But the Englishman could only stare in bewilderment at the two ruffians; he cudgelled his brains in vain, and despite the strain he imposed on his addled wits, he could not remember having made any proposal whatsoever to the individuals before him.
“But I don’t know those persons,” he articulated with difficulty.
The Commissary gave a sceptical smile.
“Speak!” he ordered, addressing the “Gasman,” “Repeat to the gentleman the deposition you came to my office to make.”
“Here’s for it then!” the apache spoke with some show of embarrassment at telling his story before everybody, “it was like this—the two of us, ‘Bull’s-eye’ and I, we were just on the saunter last evening, as you might say, near by the Bastille, when all of a minute we saw a toff a-coming down the stairs of the swell pub; it was the gentleman you say, the Englishman here present. He seemed a bit squiffy as he talked; he said to us like this: ‘There’s a brace of quid to be made, my lads, if you’ll lend a hand to help a lady down who’s ill seemingly upstairs, and take her back to her home; only, case she should kick up a bit of a rumpus, mustn’t let her talk.’ We chaps, we ain’t no millionaires, you know, sir, and two quid’s not to be refused. ‘Right oh!’ we told the Englishman, and there we were a-going up the stairs of the house. The Englishman, he took us into a private ken, where there was a wench, who set up a devil of a screeching when she saw us; but the Englishman claps a napkin over her mug, seemingly to make a gag; then says he to us: ‘Off you go, hook it, stir your stumps! There’s another two quid if you do it sharp!’ That made four quid, so you may bet your life we were on, sir. Then we get the baggage downstairs, clap her in a motor-car, and the four of us drive off here, all serene like. The wench never moved; by the Englishman’s orders she’d been tied up hand and foot; he paid fair and square and went straight in.
“But look’ee, sir, getting back to the Bastille, we two, ‘Bull’s-eye’ and self, we began to feel middling dicky, telling ourselves maybe we’d been lending a hand at a dirty job. Then just as we came out on the Place from the last Underground and were harking back to the Silver Goblet for to see what had been doing since, blessed if we didn’t come upon the stout gentleman who’s sitting in the armchair there, and who we’ve found out since is called M. Moche—the old bird was singing out a good ’un, tearing his hair, he was! His niece, he kept bawling, had disappeared, had been carried off by a satyr! he was in despair, he said, he didn’t know where she was. Then ‘Bull’s-eye’ made up to him:
“‘Wasn’t she a little, dark girl, the wench you’re howling about?’ he asks him.
“‘Yes, yes ... Might you, maybe, know where she is?’
“‘Maybe we might, and maybe we might not.’
“‘Bull’s-eye,’ he was getting to feel funny-like, and I wasn’t just over happy, we’d been and done a nasty trick. But there was a way, p’raps, to make up for our foolishness, and we made up our minds to do the right thing. Old Moche, he stuck to us all night; back we trotted to the district we’d taken the wench to, hunted round to recognize the house and found it at last.