Plunging deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the slums, they had penetrated at length to a tiny bar in the very lowest and most dangerous portion of the market section. The place was crowded with a mass of riff-raff at which even Yvette and Jules, accustomed as they were to such sights and sounds, could not repress a shudder.
The proprietor, as it happened, was a beetle-browed Provençal whose one redeeming feature was gratitude to Yvette. His character was utterly bad and he had been mixed up in dozens of affairs more or less disreputable. A year or two before a serious charge of which he happened to be innocent had been brought against him. Yvette had managed, with considerable trouble, to lay the real culprit by the heels, and Jules Charetier, Apache though he was, would now go through fire and water to serve her. Yvette knew that in his house she was personally far safer than she would have been in many more pretentious establishments.
Charetier raised his eyebrows when he caught the slight inflexion that instantly revealed to him Yvette’s identity. But he took no further notice beyond serving the drinks for which she had asked.
A moment later, with a significant look, he quitted the room. Yvette, with a slang caution to look after her drink for a moment, slipped into the filthy street and round the corner to the side entrance of the house. Charetier was waiting for her, and a few moments later they were seated in the man’s dingy room on the floor above the bar.
“Whatever are you doing here, mademoiselle?” Jules burst out impulsively. “This is no place, even for you!”
“Listen, Charetier,” replied the girl rapidly. “Something is brewing for next Friday. Something serious! You have seen the posters. I must find out about it. Can you tell me where any of the ‘Seven’ are to-night?”
Jules Charetier paled at the mention of “The Seven,” the powerful camarilla whose hidden influence was felt throughout the criminal underworld of Paris, London, and New York. The men who, practically without risk to themselves, were responsible for half the anarchist crimes of the three great capitals. Who they were, and their real names, not even Yvette knew. Never appearing directly themselves, they worked entirely through agents, and fighting against them, the police found themselves in a stifling fog of mystery. But, as Yvette knew, Charetier was deep in the councils of Continental Anarchism, and she knew, too, that in his hands the life of the ordinary police agent would have been worth nothing. Even for herself she was not very confident, but she had decided on a bold stroke, trusting Charetier with everything on the ground of the service she had done him.
At first the man was obdurate.
“Not even for you, my dear mademoiselle,” he said sullenly. “But, mademoiselle,” he went on earnestly, “we have been friends, therefore I implore you for your own sake to drop the matter and get away as speedily as possible. I cannot tell you anything.”
Yvette’s revolver flashed out and in an instant she had the innkeeper covered.