“As sure as my name’s Nini,” she swore, “if ever we get run in for this job, I give you my oath, Père Moche, you’ll leave every feather of your dirty plumage behind; but if we come to an agreement ...”
“If we come to an agreement ...” the advocate repeated the phrase with newly-aroused interest.
“Well, then,” Nini went on, assuming the soft, coaxing, wheedling voice every woman can use on occasion, “if we come to some agreement in case of trouble arising, we shall be two, you and I, to say we have nothing whatever to do with the affair of the bank messenger, and that it was Paulet who did the trick all by himself, and got all there was to be got out of it ... There!”
The offer of partnership thus formulated by the young slut was just the sort of thing to appeal to the old usurer. Nodding his head approvingly:
“Your notion’s really not such a bad one, my little girl,” he said; “only, what’s to become of you?”
Nini, encouraged by the way the interview was shaping, had dropped nonchalantly into the one and only armchair
the room contained. Now, with eyes fixed on the ceiling, the girl sat in a day-dream, a prophetic dream.
“I have a sort of a notion,” she murmured, “that with all these new complications, Paulet is going to get cotched. First, there’s that journalist Fandor drawing attention to the house; then they find the button off the poor devil’s uniform in your garret; Fandor disappears; on the other hand Tom Bob arrives. What does the fellow count for? I don’t know, but I have my doubts; he must be pretty smart, he nabbed ‘Beauty Boy’ in less time than it takes to tell the story! So then, it all comes to this—little Nini’s had enough, thank you, she’s got to bolt, and that at sixty miles an hour, and Papa Moche, who’s no fool neither, has got to find her a place, for choice with the nobs, to save her from any future worries. Does that suit your book, Père Moche? Is that settled, eh?... You’ll clearly understand this, I didn’t leave the bosom of my family to go and rot on Devil’s Island or be eaten up by the mosquitoes at New Caledonia.”
Père Moche was prodigiously diverted by this announcement of her principles of action on the part of Paulet’s girl mistress. Undoubtedly there was something to be made of this little minx with the wide-awake look and bright eyes, so vicious and so astute. He was about to reply, when suddenly a peal on the door bell was heard.
“Who’s that coming?” Nini asked anxiously, as she instinctively laid a hand on her bosom to restrain the excited beating of her heart.