“Now pull,” said Essarès. “That’s it. The safe is not deep: it’s dug in one of the stones of the front wall. Put in your hand. You’ll find four pocket-books.”
It must be admitted that Patrice Belval expected to see something startling interrupt Bournef’s quest and hurl him into some pit suddenly opened by Essarès’ trickery. And the three confederates seemed to share this unpleasant apprehension, for they were gray in the face, while Bournef himself appeared to be working very cautiously and suspiciously.
At last he turned round and came and sat beside Essarès. In his hands he held a bundle of four pocket-books, short but extremely bulky and bound together with a canvas strap. He unfastened the buckle of the strap and opened one of the pocket-books.
His knees shook under their precious burden, and, when he had taken a huge sheaf of notes from one of the compartments, his hands were like the hands of a very old man trembling with fever.
“Thousand-franc notes,” he murmured. “Ten packets of thousand-franc notes.”
Brutally, like men prepared to fight one another, each of the other three laid hold of a pocket-book, felt inside and mumbled:
“Ten packets . . . they’re all there. . . . Thousand-franc notes . . .”
And one of them forthwith cried, in a choking voice:
“Let’s clear out! . . . Let’s go!”
A sudden fear was sending them off their heads. They could not imagine that Essarès would hand over such a fortune to them unless he had some plan which would enable him to recover it before they had left the room. That was a certainty. The ceiling would come down on their heads. The walls would close up and crush them to death, while sparing their unfathomable adversary.