"Yes, why do you ask?"
"My dear fellow, don't lose a minute. He is the very man for you. I know him intimately—an awfully good sort, and clever! Why he is the smartest man in Paris. I'll lay you a wager of any amount you like, that Delapine will pull you through. Shake," he said proffering his hand to Payot who grasped it warmly.
"Thank you with all my heart," said Payot; "we will see him immediately," and M. Beaupaire hailed a taxi, and they drove to the Villebois's.
M. Beaupaire and Payot were soon engaged in earnest conversation with Delapine, who was propped up in an easy-chair with Renée who sat on a footstool beside him.
"You need not leave me, Renée," said the professor, as she was about to retire. "I am sure these gentlemen will not mind, and I know she wants to know the worst, don't you, Renée?"
Delapine listened quietly to the history of the New Jerusalem bubble, and leaning back with his eyes half closed, and with the tips of his fingers pressed together after the manner of divines, but said nothing. When Payot and Beaupaire had quite finished, Delapine looked up with a smile.
"Well," he answered, "I like you to put your confidence in me. You are a man after my own heart, and I promise you I will put you straight again, in fact all my arrangements for doing it have been completed for several days past."
"What do you mean, professor?" the two men called out together.
"Have I not put it clearly then?"
"Yes, but we don't understand you."