“And that upsets you, does it . . . Lothario?”
“What!”
Lupin planted himself in front of the other and repeated:
“What! What do you mean?”
“Nothing.... Nothing.... Something that crossed my mind.... Clarisse Mergy is a young woman still and a pretty woman at that.”
Lupin shrugged his shoulders:
“You brute!” he mumbled. “You imagine that everybody is like yourself, heartless and pitiless. It takes your breath away, what, to think that a shark like me can waste his time playing the Don Quixote? And you wonder what dirty motive I can have? Don’t try to find out: it’s beyond your powers of perception. Answer me, instead: do you accept?”
“So you’re serious?” asked Daubrecq, who seemed but little disturbed by Lupin’s contemptuous tone.
“Absolutely. The forty-five pieces are in a shed, of which I will give you the address, and they will be handed over to you, if you call there, at nine o’clock this evening, with the child.”
There was no doubt about Daubrecq’s reply. To him, the kidnapping of little Jacques had represented only a means of working upon Clarisse Mergy’s feelings and perhaps also a warning for her to cease the contest upon which she had engaged. But the threat of a suicide must needs show Daubrecq that he was on the wrong track. That being so, why refuse the favourable bargain which Arsène Lupin was now offering him?