“Do you want me to ring?” asked the doctor, “and have you turned out?”
Siméon laughed and quietly, with a pause after each figure:
“Thirty thousand?” he asked. “Forty? . . . Fifty? . . . Oh, I see, we’re playing a great game, we want a round sum. . . . All right. Only, you know, everything must be included in the price we settle. You must not only fix me up a passport so genuine that it can’t be disputed, but you must guarantee me the means of leaving France, as you did for Mme. Mosgranem, on terms not half so handsome, by Jove! However, I’m not haggling. I need your assistance. Is it a bargain? A hundred thousand francs?”
Dr. Géradec bolted the door, came back, sat down at his desk and said, simply:
“We’ll talk about it.”
“I repeat the question,” said Siméon, coming closer. “Are we agreed at a hundred thousand?”
“We are agreed,” said the doctor, “unless any complications appear later.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the figure of a hundred thousand francs forms a suitable basis for discussion, that’s all.”
Siméon hesitated a second. The man struck him as rather greedy. However, he sat down once more; and the doctor at once resumed the conversation: