"So much I know," said Lajeunie.
"I shall attack the messenger, and make a slight exchange of manuscripts," Tricotrin went on.
"A blunder!" proclaimed Lajeunie; "you show a lack of invention. Now be guided by me, because I am a novelist and I understand these things. The messenger is an escaped convict, and you say to him, 'I know your secret. You do my bidding, or you go back to the galleys; I shall give you three minutes to decide!' You stand before him, stern, dominant, inexorable—your watch in your hand."
"It is at the pawn-shop."
"Well, well, of course it is; since when have you joined the realists? Somebody else's watch—or a clock. Are there no clocks in Paris? You say, 'I shall give you until the clock strikes the hour.' That is even more literary—you obtain the solemn note of the clock to mark the crisis."
"But there is no convict," demurred Tricotrin; "there are clocks, but there is no convict."
"No convict? The messenger is not a convict?"
"Not at all—he is an apple-cheeked boy."
"Oh, it is a rotten plot," said Lajeunie; "I shall not collaborate in it!"
"Consider!" cried Tricotrin; "do not throw away the chance of a lifetime, think what I offer you—you shall hang about the end of a dark alley, and whistle if anybody comes. How literary again is that! You may develop it into a novel that will make you celebrated. Pitou will be at the other end. I and the apple-cheeked boy who is to die— that is to say, to be duped—will occupy the centre of the stage—I mean the middle of the alley. And on the morrow, when all Paris rings with the fame of Claudine Hilairet, I, who adore her, shall have won her heart!"