She, however, calmly explained that Busch had sent her to get some information respecting the issue of the Universal Bank shares. Were there any still available? Could one hope to secure some with the premium accorded to the members of the syndicate? But all this was surely a pretext, a dodge to get in to see the house, to spy out what was being done there, and to feel him, Saccard; for her tiny eyes, gimlet-holes as they seemed, pierced in her puffy face, were ferreting everywhere, and incessantly returning to him, as though to probe him to the very soul. Busch, indeed, after long and patient waiting, ripening the famous affair of the abandoned child, was now making up his mind to act, and had sent her out to reconnoitre.
'There are none left,' answered Saccard brutally.
She realised that she would learn nothing further, and that any attempt that day would be imprudent. And so, without waiting for him to push her out, she at once stepped towards the door.
'Why don't you ask me for some shares for yourself?' he resumed with the intention of offending her.
Thereupon, in her lisping, pointed voice in which there was a touch of mockery, she replied: 'Me! Oh! that isn't my style of business—I—wait.'
And, at that moment, catching sight of the huge, worn leather bag which never left her, he felt a shudder pass through him. To think of it, on a day when everything had gone off so well, when he had at last felt so happy at beholding the long-desired birth of that great financial establishment, this woman came to him. Would she, rascally old creature that she was, prove to be the wicked fairy, the fairy who in the familiar tales throws a spell over princesses in their cradles? That bag which she had been carrying through the offices of his nascent bank was—he realised—full of depreciated securities, stock that had ceased to be quoted. And he understood, so he fancied, that she meant to wait as long as might be necessary in order to bury his own shares in it, when the fall of his enterprise should come. Her reply was like the cry of the raven that starts with the army when it sets out on the march, that follows it until the night of the carnage, then hovers and swoops down, knowing there must be dead to eat.
'Au revoir, monsieur,' added La Méchain, as she retired panting and very polite.