Three boats were lying at the landing-place, and at the bottom of one of them Nicholas was trying how the trap worked which he had arranged.
Mounted on a bench outside of the arbor, Calabash, with her eyes shaded with her hand, was looking in the direction where she expected Seraphin and Fleur-de-Marie to appear.
"No one yet, neither old nor young," said Calabash, descending from her bench, and addressing Nicholas; "it will be as yesterday! Like poor fellows waiting for their ship to come in! If these women don't come before a half hour, we must go: the affair of Bras-Rouge is better worth our while; he is waiting for us. The broker is to be at his house in the Champs Elysees at five-o'clock—we must be there before him. This very morning La Chouette repeated it to us."
"You are right," answered Nicholas, leaving his boat. "May the thunder crush this old woman, who physics us for no purpose! The trap works like a charm—of the two jobs perhaps we shall have neither."
"Besides, Bras-Rouge and Barbillon have need of us—of themselves they can do nothing."
"It is true; for while one does the business, Red-Arm must remain outside his tavern to watch, and Barbillon is not strong enough to drag the broker into the cellar alone; this old woman will kick."
"Did not La Chouette tell us, laughingly, that she kept the Maitre d'Ecole as a boarder in this cellar?"
"Not in this one; in another which is much deeper, and inundated when the river is high."
"Mustn't he vegetate there, in that cellar! To be there all alone and blind as he is, after the accident to him!"
"He will see clear there, if he sees nowhere else: the cellar is as dark as a furnace."