‘You have brought my money,’ said the physician, half interrogatively, as he turned his ghastly features towards Sainte-Croix. ‘Five thousand crowns is light payment for the services I have rendered you. It should have been here before.’
‘I regret that I have not yet got it,’ answered Gaudin. ‘The greater part of the possessions which have fallen to Madame de Brinvilliers cannot yet be made available. I went this morning to the Jew who before aided me, on the Quai des Orfèvres, to get some money, but he was from home.’
It is true that Sainte-Croix had been in that direction during the day, but it was with a far different object. To elude the payment of Exili’s bond he had determined upon destroying him, running the risk of whatever might happen subsequently through the physician’s knowledge of the murders. And he had therefore ordered a body of the Garde Royal to attend at the Palais des Thermes that evening, when they would receive sufficient proof of the trade Exili was driving in his capacity of alchemist.
‘It must be paid, however,’ said Exili, ‘and by daybreak to-morrow morning. Look you, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix, I am not to be put off like your grovelling creditors have been, with your dull, ordinary debts. To-morrow I start for England, and I will have the money with me.’
‘I tell you I cannot procure it by that time,’ said Gaudin. ‘A day can be of no consequence to you.’
‘No more than it may be a matter of life or death—a simple affair, I grant you, with either of us, but still worth caring for. Ha! what is this?’
He had purposely brushed his hand against Sainte-Croix’s cloak, and in the pocket of it he felt some weighty substance. The chink assured him it was gold.
‘You cannot have that,’ said Gaudin confusedly; ‘it is going with me to the gaming-table this evening. Chavagnac has promised me my revenge at De Lauzun’s.’
‘You have rich jewels, too, about you,’ continued Exili, peering at him with a fearful expression. ‘The carcanet, I see, has been redeemed, and becomes you well. That diamond clasp is a fortune in itself.’
The gaze of the physician grew every moment more peculiar, as he gazed at Gaudin’s rich attire.