“A joker! Whom d’you mean?”
“Egad, why, the man who ’phoned you!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Still—as nothing has happened.”
Tom Bob called the waiter. “Bring the cigars,” he ordered. Then, turning again to the Head of the Criminal Bureau:
“Well, Monsieur Havard,” he said, “if nothing has happened, I fancy that’s because the time hasn’t come yet for anything to happen, that’s all.”
M. Havard growled out: “You think the ...”
“I think ... ’pon my word! Monsieur Havard, I think the wisest thing to do is to wait patiently. Anyway, Fantômas strikes me as being quite a man of the world. If he really means to destroy the charming surroundings where he has brought me for this little dinner, I think he has had the politeness to wait till I have finished. It was the least he could do.”
But M. Havard failed to appreciate the American detective’s irony. Interrupting him in the middle of his sentence, he sprang from his chair, and slapping his forehead:
“And my men?” he cried, “I must make sure they are there.”