“Will he be here?”
“Certainly.”
Mascarin was often laconic, but he seldom gave such short answers as this.
“What is the matter?” asked the doctor. “Your greeting is quite funereal. Are you not well?”
“I am merely preoccupied, and that is excusable on the eve of the battle we are about to fight,” returned Mascarin.
He only, however, told a portion of the truth; for there was more in the background, which he did not wish to confide to his friend. Toto Chupin’s revolt had disquieted him. Let there be but a single flaw in the axletree, and one day it will snap in twain; and Mascarin wanted to eliminate this flaw.
“Pooh!” remarked the doctor, playing with his locket, “we shall succeed. What have we to fear, after all,—opposition on Paul’s part?”
“Paul may resent a little,” answered Mascarin disdainfully; “but I have decided that he shall be present at our meeting of to-day. It will be a stormy one, so be prepared. We might give him his medicine in minims, but I prefer the whole dose at once.”
“The deuce you do! Suppose he should be frightened, and make off with our secret.”
“He won’t make off,” replied Mascarin in a tone which froze his listener’s blood. “He can’t escape from us any more than the cockchafer can from the string that a child has fastened to it. Do you not understand weak natures like his? He is the glove, I the strong hand beneath it.”