The long arm of Fantômas, page 28
Ah! if only he were right! if he had discovered the villain? That would be an extraordinarily fine trump card for him in the grim game he was playing with Fantômas as adversary! And now, many hitherto unexplained details recurred to his memory. Notably he recalled the strange apparition of the man in the black mask on that terrible night he had spent in M. Moche’s garret. He did not forget how on that occasion Fantômas, under pretence of safeguarding him from harm, had involved him in the direst peril, evidently in the hope that the police would discover him hidden in the Chinese lantern.
“Why,” he thought presently, “but why did not Fantômas kill me when he had this chance? that is what I cannot understand.”
But, when he examined the question more deeply, Fandor realized the fact that Fantômas’ crimes invariably had a double object—to get rid of an obnoxious adversary and at the same time to throw suspicions on the dead man that went to prove by their very nature the innocence of some accomplice of Fantômas or of Fantômas himself. Thus he pondered, all the while carrying on with the utmost awkwardness his duties as a waiter, under the wary and ever watchful eye of the landlord of The Orange Blossom.
At the same time Fandor did not allow his attention to be absorbed solely by the conversation between Moche and Nini. A short while before Ascott had left the rest of the party—it was an incident which had, in fact, contributed not a little to the rising nausea that had driven the young Englishman from the table—two of the apache gang, the same two, “Bull’s-eye” and the “Gasman” who had signalized themselves in the Silver Goblet affair and at the unpleasant interview with the Police Commissary, appearing unexpectedly within sight of the window, had been invited to join the wedding feast by the irrepressible Bouzille. The two intruders were now seated at the table, and the soi-disant waiter made a point of plying them with drink and incidentally catching up any fragments of their talk that struck him as being to the point. The apaches, in ambiguous terms, but in a fashion explicit enough for Fandor’s comprehension, were discussing recent enterprises in which the gang had been mixed up. It became very evident that a unanimous and general feeling of suspicion and ill-will towards Fantômas was growing up among the criminal confraternity. Fantômas, they muttered, used everybody for his own purposes, forced each man to risk his skin and in the end compensated nobody. In covert phrases, too, they spoke of Père Moche, who, they hinted, must know all about Fantômas, and whose task was always to pour oil on the troubled waters, who was for ever putting off till tomorrow payments that should have been made yesterday, in one word playing a double game.
“Oh!” grumbled the “Gasman,” while Fandor was refilling his glass, “things can’t go on no longer like this, tomorrow night and the hour sounds for definite and final explanations; we want our money, Fantômas will have to answer our questions.”
“Bull’s-eye” bent over to his comrade, and in his hoarse voice asked:
“So the rendez-vous still holds good at the same place, eh?”
At that moment Fandor was obliged to go away, M. Moche was calling him; nevertheless the journalist had gathered from a remark of the “Gasman’s” that the following night there was to be a meeting of the gang on the outskirts of the city, close down by the banks of the Seine at the far end of Alfort.
A superb limousine had drawn up at the back of the restaurant of The Orange Blossom. It was about four of the afternoon: the breakfast had resolved itself into a drunken debauch, a horrid uproar of ribald songs disturbed the quiet of the establishment. Bouzille was the noisiest of them all; the wine bottles had been left on the table at the end of the meal, in an hour’s time they had to be replaced. Ascott, heedless of the whole riot, had paid without a murmur.
Ten minutes ago Nini Guinon, at Moche’s urgent suggestion, had gone to join her husband, who had spent a strange afternoon for a bridegroom, shut up alone in a room on the first floor, anxiously awaiting, not so much the return of his wife, as the arrival of the motor-car he had ordered, eager to escape from Paris with all speed and hide himself and his intolerable situation in some remote corner of the provinces. Hardly had Nini appeared, all flushed and excited, before Ascott, looking her coldly up and down, ordered her:
“Put on your hat, we are going.”
Furious at bottom to be so treated, but scared by her husband’s manner, and also remembering old Moche’s counsels, she obeyed, muttering curses under her breath; “He shall pay me for this, come the day I can bring him to heel.”
Hastily she put on a long dust-cloak, settled her hat in place and followed her husband and the two, without a word of goodbyee to anyone, got into the car, which started away at once. Père Moche, however, had run up hastily to see the last of them; with a wave of the hand he bade farewell to the newly-wed pair, a broad, ironical smile on his lips.
But suddenly he started back. An explosion had rung out, half an inch more and Père Moche would have received a bullet full in the face. Luckily he had foreseen the shot and ducked in time. With amazing agility, Moche sprang at his assailant, whom he hurled to the ground, keeping him down with a knee pressed hard on the fellow’s chest.
“Brigand! scoundrel! I don’t know what stops me from killing you here and now!”
Who was this man Père Moche had mastered so adroitly? No other than Paulet, Nini Guinon’s lover, the white-faced, pale-eyed scamp who had assuredly been completely sacrificed in the old usurer’s sinister machinations. With calm ferocity the latter was now brandishing the revolver he had snatched from the apache’s hands.
“One word, one movement,” he declared, “and I blow your brains out, as you tried to blow out mine the day of the bank messenger’s death. Villain! murderer! Remember I hold your life in my hands, that I can do for you where I choose and when I choose.”
“Scoundrel!” vociferated Paulet, “you’ve robbed me of my doxy, what d’you think is to become of me now?”
“Fool! she wanted to be done with you!”
“Ah! if you hadn’t hid her away, you old rascal, if only I could have seen her!”
But Moche ordered him to hold his tongue. It needed all his strength to keep the apache down. Paulet, savage and desperate, had managed with his right hand to grasp the barrel of the revolver, and was holding it away from his body; it looked as if he might renew the struggle, perhaps floor the old man in his turn. The two wretches fought furiously for some seconds, now one, now the other momentarily getting the upper hand; the two rolled over and over in the dust. At last Moche succeeded in gripping the young apache’s throat between his powerful fingers, after forcing him to let go the revolver.
“Die, then,” yelled Moche, “die, as you won’t give in!”
“Oh! oh!” stammered Paulet in a broken voice, “Curse it, curse my luck! will no one save me?”
Suddenly the two combatants were dragged apart. In answer to Paulet’s cry for help, someone shouted in a ringing voice: “I will.”
The someone had picked up the revolver that had been dropped in the struggle and stood with it in his hand. Dazed and dumbfounded, Paulet gazed open-mouthed at his preserver, whom he did not know. Père Moche, for his part, saw that the person who had just intervened between them in the battle was no other than the servant at the restaurant who had waited at breakfast.
Moche stared at the man, scrutinizing his face with concentrated attention; suddenly he broke into a cry:
“Fandor, in heaven’s name!” he exclaimed, “you blackguard, I didn’t recognize you before....”
At the name of Fandor, Paulet sprang up and ranged himself instinctively by the journalist’s side; while Père Moche realized the time was not come to continue the discussion. Besides which, the landlord of The Orange Blossom now came running up from the penetralia of his establishment with very natural curiosity:
“What is up now?” he demanded, “I seem to have heard an explosion, like a revolver shot.”
Mine host looked hard at the three men, standing there with torn clothes, all filthy and smothered in dust; but Fandor was ready with a plausible explanation. He gave his account with perfect self-possession:
“It’s nothing, landlord, only the customer’s car burst a tyre just now and we’ve been helping to mend it; it was a case of creeping in under the chassis, that’s how we’re a bit dirty, but a clothes brush’ll soon put that to rights!”
The landlord asked no more questions, and the four men returned quietly to the restaurant, but three of them were well aware that this tranquillity was only apparent. It was but a truce before the battle, for war seemed henceforth to be definitely declared.
End of Chapter
Chapter 24
Plots and Counterplots
It was nine o’clock, and the storm was at its height. The rain came down in torrents, the wind blew fiercely, lightning blazed and thunder bellowed. The streets were deserted, for a man must indeed have had urgent business to call him abroad on such a night.
Apparently such was Jérôme Fandor’s case, for the journalist was walking fast and resolutely under the pitiless downpour along the quays bordering the Seine in the direction of Charenton. As he fought his way against the gale, the belated pedestrian was growling between his teeth:
“Good lord! how my ears sting with the cold! and how pitch dark it is! Screw up my eyes as I will, I can’t see a thing. All the same, I’ve got to get to Alfort; but shall I ever find the rendez-vous in this darkness, I wonder! All the same, how right I was to attend the marriage of that fool Ascott with the unspeakable Nini Guinon! What a wedding! and what a crew! And old Moche! what a clever fellow he must be to keep this gang of scoundrels on the job, always promising the fellows money and never giving them the pay for the crimes they do at his bidding! Oh! he’s one in a thousand, he is, the old money-lender of the Rue Saint-Fargeau! If I hadn’t important reasons for not wishing him to see me, I’d just go straight, fair and square, to the abandoned quarry where the confabulation’s to be between the ‘Gasman,’ ‘Bull’s-eye,’ Paulet and the rest of that gang of ruffians. But surely I hear footsteps coming up behind me. Best turn off the road now and make to the right to get time to find a hiding place. Mustn’t let yourself be seen, friend Fandor. True, all these chaps are your ‘pals’ and more or less well disposed; but ‘ware Moche, if he spotted you, especially after yesterday’s business, there’d be trouble, and that wouldn’t help on poor Juve’s affairs!”
All the while, as he soliloquized thus, Fandor was moving on as fast as he could in the deep shadows that helped to conceal him, sometimes crawling, sometimes walking. Still, he was the first to reach the rendez-vous. It was a sinister spot. A sand quarry lay there abandoned, a hundred yards from the bank of the river. A strike of the quarrymen had been on foot for a week, and there appeared no present likelihood of work being resumed. Fantômas’ henchmen were aware of the fact and knew that nobody would come to disturb them. Besides, the river was close at hand, and if interruptors appeared, so much the worse for them! They would make a hole in the water, whether they liked a bath or no.
But the look of things would not have been half so grim if, moored by the shore, a dredger had not shown its huge, dark bulk on the black water, lifting to the sky its slanting spar with an endless chain running along its length carrying the great buckets that dredge up the mud and detritus from the bed of the stream.
A sound of footsteps. A cold sweat broke out on Fandor’s temples; like all truly brave men, he was not rash and deemed it foolish to risk his life without gain for anybody or anything whatsoever. Now it was very certain that, if he was seen by Moche, who knew him, and now treated him openly as an enemy, he would be denounced to the apaches, who would no longer take him to be one of their own crew and would dub him a traitor. A summary execution would be the sequel. But what would become of Juve then? Anyway, what was to be done now under these difficult circumstances? The intrepid journalist asked himself the question anxiously, calling up all his ingenuity and cunning to discover an immediate answer, for it was not hours now that counted, but seconds.
The footsteps came nearer. They were within a hundred yards and the new arrivals would soon be able to pierce the heavy shadows that, luckily for Fandor, still hung, a protective screen, between them and the reporter. A happy thought! a really brilliant idea! Those great buckets (empty or full, what matter?) that swung in the wind along the dredger’s spar, were they not observatories all ready made, so excellently adapted to the purpose that assuredly it would never occur to the most suspiciously minded of the gang that a spy, however rash, should have chosen so perilous a hiding place. Fandor did not lose a moment. Rapidly and dexterously the young man hauled himself up by the chain and had very soon reached the highest point of the spar, where he settled himself, crouching down in the topmost bucket of all. By great good luck it was empty. From there he could both see and hear, while remaining entirely incognito himself.
He was only just in time. The apaches were arriving one after the other in quick succession. “Big Ernestine” was the first; behind her came Paulet, the murderer of the bank messenger, the “Gasman,” “Bull’s-eye,” the “Beadle,” and other members of the gang, after them, five or six new recruits, whom Fandor only knew by sight, and who had as yet done little to get themselves talked about. These were whispering together under their breath. The rest seemed quite at home, they believed themselves as much alone as in their regular haunts, and their voices swelled to the loudest diapason of indignation.
“Eleven gone, and the dirty scamp’s not come! it’s over long the thief’s been chousing us all with his promises he never keeps. Won’t stand the cheat any more, what say you, mates?”
“If old man Moche tries on another of his tricks tonight, I’ll do him in tomorrow!”
“Hark there! what’s that?”
“It’s the old humbug here at last! oh, ho! his pockets are bulging with brass; that’s why he’s been so slow; it’s over heavy for him, he can’t walk!”—and the yells and imprecations broke out afresh.
A small, mean, cringing figure, his head almost buried in the collar of his great-coat, his hands clasped in a suppliant attitude, the old usurer listened quietly to the recriminations that rose on all sides, guessing that for sure he would be in the tightest of tight places before long.
“Good day to you, mates all,” he greeted the angry crowd, and said no more for the moment. But, after a brief pause, seeing looks of anger and suspicion scanning him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, he added in a whining voice:
“Beg pardon, but we’d be better elsewhere: suppose we adjourn to the deck of the Marie-Salope (the dredger) over there?”
All agreed; only “Bull’s-eye” slipped in a question: “There’s nobody there?”
A general shout reassured him: “Why, who’d ever dare to come?”
Still, by way of further precaution, “Big Ernestine” climbed down into the lighter, moored in the wake of the dredger, into which the buckets when working emptied their contents. Another minute and the woman was up again, satisfied with her inspection, and declaring:
“All clear!”
But Moche now pointed out that they were wasting precious time, gassing without saying anything to the point.
“We’re here to talk business, so let’s begin.”
The company took seats as they best could, some on the bulwarks, some on the deck-planks of the dredger, forming a circle in the middle of which Père Moche took his stand—and the trial opened. “Trial” is the right word, for truly the speaker was pleading for his life before his judges seated round him, whom even a superficial observer would have found no difficulty in recognizing as ready to go to the most violent extremities.
It was the “Beadle” who undertook the prosecution. All the while brandishing before the face of the culprit, who stood impassive before him, his redoubtable clenched fists, the weight of which was familiar to all the onlookers and which without an effort could have felled the unhappy old man to the ground, he began with an artful reference that instantly won him the sympathy of his audience.
“Père Moche,” he said, “you are come, and that is well, for it behooves us once for all to understand each other, us and you. You can see for yourself, that, among the chosen few of our band, one only is missing, poor ‘Beauty Boy,’ and if he has been nabbed, if he is in the stone jug, waiting till the bigwigs send him overseas, that is entirely your fault; I don’t mean to say you sold him to the ‘tecs, but you left him without coin, without a yellow boy, without a stiver, and forced him to muck it somehow or other, so that ...”
A triple round of applause allowed the orator to take breath, which he did long and noisily, and to add another touch:
“Yes, if ‘Beauty Boy’ was pinched working the Yankees on the Trans-Atlantic boat-train, and he so clever fingered, it was because he didn’t have the usual stuff with him. If he hadn’t been forced to pick up just anything he could to fill his belly, he would never have ...”
Faces grew ugly, fists clenched, every eye glittered with murderous light. In his hiding-place Fandor congratulated himself on his presence at this unexpected scene. Moche seemed to be racking his brains to find a way to exculpate himself. Still the old ruffian managed to conceal his distress, and it was without any great difficulty he succeeded in breaking in on the “Beadle’s” eloquence and making himself heard instead.
“Come, come, you’re never going to eat me, comrades? I’ve got a tough hide, you know, and you’d only get a belly-ache. Now what makes you go howling at me that gate when I’m your best chum? What have you against me, now?”
“The infernal cheek of the chap!” snorted out “Big Ernestine,” looking as red as a poppy.
