“Come now, don’t go trying to be too clever; surrender, I tell you!”
Then the “Beadle” spoke out in the name of all. In a quavering voice, a coward in face of the instant danger, the fellow whined:
“We’re going to give in, Juve; only protect us from the crowd, those dogs might easy tear us to pieces.”
Juve made no show of insolent triumph. At a nod from him to the Commissary, a double line of officers, revolvers in hand, formed up either side of the entrance, while four men stood ready in the doorway to clap on the bracelets as the ruffians came out. A minute or two earlier the Commissary had caught sight of an army forage-wagon going by, and had requisitioned it to serve as an impromptu “Black Maria” for the conveyance of the sinister crew Juve had so opportunely arrested.
Juve held the heavy door of the cellar ajar. “One by one!” he ordered—and the apaches obeyed. “Bull’s-eye” was the first to present himself, wearing a hang-dog look and offering his wrists docilely for the handcuffs to be adjusted; behind him appeared “Big Ernestine,” with hard-featured face and rouged cheeks, casting black looks of furious defiance at the crowd that jeered at the street-walker
and her tattered finery; next came the “Gasman’s” turn, a tall skeleton with enormous hands; then the “Beadle,” shivering with fear; Paulet, paler than ever, his features drawn and distorted almost beyond recognition in sheer terror of the scaffold; then Mère Toulouche, alone and utterly callous, who the moment she was outside, began to harangue Juve, the police-officers, the Commissary, chuckling and grinning in hideous mockery.
All submitted to the same fate with a remarkable docility. But when the officers prepared to deal with the last of the unfortunates issuing from the cellar in this ignominious fashion and were going to slip on the bracelets, Juve threw himself impetuously before them.
“No, oh no!” he cried, “not that one, you shall not pinion him! leave him to me, I will see to him; for, look you, this is the man who saved my life, Fandor!”—and to the amazement of all, Juve and Fandor fell into one another’s arms in a long-drawn embrace.
For Tom Bob, he had vanished long before this!