“I’m agreeable.”
“I shall call you ... let me see ... I’ll call you my ‘Chief of Staff.’ That’ll put a stopper on their gab.”
“No doubt it will, Monsieur Moche.”
It was in a dull, depressed, specious, fawning voice that Jérôme Fandor replied to his new “master.”
In the garret where the dreadful old fellow stored his archives, huge masses of dusty paper, cheek by jowl with all sorts of miscellaneous rubbish, worthless bric-à-brac, old worn-out furniture, clothes fit only for a hand-me-down shop, Fandor had passed a not too uncomfortable night.
Accordingly he had risen in a cheerful frame of mind. A hasty wash at a trickle of cold water that escaped with a nerve-racking noise from a leaky tap on the landing outside his door, had quite made him his own man again. Whistling a tune he had rejoined M. Moche.
“Now, sir,” he had asked, “you have work for me to do, eh, in your place of business?”
M. Moche, already ensconced in a leather armchair, from which tags of the horsehair stuffing stuck out in all directions, but which formed a permanent seat of state behind his desk, loaded with multitudinous papers, had nodded assent.
“Work? Yes, my young friend, yes; at my place there’s always work to do, only as there’s not always cash, for times are hard, we must settle about conditions. I offer you board and lodging, and now and again a bit of money ... does that suit your book?”
Jérôme Fandor would have thought himself in heaven, had not the dubious looks of the unpleasant old man driven all celestial ideas clean out of his head.