What response Narkom might have made was checked by a sudden discovery. Huddling in a corner, feigning a drunken sleep, he saw a man lying with his face hidden in his folded arms. It was the pedler. He pounced on the man and jerked up his head before the fellow could prevent it or could dream of what was about to happen.
“Here’s one of them at least!” he cried, and fell to shaking him with all his force. “Here’s one of Margot’s pals, Ducroix. You shan’t go empty-handed after all.”
A cry of consternation fluttered through the gathering as he brought the man’s face into view. Evidently they were past masters of the art of acting, these Apaches, for one might have sworn that every man and every woman of them was taken aback by the fellow’s presence.
“Mother of Miracles! who shall the man be?” exclaimed Marise. “Messieurs, I know him not. I have not seen him in all my life before. Cochon, speak up! Who are you, that you come in like this and get a respectable widow in trouble, dog? Eh?”
The man made a motion first to his ears, then to his mouth, then fell to making movements in the sign language, but spoke never a word.
“La, la! he is a deaf mute, m’sieur,” said Ducroix. “He hears not and speaks not, poor unfortunate.”
“Oh, doesn’t he?” said Narkom with an ugly laugh. “He spoke well enough a couple of hours back, I promise you. My young friend here and I heard him when he paid off the fisherman who had carried him over to Dover just before he sneaked aboard the packet to come back with Margot and the Mauravanian.”
The eyes of the Apaches flew to the man’s face with a sudden keen interest which only they might understand; but he still stood, wagging his great head either drunkenly or idiotically, and pointing to ears and mouth.
“Lay hold of him—run him in!” said Narkom, whirling him across into the arms of a couple of stalwart Sergeants de Ville. “I’ll go before the magistrate and lay a charge against him in the morning that will open your eyes when you hear it. One of a bloodthirsty, dynamiting crew, the dog! Lay fast hold of him! don’t let him get away on your lives! God! to have lost that woman! to have lost her after all!”
It was a sore blow, certainly, but there was nothing to do but to grin and bear it; for to seek Margot at any of the inns which might communicate with the sewer trap, or to hunt for her and a motor boat on the dark water’s surface, was in very truth like looking for a needle in a haystack, and quite as hopeless. He therefore, decided to go, for the rest of the night, to the nearest hotel; and waiting only to see the pedler carried away in safe custody, and promising to be on hand when he was brought up before the local magistrate in the morning, took Dollops by the arm and dejectedly went his way.