“That spoils our game!” he muttered simply, “I suppose our fine fellows have found out at last that the Fantômas they held prisoner was no other than Juve, the police-officer!”
“Sir,” demanded the Commissary, consulting the Inspector with enhanced respect in face of the new danger, “how must we proceed now?”
Juve cast a rapid glance round the house. “We must parley with them to begin with,” he declared—and in a voice he made big and authoritative, he challenged the apaches.
“You are taken!” he announced in peremptory tones, “surrender!”
The shouts redoubled, mingled with oaths of the most appalling profanity. The Commissary, all for making a quick end, suggested:
“For my part, I should make no bones about shooting them all down through the grated windows, if five minutes from now they haven’t given in their submission.”
But Juve was biting his lip, a prey to excruciating anxiety. At all costs firing must be avoided, the ruffians induced to surrender and a fight prevented; doubtless Juve did not care a straw for the lives of the monsters who had come so near killing him, but he knew that among them was one, the least hair of whose head was sacred to him! But would the apaches give in, or must they be mastered by force or famine? Either solution was equally repugnant to Juve, always swayed by the same motive.
Meanwhile a crowd of the honest, hard-working inhabitants of Alfort, risen early as is their wont, had gathered round, naturally all agog with curiosity to see this quite unusual display of police activity round the old building that had always borne something of an evil reputation. The police, on being questioned, had not hesitated to say it was a matter of a gang of dangerous apaches they had just brought to bay. The louder the clamour of oaths and threats that rose from the cellar, the more excited and angry and impatient grew the crowd.
“Smoke ’em out!” rose the cry, and fists were shaken fiercely at the wild beasts’ lair, as they remembered how in all the honest, hard-working population of Alfort there was hardly a soul but had suffered from the depredations and atrocities of the ill-omened gang, or at any rate, of similar gangs of marauders ... They had them at their mercy, why not make an end? Already, in spite of the constables’ efforts to keep order, the crowd was kindling round the walls dry vine shoots and wisps of straw: through the low grated window someone threw in a lighted brand.
Juve began to tremble, and once more addressed the apaches: