As Gaspard sat watching Sagesse a faint glow of enthusiasm began to warm his breast. What man is there to whom the thought of hidden treasure does not appeal? The idea of returning to the island would have been hateful to him half an hour a go, but already his heart was stirring to the venture.
He would not be alone.
Already he had divined the main points of Sagesse’s character—or fancied he had—. He felt him to be cold-blooded, heartless, calculating, yet he fancied that if Sagesse offered him fifteen francs out of every hundred he made on the business he would keep his word. With such a small percentage in view it would be easier to keep his word than break it and make trouble. Sagesse came out of his reverie.
“Well,” said he, relighting his cigar, which had gone out, “there’s an end of the matter. I take the thing up; I put my money in it; I offer you your fifteen per cent.; I put you in the way, perhaps, of a small fortune. I make you, in fact, a small partner in what may be a big concern. Half an hour ago you were a Moco, and your end was the drinking bar and the stokehold; you had stuff in your head that was valuable to me and I had to blast it out of your skull by threats of the law, just as I will blast the stuff out of that hooker with dynamite. Well, what do you think of Pierre Sagesse? Is he a man who knows his way about? Is he a man worth following? I’m frank as day when I choose to be frank, and I tell you now, you may take the offer or leave it; come with me, well and good; refuse it, and I will get another man. Only, remember this, if you refuse you get nothing.”
“What you offer is perhaps fair enough,” said Gaspard, “but this I will say, straight out, you treated me as a friend this morning; you took my arm, you brought me in here, you stood for drinks, and then you threatened me with that affair. I don’t like that, and be you who you may, I say so.”
Sagesse took a puff at his cigar and then patiently, as though explaining things to a child:
“You, this morning, were going about like a man with a jewel in his empty skull; I operated like a surgeon, and took it out; it was unpleasant, but there is the jewel, and instead of charging you a fee I offer you a percentage on the value. If I had not threatened, you would not have told. Well? What do you say?”
“I don’t say I won’t come—on one condition—that you never name that affair again or threaten me with it.”
Sagesse laughed. “Threaten you, why should I? I have used the instrument, I fling it away. I have got all I want out of you, and now it is your turn to profit a bit. You will be very useful, and I don’t want a stranger in the business.”
“Look here,” said Gaspard, true Provençal that he was, “fifteen per cent.—make it twenty—”