“Yes.”
“I say! I had a high opinion of you as it was, but now there is nothing for me but to make you my bow. A friend of the late Arsène Lupin! We’re going it! . . . And how long will it take you to place his ghost at our disposal? Six months? Three months? One month? A fortnight?”
Ya-Bon made a gesture.
“About a fortnight,” Captain Belval translated. “Very well, evoke your friend’s spirit; I shall be delighted to make his acquaintance. Only, upon my word, you must have a very poor idea of me to imagine that I need a collaborator! What next! Do you take me for a helpless dunderhead?”
CHAPTER IX
PATRICE AND CORALIE
Everything happened as M. Masseron had foretold. The press did not speak. The public did not become excited. The various deaths were casually paragraphed. The funeral of Essarès Bey, the wealthy banker, passed unnoticed.
But, on the day following the funeral, after Captain Belval, with the support of the police, had made an application to the military authorities, a new order of things was established in the house in the Rue Raynouard. It was recognized as Home No. 2 attached to the hospital in the Champs-Élysées; Mme. Essarès was appointed matron; and it became the residence of Captain Belval and his seven wounded men exclusively.
Coralie, therefore, was the only woman remaining. The cook and housemaid were sent away. The seven cripples did all the work of the house. One acted as hall-porter, another as cook, a third as butler. Ya-Bon, promoted to parlor-maid, made it his business to wait on Little Mother Coralie. At night he slept in the passage outside her door. By day he mounted guard outside her window.
“Let no one near that door or that window!” Patrice said to him. “Let no one in! You’ll catch it if so much as a mosquito succeeds in entering her room.”