“Come to an understanding with my wife,” he said, as he left the Cointets in the office and went back to his laboratory. “Mme. Séchard knows more about the business than I do myself. I am interested in something that will pay better than this poor place; I hope to find a way to retrieve the losses that I have made through you——”
“And how?” asked the fat Cointet, chuckling.
Eve gave her husband a look that meant, “Be careful!”
“You will be my tributaries,” said David, “and all other consumers of papers besides.”
“Then what are you investigating?” asked the hypocritical Boniface Cointet.
Boniface’s question slipped out smoothly and insinuatingly, and again Eve’s eyes implored her husband to give an answer that was no answer, or to say nothing at all.
“I am trying to produce paper at fifty per cent less than the present cost price,” and he went. He did not see the glances exchanged between the brothers. “That is an inventor, a man of his build cannot sit with his hands before him.—Let us exploit him,” said Boniface’s eyes. “How can we do it?” said Jean’s.
Mme. Séchard spoke. “David treats me just in the same way,” she said. “If I show any curiosity, he feels suspicious of my name, no doubt, and out comes that remark of his; it is only a formula, after all.”
“If your husband can work out the formula, he will certainly make a fortune more quickly than by printing; I am not surprised that he leaves the business to itself,” said Boniface, looking across the empty workshop, where Kolb, seated upon a wetting-board, was rubbing his bread with a clove of garlic; “but it would not suit our views to see this place in the hands of an energetic, pushing, ambitious competitor,” he continued, “and perhaps it might be possible to arrive at an understanding. Suppose, for instance, that you consented for a consideration to allow us to put in one of our own men to work your presses for our benefit, but nominally for you; the thing is sometimes done in Paris. We would find the fellow work enough to enable him to rent your place and pay you well, and yet make a profit for himself.”
“It depends on the amount,” said Eve Séchard. “What is your offer?” she added, looking at Boniface to let him see that she understood his scheme perfectly well.