“I must think out a plan,” he told himself; “I know now where she lives, I know where she is going to live, by the Lord, I can surely contrive to clear my character in her eyes.” His aimless wanderings had led him to the neighbourhood of Père-Lachaise, and he now set out slowly and sadly on his way back to the Rue Saint-Fargeau.
“I will tell Moche,” he thought to himself, “that I waited for Elisabeth all day, and have not seen her ... or else I will assure him her furniture is good enough ... or, better still, as it’s nine o’clock at night, I will slip up to my garret, of which I have a key, without seeing my worthy master at all. To-morrow I shall be calmer, and can then see what’s best to be done.”
CHAPTER VI
PRISONER OF THE LANTERN
For nearly two hours, Jérôme Fandor had been back in his garret, the lumber-room M. Moche had put at his disposal, albeit without making any further provision for his accommodation beyond supplying a tiny lamp to give him a glimmer of light. But the journalist was not yet asleep. Kneeling on the floor, his lamp in front of him, he was reading and re-reading the evening paper, La Capitale, which he had bought with the sacrifice of one of the three sous presented to him that morning by his generous master. What he read was of the deepest interest and importance to Fandor. The young man was trembling in every limb, his face wore an expression of horror and consternation; at intervals he punctuated his perusal with half-stifled exclamations and frantic ejaculations of dismay:
“What does it mean?... the audacity of it!... the unspeakable effrontery!... Are we on the eve of a Reign of Terror?... After six months’ truce, are we to behold once more this figure of ill-omen rise threatening, terrifying, on the horizon?... And to think of it, my name too, on all men’s lips!... Confusion twice confounded! once again the man succeeds in thrusting on another the responsibility for his crimes!... a Minister kidnapped!... the Chamber in consternation!... The whole country attacked in the person of its highest representatives!... Ah! Fantômas is indeed a genius, the genius of audacity, the king of frightfulness, the monster that assails everything, that fears nothing, for whom nothing is sacred!”
For the tenth time, Fandor re-read the article in La Capitale. On regaining the Rue Saint-Fargeau, worn out by the stress and strain of his visit to Elisabeth, he had heard the newsboys crying at the top of their voices the latest edition of La Capitale. People were fighting for the paper, passers-by reading the news with looks of horror and feverish excitement. No sooner had Fandor cast his eyes on the copy he had secured than he started violently. In enormous letters he read the headlines:
“Fantômas at work again.—A Minister carried off by brigands.—Fantômas demands a million francs to disappear. The Chamber votes defiance.”
Now, back in his garret two hours ago, Fandor was reading, still incapable, in the mad whirl of his thoughts, of regaining anything like calmness, the amazing details of the extraordinary sitting of the Chamber, the Chamber wherein Fantômas had thrown defiance, a veritable ultimatum to France, the sitting that had been held that same afternoon at the moment he was on his way to Mlle. Dollon’s.
That Fantômas should strike a sudden blow, he reflected, a blow so extraordinary as the one he has just delivered, is astounding, but it is not perhaps so crushing as I thought at first. In any case, what a fine argument it supplies in Juve’s defence. If Fantômas manifests his activity abroad, in public, why, Juve can no longer be confounded with him, seeing Juve is a prisoner in the Santé!
Then, with ever increasing agitation, the journalist began to read the passage in the paper giving the shorthand report of the debate in the Chamber, which stated how his name, his, Jérôme Fandor’s name, had been uttered aloud as probably masking that of one of Fantômas’ chief accomplices.