Juve never flinched, but stood there impassive, waiting, though his heart was beating tumultuously. It was eventually the police-officer’s old acquaintance, the “Beadle,” who, breaking through the circle gathered round the prisoner, stepped up to him, mocking and sarcastic, both hands stuffed insolently in his pockets; the apache was bent on heaping his scorn on the man he had looked upon as the “master,” now a captive!
“So there you are, Fantômas,” he grinned, “our chief, our trusty leader! the chap who sets other folks to fight for him and pockets the tin, and never a stiver for his good lads!”
“Bravo! bravo, ‘Beadle’!”
With a wave of the hand, the apache silenced his comrades, signifying he had said nothing of importance yet, but he was going to begin.
“My lads,” resumed the speaker, turning to his comrades, who stood listening eagerly, again and again interrupting his discourse by cries of enthusiastic approval, “yes, my lads, we may well say we’ve brought off a fine bit of business!”
“True for you,” suddenly shouted the “Gasman,” “and it’s lucky we had cute chaps with us like the ‘Beadle’”—and another burst of applause greeted the words.
All this while Juve had not stirred or opened his lips; nerves and attention on the stretch, he had listened, understood, realized the appalling position he had to face. Meanwhile the “Beadle” resumed, emphasizing the facts, that were plain enough as they stood.
“Fantômas,” he apostrophized the prisoner, “you’re a cute devil, I don’t dispute that, but we are cuter than you, seeing as how we’ve caught you. Well, I’m going straight to the point, I am: here’s how it stands—Fantômas must shell out or croak! so look sharp and make up your mind, and tell us where the money is; you’ve got five minutes to answer, after that five minutes is up your silence will be your death warrant!”
To occupy his mind, to cheat his despair, Juve began to count mechanically, as if in a dream; there were left him, he told himself, three hundred seconds to live, after that he would face the final plunge, exchange time for eternity. Would they kill him at a stroke, or must he endure some of those dreadful tortures the apaches invent to satisfy their thirst for vengeance? Juve refused to think of it, that his courage might not fail him before the end.
Amid the deafening uproar that raged round him, the apaches were discussing, all clamouring at once, the sort of death Fantômas deserved. Juve, forcing himself to go on counting so as not to hear, continued speaking almost out loud: