her, then at Paulet:
“You’ll see what we’re going to do all in good time,” he announced,
“but I can tell you one thing—what we’re going to do is a mighty
promising job.”