At last Père Moche so far yielded to the other’s eager importunities and forked out. But, like a good business man, he struck a bargain with the borrower that the latter, on his return, that is to say on the next day but one, should pay him back thirty francs.
The cash once in his pocket, the apache vanished.
Fandor had overheard it all, besides catching other scraps of conversation from one and another of the band, from which he gathered only one thing clearly, and that was that at bottom everyone of them was upset about the arrival of the redoubtable and mysterious Tom Bob, whose coming was announced with such a flourish of trumpets and noisy advertisement—a proceeding by-the-by he, Fandor, deemed highly injudicious.
The journalist noted the “Beauty Boy’s” departure, and he could not help thinking that it would be greatly to his advantage, too, if only he could get to Hâvre. But alas! he had not a sou and could not borrow from Père Moche, as the apache had done, inasmuch as he could not very well urge the same reasons to justify the loan. Still the idea tormented him that he must go to Hâvre. It was all important for him to get to know Tom Bob at the earliest possible moment, so to say before everybody else. He was still cudgelling his brains to discover some way of realizing his project when suddenly he shuddered to hear a hoarse, angry voice growling in his ear:
“Scoundrel, brigand, murderer, aren’t you ashamed to show your face? why don’t I have you run in on the spot? will you rid me of the sight of you, now, this instant, you hell-hound of calamity!”
Fandor wheeled round in consternation, dumbfounded by this avalanche of abuse, this maelstrom of words. His eyes opened wide in amazement; it was old Moche who was addressing him in these furious terms—Moche, his face working with passion, unable to contain himself for anger.
The old scoundrel went on with a hypocritical assumption of righteous indignation.
“When I think how I befriended you, how I saved you in your extremity, and then you came and murdered people in my house and committed atrocious crimes, I don’t know, I really do not know, you villain, what hinders me ...”
Fandor looked his man calmly in the face. For one moment he had entertained the notion of seizing his accuser by the throat and choking him, for instinctively his gorge rose at the outrageous charge brought against him. But he quickly realized that, to begin with, old Moche’s indignation was only pretence, and then, that the least display of violence on his part could only have consequences disastrous to his plans. The journalist had gathered the firm conviction in the course of the two hours he had spent among the dubious frequenters of the Blue Chestnut that Père Moche was possessed of a strange, but indubitable authority over these sinister personages. There was no question that, for some purpose or another, he was in the habit of aiding and abetting them, lending them money at need, or that he possessed an astuteness that made him master of the rest of his associates—and was perhaps the mysterious intermediary who transmitted to them the orders of the elusive autocrat Fantômas.
Postponing all thought of reprisals for the present, Fandor obeyed the old ruffian’s orders and sneaked away; a few moments more and he quitted the Blue Chestnut without his departure being remarked by anyone whatsoever, not even by the landlord, who troubled himself very little about his customer going away, as he invariably observed the excellent custom of making everybody pay in advance.