The “Gasman” repeated: “That depends. Question is who’re we working for? For my part, since all these here to-dos, you’ll understand, I’m beginning to be a bit off. Fantômas’ gang and me being in the know with ’em, that’s all very fine and large; but sure as I’m here drinking at your expense, the thing can’t go on, and it’s bound to end badly.”
“Don’t you worry about that, my man; this business is my little game and nobody else’s. Fantômas has nothing to do with it. And what’s more, let me tell you, Fantômas don’t like folks prying into his business, whoever they may be; cute chap as you are, Mr. ‘Gasman,’ you’ll be getting yourself into trouble, if you poke your nose in there.”
“Right oh!” agreed the apache; “let’s talk about your business then instead!”
“Well then,” resumed Père Moche, “you quite understand I count on you implicitly for to-night. Now there must be two of you for the job, so stir your stumps this afternoon and find a bully boy at a loose end. Who are you going to take, eh?”
The apache thought a moment, twisting his long moustache, then suggested:
“I don’t see anyone hardly but ‘Bull’s-eye,’ you know who I mean, who’d just do ...”
Moche approved the selection: “That’s the ticket, go and fix it up with your friend; he’s a good cuss and no white liver,” he grinned.
But Moche grew grave again: “Don’t forget to bring along all the properties—some good strong rope, and of course a handkerchief, you know, to make a gag—part of your stock in trade all that, eh, ‘Gasman’?”
Then, discovering it was half past eleven, and he was behind time, M. Moche shook the apache hurriedly by the hand and vanished. With rapid strides the old usurer made his way down the Rue de Belleville and so to the line of the exterior boulevards, where he hailed a cab, telling the man to drive him to the Silver Goblet, a restaurant on the Place de la Bastille.
What new scheme could the dubious advocate of the Rue Saint-Fargeau be meditating now? What was the shady enterprise he was planning, for which he needed the co-operation of two notorious apaches from Ménilmontant like the “Gasman” and “Bull’s-eye”? On arriving at his destination, M. Moche took the landlord on one side; the latter seemed an old acquaintance.