"Robec and the kid," was the reply.
The door opened noiselessly on well-oiled hinges.
"Come in, all of you." It was Roulante who spoke.
Francine was at once carried to a little cottage at the foot of a long garden, where, still unconscious, she was laid on a couch.
Then Robeccal paid his assistants the sum agreed upon. They were not altogether satisfied, but he managed to get rid of them.
La Roulante was unchanged since the day when she and her lover discussed the assassination of Iron Jaws.
"I have done well, have I not?" asked Robeccal, with a friendly tap on the massive shoulders of this monstrosity.
"Her beauty is not marred, I hope?" she asked, anxiously.
"I am not such a fool as that! But I am afraid that the handkerchief was too tight. She is confoundedly pretty, that is a fact!"
"What is that to you?" asked the giantess, angrily. "Now give me that bottle."