“Why not pay at once?” said Grindot.
“I have my workmen in the faubourg to pay,” said Birotteau, who knew not how to lie.
He took his hat once more intending to follow them out, but the mason, Thorein, and Chaffaroux stopped him as he was closing the door.
“Monsieur,” said Chaffaroux, “we are in great need of money.”
“Well, I have not the mines of Peru,” said Cesar, walking quickly away from them. “There is something beneath all this,” he said to himself. “That cursed ball! All the world thinks I am worth millions. Yet Lourdois had a look that was not natural; there’s a snake in the grass somewhere.”
He walked along the Rue Saint-Honore, in no special direction, and feeling much discomposed. At the corner of a street he ran against Alexandre Crottat, just as a ram, or a mathematician absorbed in the solution of a problem, might have knocked against another of his kind.
“Ah, monsieur,” said the future notary, “one word! Has Roguin given your four hundred thousand francs to Monsieur Claparon?”
“The business was settled in your presence. Monsieur Claparon gave me no receipt; my acceptances were to be—negotiated. Roguin was to give him—my two hundred and forty thousand francs. He was told that he was to pay for the property definitely. Monsieur Popinot the judge said—The receipt!—but—why do you ask the question?”
“Why ask the question? To know if your two hundred and forty thousand francs are still with Roguin. Roguin was so long connected with you, that perhaps out of decent feeling he may have paid them over to Claparon, and you will escape! But, no! what a fool I am! He has carried off Claparon’s money as well! Happily, Claparon had only paid over, to my care, one hundred thousand francs. I gave them to Roguin just as I would give you my purse, and I have no receipt for them. The owners of the land have not received one penny; they have just been talking to me. The money you thought you raised upon your property in the Faubourg du Temple had no existence for you, or the borrower; Roguin has squandered it, together with your hundred thousand francs, which he used up long ago,—and your last hundred thousand as well, for I just remember drawing them from the bank.”
The pupils of Cesar’s eyes dilated so enormously that he saw only red flames.