“and ready for anything! Upon my word, my dear fellow, Paris has quite changed your habits. How are you this morning?”
Ascott turned half round in his chair, extending a careless hand to his visitor:
“Not so bad, and you, Tom Bob? To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? Take a seat, pray!”
“Good!” thought the detective, “he is not over and above angry with me!” At the same time, remembering that time was flying with alarming swiftness, he announced:
“I have merely come to shake you by the hand, as I was passing your way.”
But Ascott, who appeared to guess the object of his visit, began to hunt through his pocket-book, from which he presently extracted a bank note. Holding this out to the detective:
“Here is my subscription,” he said: “will you be so obliging as to hand this thousand francs to the Grand Duchess Alexandra when you have an opportunity of seeing her.”
Tom Bob expressed his willingness with an almost imperceptible smile.
“Just fancy, my dear sir,” he remarked, “how timorous Parisian society is; to think that it is now a perfect mania, a fashionable craze, quite the correct thing in fact, to subscribe to this fund. They want to see Fantômas waxing fat!... ’pon my word! it is excruciatingly funny. Henceforth, I take it the light-fingered gentry will have an easy time of it when they want to make their fortunes. Instead of fagging themselves to commit crimes, they will only have to make it known through the newspapers that they are short of cash for the moment, and the money will come tumbling in straight away! Why, sir,” continued the detective, “it will be the ruin of the police; I ask you, what are we to do, my colleagues and I, when there are no more any culprits to hunt down, any criminals to arrest?”
Tom Bob had uttered his little speech in a tone of laughing irony well calculated to divert his host, but the latter declined to be amused.