“No nose?” stammered Fandor, really alarmed by the detective’s conduct.
Already the latter had resumed his seat on his abbreviated chair: “Forgive me,” he said with a smile—“my monomania! only my monomania again!... You were saying?”
Fandor resolved to show no more surprise at anything, and above all not to move again.
“This arrest,” he went on, “this sensational arrest that is needed to give you prestige, I am going to supply you with the means of carrying out. Some days ago an unfortunate bank messenger was murdered in M. Moche’s house, the same house where, as I described just now, I was myself the victim of mysterious violence. The police at this present time have proved unable to discover either the body of the victim or his murderer. His murderer, I know, I denounce him here and now; it is, it must be, it cannot but be M. Moche!”
“M. Moche?”
“Yes!”—and Fandor began a detailed account of how he had come to know that dubious man of business. He said how he associated with notorious apaches, how he was habitually engaged in shady transactions with those gentry, that in particular he was the intimate and friend of a bully, one Paulet. He concluded: “There is besides a damning piece of evidence against him. While I was in the Chinese lantern, where Fantômas had imprisoned me, I saw the officers find in the garret a button from the uniform of the bank collector who has disappeared. This garret belongs to M. Moche, it was in this garret the crime was committed. Moche must be the criminal. You will understand, Mr. Bob, that after I had crept away along the house-roofs after my extraordinary adventure, I could not, under pain of being immediately arrested, return to make investigations at M. Moche’s. Nor have the police, on their side, being convinced that Fantômas is responsible for the murder of the collector and that I am Fantômas, troubled M. Moche. You are free to act: I beseech you to move heaven and earth to clear up with all speed the mystery of the bank employé’s death.”
The detective nodded his comprehension.
“What you tell me is interesting, very inter...”
But, cutting him off short, with a dull roar that was unmistakable, an explosion shook the room. It came from above the two men’s heads, like a hurricane sweeping by. Facing them, fragments of plaster, bits of the woodwork, broke away, and the wall was pitted with little holes. A thick, acrid smoke, smelling like gunpowder, rolled through the room in heavy blue-grey wreaths.
Tom Bob did not so much as start; Fandor stammered a terrific oath. Then after a moment’s silence, the detective in the calmest way completed his interrupted sentence: “... Very interesting what you are telling me;... but what has just happened is interesting, too. And now, Monsieur Fandor, you can stand up.”