“To-morrow or next day, not a day later. So once again: Fantômas for ever!”
“Yes, Fantômas for ever!” echoed “Big Ernestine,” “... but only if he pays up and can prove he hasn’t choused us!”
“By God! yes, we’ll keep our eyes lifting,” added the “Gasman,” completing the other worthy’s meaning. “Till we meet again!”
“So long then!”—and Moche, without rousing the slightest suspicion, had contrived to start back on his road to the dredger. What was he coming to do? Something underhand, evidently, for instead of advancing as the first time, walking quietly on his two feet, he was flat on his belly, crawling on the ground, as he had been doing for the last two hundred yards or more. Whose notice was the old scamp trying to evade? Doubtless it was one of the companions he had just left that he feared. Fandor was burning with impatience, albeit the temperature had fallen at the approach of the dawn, which was due in another hour. Moreover, a heavy, drenching rain-storm was beginning, accompanied by vivid flashes of forked lightning and reverberating thunderclaps.
On reaching the dredger, Moche abandoned his serpentine mode of advance and rising to his feet, stepped on to the deck and made straight for the winding-crank fixed at the bottom end of the spar, to put the buckets in motion. He took the handle in both hands and with legs wide astraddle and back hunched up, set to work to turn. Looking down at the old chap from above, Fandor could not restrain a laugh.
“Sweat away!” he grinned, “I’ll give you a dozen of champagne if you get the old machine to work ... God in heaven! it is turning.”
He had not time to say another word before he was pitched headlong into the lighter astern, among the rubbish that already half filled it and which, luckily for him, made a sort of cushion sufficiently yielding to break his fall. Nor had he time to get to his feet before the contents of the bucket that had previously hung below him, but was now suspended above his head as the chain revolved, came tumbling all over him.
“Bad luck again!” was all he said, as he shifted quickly a bit to one side, so as not to be fouled again if Moche went on working the crank, which had gone on turning without further application of external force. But what now? the avalanche had stopped; what did that mean? Peeping out through the cracks in the ramshackle bulwarks of the lighter, Fandor could get an excellent view of what old Moche might be at without any risk of being seen himself. What he did see was so singular that his face lit up with a broad smile. Something was afoot of so strange a sort as to force an involuntary exclamation from his lips. “The artful dodger!” he ejaculated. What the old usurer of the Rue Saint-Fargeau was doing was, in fact, extraordinary. He had stopped the crank at the exact moment when the first bucket under water rose from the depths of the dredger’s hold. At this the old man was gazing lovingly, and it was only after he had cast a wary glance round the horizon and made sure there was no one watching his proceedings that he began groping in it with feverish eagerness. Fandor grinned like a Cheshire cat, chuckling to himself as he mentally apostrophized the old fellow:
“Oh, Moche, Moche, what a fool you are!—and just when you’re thinking yourself the cleverest rogue unhung! What is the fellow after? By the Lord, he’s hauling out of the mud an iron box, a cashbox. Full of yellow boys, I wager. Egad, there’s enough and to spare there to pay the greediest of Fantômas’ regular workers for their trouble! Moche, my boy, if I wanted to play you a nasty trick, I’d go slap off and tell the gang what I’ve seen, and I promise you that, two hours from now, when they’d caught you, you’d be having a devilish bad half-hour! Luckily for you, I prefer, in Juve’s interests, to find out what you’re proposing to do with your treasure. Are you an honest agent, is it just a trust confided to you by Fantômas? Or, are you by way of robbing your master and all his confederates? Oh, ho! it looks as if the villain is preparing to answer my question himself.”
For now, with a meditative air, Moche was pulling at his hideous red whiskers, one after the other. Then he took out his watch and made several unavailing attempts to see the time, for the night was still so dark he had to wait for a flash of lightning before he could read the hour, while the wind was blowing too violently for him to dream of lighting a match. When at last he was able to make out the face, a cry of annoyance broke from his lips: “Gone three already!”—and without a moment’s delay he started off at a run in the direction of Alfort, gripping under his left arm the precious box, which he had hastily reclosed.