The "drunk" whom one push had sufficed to plant on his seat, had briskly drawn himself upright and was smiling broadly, a wide, noiseless smile!
"What a joke!... And what a jolly good actor I should have made!" thought Jérôme Fandor, giving himself a mental hug of satisfaction.... "Ah! They arrest the individuals I want to set talking!... The police imagine they are going to push in first and find out the answer to the riddle!... We shall see!"
Fandor was listening intensely and trying to discover from the movements of the Salad Basket what street they were passing along.
"Smooth going ... evidently we are still in the rue de la Pompe, so I have about a quarter of an hour more of it!"
Fandor examined the tiny cell in which he had been imprisoned of his own free will.
"Not much to be said for it!" ran his thoughts. "There is scarcely room to sit ... impossible to stand up or turn around ... nearly dark ... and precious little air comes in through those wooden shutters!... I shouldn't think there ever had been an escape from these vans!..."
Fandor smiled broadly.
"Even if I don't succeed, it is worth while making the attempt!... But I shall succeed—see if I don't!... I settled it in my mind that I was to leave the cells after this costermonger: he is in front of me, therefore the cell behind me is empty. It will be deucedly queer if, at Auteuil police station, they don't put that confounded Jules in it, whom I intend to interview under the nose of the police!... I shall start talking to him by tapping on the partition in prisoner's language. The fellow is pretty sure to be an old offender, so he will know the system.... If he doesn't, when we get to the Dépôt, I will push up to him somehow and get a few words with him.... If the Dépôt is full, we shall be stuck into the common cell until morning.... So, I take it as certain that my interview with this true and faithful servant will come off, and I shall get to know a good deal about the mystery!..."
As an afterthought, it occurred to Fandor that probably there had never been such a light-hearted occupant of this cell as he....
"Ah, that's the sound of the trams!... One jolt! Two jolts! Good!... The rails!... We are crossing rue Mozart! We are going faster—in five minutes we shall be at the Auteuil police station, and there we can start our little operations!"