“What men?”
“The officers.”
“You’ve sent police-officers here?”
“Ten inspectors from the Bureau, yes!”
An amused smile flitted over the detective’s lips as he looked at M. Havard whimsically.
“By the Lord!” he cried, “if I was Fantômas, I should be flattered; at a telephone ring from him, you set a little army in motion, Monsieur Havard! It’s a pretty compliment, d’you know, on your part.”
But M. Havard would hear no more.
“It’s a compliment, or it’s not a compliment,” he struck in in a dry tone that, he hoped, would cut short the American’s irony. “
Anyhow, this is the way it is; you, if by any chance you succeeded in catching one glimpse of Fantômas, they’d all be shouting wonderful! miraculous! If I were to arrest him, why, they’d just say it was all in the day’s work; now, as I don’t arrest him, they throw stones at me!... Meet you again, directly, I’m off to see if my men are posted.”
M. Havard took three steps to go, then thinking better of it and coming up to Tom Bob again: