By dint of desperate appeals to relatives Robert succeeded in getting the money to take up the forged bill, but he had now another danger to face—Bastien, the jobbing carpenter, who, he knew, would make a terrible row when told of the failure to get hold of the widow's money.
The carpenter came with an expectant expression, and left infuriated. Vainly had Robert explained. Bastien bluntly informed him that he did not believe a word.
"You are trying to defraud me!" he had shrieked, shaking his fist and sending Madame Robert into hysterics. "I will be even with you yet, and if to-morrow you have not the money ready, I—" He ceased abruptly and shuffled out of the house.
He did not come back for a fortnight. Then ensued a repetition of the first scene, terminated by Robert handing him two hundred and fifty francs.
It was a couple of months before Bastien believed his explanation of his poverty, but the two murderers continued to quarrel whenever they met. Robert was again hopelessly in debt, and could hardly raise a few francs to give to his fellow-assassin, who was blackmailing him daily. Eventually things became so bad that Bastien in desperation committed a burglary for which he was arrested and sent to penal servitude for seven years.
Then fresh information reached the authorities and Robert was arrested again, whilst Bastien was brought from prison and taken with the ex-wine merchant before the magistrate. They were severely examined, but despite many contradictions and lies they had to be discharged again, Bastien returning to gaol, and Robert to the miserable rooms he called his home. This second arrest, however, meant that still ten years would have to elapse before Madame Houet was considered dead in law and her assassins free from punishment.
When Bastien had served his sentence for burglary he began to blackmail Robert systematically, until another robbery landed him in gaol again. As the years went by he grew jealous of the liberty enjoyed by Robert, and, becoming garrulous, eventually confided in an old convict with whom he worked exactly nine years and eight months from the day of his second arrest. His fellow-prisoner had twelve years to serve, and was, accordingly, not to be feared, but the very week he heard Bastien's story of the tragedy in the Rue Vaugirard he saved a warder's life by an act of bravery, and was rewarded by a free pardon in March, 1833.
The pardon, however, did not include employment, and the ex-convict found the world hard and unsympathetic. No one would have anything to do with a man whose record included a murder and several violent assaults, and he was starving when it occurred to him that he might be able to make something out of Bastien's confession. He, thereupon, called on the chief of police, and offered to tell him where the body of the widow was provided he was given five hundred francs when his statement had been tested.
The chief willingly promised the sum mentioned, for it was a continual source of exasperation to him that two such villains as Robert and Bastien should have outwitted him and his legion of trained detectives.
The ex-convict recounted what Bastien had told him, and for the third time Robert and Bastien were charged together. They were not so confident now, for something seemed to tell them that they were not going to escape again.