And, as a fact, who and what was this man who—Fandor saw it all—had conceived so Machiavellian a scheme as that of marrying the street wench Nini Guinon to Ascott, the wealthy Englishman of the Rue Fortuny, and who, having conceived, had carried it through!
Père Moche ... Fantômas? ...? ...?
Fandor, as the result of a series of logical deductions, possibly also through giving a certain weight to the presentiments that rarely deceived him, had come to ask himself if the man of the Rue Saint-Fargeau, really too mysterious a personage, was not one of the incarnations of Fantômas himself. Since he had been watching his man, and particularly since he had seen his eyes and their expression, Fandor clung more and more closely to this opinion.
Ah! if only he were right! if he had discovered the villain? That would be an extraordinarily fine trump card for him in the grim game he was playing with Fantômas as adversary! And now, many hitherto unexplained details recurred to his memory. Notably he recalled the strange apparition of the man in the black mask on that terrible night he had spent in M. Moche’s garret. He did not forget how on that occasion Fantômas, under pretence of safeguarding him from harm, had involved him in the direst peril, evidently in the hope that the police would discover him hidden in the Chinese lantern.
“Why,” he thought presently, “but why did not Fantômas kill me when he had this chance? that is what I cannot understand.”
But, when he examined the question more deeply, Fandor realized the fact that Fantômas’ crimes invariably had a double object—to get rid of an obnoxious adversary and at the same time to throw suspicions on the dead man that went to prove by their very nature the innocence of some accomplice of Fantômas or of Fantômas himself. Thus he pondered, all the while carrying on with the utmost awkwardness his duties as a waiter, under the wary and ever watchful eye of the landlord of The Orange Blossom.
At the same time Fandor did not allow his attention to be absorbed solely by the conversation between Moche and Nini. A short while before Ascott had left the rest of the party—it was an incident which had, in fact, contributed not a little to the rising nausea that had driven the young Englishman from the table—two of the apache gang, the same two, “Bull’s-eye” and the “Gasman” who had signalized themselves in the Silver Goblet affair and at the unpleasant interview with the Police Commissary, appearing unexpectedly within sight of the window, had been invited to join the wedding feast by the irrepressible Bouzille. The two intruders were now seated at the table, and the soi-disant waiter made a point of plying them with drink and incidentally catching up any fragments of their talk that struck him as being to the point. The apaches, in ambiguous terms, but in a fashion explicit enough for Fandor’s comprehension, were discussing recent enterprises in which the gang had been mixed up. It became very evident that a unanimous and general feeling of suspicion and ill-will towards Fantômas was growing up among the criminal confraternity. Fantômas, they muttered, used everybody for his own purposes, forced each man to risk his skin and in the end compensated nobody. In covert phrases, too, they spoke of Père Moche, who, they hinted, must know all about Fantômas, and whose task was always to pour oil on the troubled waters, who was for ever putting off till to-morrow payments that should have been made yesterday, in one word playing a double game.
“Oh!” grumbled the “Gasman,” while Fandor was refilling his glass, “things can’t go on no longer like this, to-morrow night and the hour sounds for definite and final explanations; we want our money, Fantômas will have to answer our questions.”
“Bull’s-eye” bent over to his comrade, and in his hoarse voice asked:
“So the rendez-vous still holds good at the same place, eh?”