"They've got on to it all right! Redhead has just gone! He knows through the little maid that the Princess went off to the ball, dressed up to the nines—hung with jewels like a shrine!"
Big Ernestine uttered a deep sigh of satisfaction: her only reply was to hustle the old receiver:
"Look alive, Mother Toulouche!... You've got to give me a beggar's outfit: it's up to you to see I'm disguised properly, and there's not a minute to lose either!"
Mother Toulouche was an expert at disguises and make-up of every sort: this was not to be wondered at, considering the queer company she kept, and the fraudulent business she carried on, and the smuggling she was mixed up in!
Big Ernestine, disguised as a poverty-stricken creature and rendered unrecognisable, looked exactly like some unfortunate reduced to soliciting alms. She walked into the back store, and helped Mother Toulouche to take from a cupboard some bottles, bandages, and medicated cotton-wool. By the light of a smoky lamp the two women scrutinised the labels, sniffing the various phials and flasks. Big Ernestine, with the aid of Mother Toulouche, prepared compresses of pomade and cotton-wool, on which she sprinkled a few drops of a yellow liquid, giving out a sickening odour. Besides this big Ernestine put inside her bodice a long phial, after making certain that the mixture, with which it was full, contained chloroform....
Then, under Mother Toulouche's watchful eye, Ernestine prepared what was called in that world of light-fingered gentry "the mask": a mask of cotton, which is moulded by force on the face of the victim in order to plunge him, or her, into a heavy sleep. Whilst making these sinister preparations the two women talked as they went on with their evil task. Big Ernestine said, in reply to Mother Toulouche's questionings:
"Oh, it's simple enough! It's like this:... When the motor-car stops I shall go to the right-hand door and begin to beg ... likely enough, the Princess won't want to hear what I have to say, but while I attract her attention, Mimile, who will be on the other side, will open the door, and will stick the compress on her mug.... She won't struggle—besides, Mimile will have hold of her—and then I'll have had time to see where her jewels are, and how they are fastened, and then I'll soon have them in my pocket—my deep 'un!"
Mother Toulouche nodded:
"It's arranged all right, but how will you arrest the motor?"
"Oh, that's where the others come in; they'll do it all right.... I expect they're seeing to it now!..."