THE LONG ARM
OF FANTÔMAS

A NEW FANTÔMAS DETECTIVE NOVEL

THE LONG ARM
OF FANTÔMAS

NEW YORK

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Translated into English by
A. R. ALLINSON

Copyright, 1924,
By THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

THE LONG
ARM OF FANTÔMAS

CHAPTER I
A PROMISING JOB

“... Six, seven, eight, nine, ten; there you are!”

“And there’s your bill back in exchange; Monsieur Moche, I thank you.”

“It’s I should thank you!”

“Not at all, not at all!... Your leave, Monsieur Moche, to count them over again on my side? Ten thousand francs, quite a sum of money!”

“My word, yes, my man; so that clears your budget, eh?”

“Please don’t think I mistrust you because I check the notes; it’s the usual thing.”

“Go on, go on; don’t apologise.”

The bank collector deposited his peaked cap on a straw-bottomed chair beside him, mopped his streaming brow, and moistening his thumb with a rapid, eminently professional movement, passed one by one between his fingers the ten big blue bank notes his debtor had just paid over to him.

The heat was stifling; it was the 15th of May—settling day, and about four o’clock of the afternoon.

Bernard, an employé at the Comptoir National, was nearly at the end of his day’s round when he reached M. Moche’s abode, which lay at the far end of the quartier, No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau.

The man had climbed the stairs slowly. On the fourth floor right was a door with a brass plate on which was inscribed:

Moche, Advocate

The description was only roughly indicative of the professional status of the tenant of the fourth floor. M. Moche was indeed an advocate, but not an advocate borne on the rolls of the Cour d’Appel, a pleader affiliated to the Paris bar and consequently bound by the strict rules of the profession; he was an advocate in the bare, literal sense of the word, leading persons of some perspicacity to surmise that M. Moche was in actual fact merely an ordinary business agent.

Nor was the impression produced on a visitor entering M. Moche’s domicile such as to modify the supposition. A real barrister’s chambers are in the main very much like any middle-class private house, whereas M. Moche’s office, or to be more precise, M. Moche’s offices, bore the unmistakable stamp of a place of business.

The first room you entered was divided in two by a partition pierced by wicket-windows, the lower portion being solid, the upper consisting of a lattice-work of stout bars. Behind could be seen rows and rows of deed-boxes and bundles of papers ranged on big shelves. In this room M. Moche generally sat, and whenever the outer door opened he would follow suit by throwing open a little window and popping out his head to take stock of the visitor.

Anyone who had ever seen M. Moche, or even his head only framed in the window opening, could never forget the man, for the advocate of the Rue Saint-Fargeau possessed a physiognomy that was highly characteristic.

His features, prematurely wrinkled, betrayed his age to be a good fifty. Following the fashion of ministerial officers of former days, M. Moche wore on his cheeks a pair of short, bushy whiskers, of a reddish hue that made them strongly resemble a rabbit’s paws. His rather prominent nose, under which a black smudge of snuff was invariably to be found, carried a pair of enormous, round, gold-rimmed spectacles. Atop of his skull, which one guessed to be completely bald, was perched a badly made, badly kept wig, ragged at the temples and unduly flattened at the crown, whereon the wearer found it necessary from time to time to balance a little velvet skull-cap.

Had it not been for the shifty eyes that were never at rest for an instant, M. Moche might have been taken for a perfectly honest man; yet his old-maidish manner, his soft, silky address, his often exaggerated politeness, his trick of rubbing his hands and bending his back before visitors, somehow modified any such favourable impression.

Still, as a matter of fact, despite his unpleasing exterior, M. Moche had earned an excellent reputation in the quartier. He was a serviceable, obliging old fellow, occasionally over inquisitive about other folks’ business, but as a rule ready enough to do a kindness. Many a one in the neighbourhood had had recourse to him at one time or another for little loans of money, granted, it is fair to say, at quite reasonable rates of interest, and none had come to any harm at the hands of the old man of business.

The truth is, M. Moche was richer than people might suppose, judging by the appearance of his abode on the fourth floor, a quite modest set of apartments. Apart from the outer room with the barred and windowed partition, the accommodation included a second apartment, a trifle larger, a trifle more pretentious, which was honoured with the title of drawing room. One or two armchairs of worn and faded leather and a round table with a gas chandelier over it made up the furniture. The room had two windows looking on the street, and affording a superb view over the northern parts of the city and the fortifications running parallel with the Boulevard Mortier.

The third room of the flat was M. Moche’s bedroom, a chamber rarely occupied, however, for its tenant frequently slept from home, and appeared to utilize his quarters in the Rue Saint-Fargeau merely as a place for interviewing callers and conducting his business affairs in general. M. Moche, in fact, was entitled to use more than one address, and it was matter of common knowledge that he was owner of a house in the La Chapelle district.

... The collector had finished his verification of the total, and declared it to be correct. Then he added, as he turned to take leave of M. Moche:

“There, my day’s work’s done, or as good as done; I’ve only another flight to climb in your house, and then back to the bank as fast as I can go, for I’m behind my time already.”

At the words, M. Moche looked at the man with an air of surprise.

“You have a payment to collect on the floor above,” he asked, “and from whom, pray?”

Bernard consulted a little memorandum book dangling by a string from a button of his uniform.

“From a M. Paulet.”

“Oh, ho!” laughed M. Moche.

“Yes, that’s so,” affirmed the other; “

... oh, a mere trifle, a matter of 27 francs!”

“Well, good luck to you,” concluded the old man philosophically, closing the wicket, as the bank employé took his leave with a bow and a final word of politeness:

“Hoping to meet you again, sir!”

Left alone—he kept neither housekeeper nor office-boy—the old fellow stretched himself in one of the old leather-covered armchairs in the dining room. Through the open window came a breath of cool air. M. Moche sat in his shirt sleeves, enjoying the evening freshness, and presently took advantage of his momentary leisure to inhale a huge pinch of snuff. Not a sound came from without—vehicles are few and far between in the Rue Saint-Fargeau—and only faint and far away in the distance could be caught the occasional tinkle of the bells of the electric trams that, in this remote quarter of Paris, link up the outer suburbs with the central districts of the capital.

Suddenly, M. Moche started violently; from the floor above a dull, heavy thud reached his ear. He found no difficulty in identifying the sound—it was that of some heavy object falling on the floor above his head. The old man scratched his chin and muttered half aloud:

“It’s a piece of furniture overset ... or a body!”

For a minute or two he stood hesitating, but M. Moche was a man of a curious and inquiring turn of mind.

Abandoning the siesta he was proposing to enjoy, he crept cautiously from the salon, and crossed the outer room of the flat, which opened directly on the landing; then, stepping noiselessly in his felt slippers, he climbed the stairs leading to the upper floor without a sound.

On the fifth floor of No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau, there had been residing for some weeks, in a pretty enough, albeit cheap, set of rooms, two individuals who appeared at first blush to be just an amiable pair of turtle-doves.

They were quite young; the united ages of the two would barely have equalled that of M. Moche! The man looked twenty-three at most; his companion, a dainty, slim little person, a brunette with great dark eyes, had seen some sixteen summers at the outside.

They were lover and mistress, their names, his Paulet, hers Nini. The pair had set up house together in the Rue Saint-Fargeau after their union one Easter eve in the tenderest, but unconsecrated bonds of love. The two had known each other from childhood. Paulet was the son of a worthy woman who kept the porter’s lodge at a big house in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. Nini lived in the same house, whither she had come as quite a child with her mother, a respectable working woman, Mme. Guinon by name, widow of an employé on the railway.

Nini was the youngest of a large family; they had been five brothers and sisters, but two having died at an early age, Mme. Guinon had only three surviving children. The two elder, Firmaine and Alfred, were in regular employment, the former at a mantua-maker’s in the Rue de la Paix, the latter with a bookbinder in the Rue des Grands-Augustins; but Nini, a child of an uncontrolled and capricious temper and a venturesome and vicious disposition, could never acquire the habit of regular work, no matter how light. Instead of going apprentice, the girl had preferred to run the streets in company with the most outrageous young scamps, boys and girls, of the quartier.

This was the very thing to attract and fascinate Paulet, the concierge’s son, who, too, as the phrase goes, had a wild “bee in his bonnet,” and who from his teens upwards had been over and over again told by the flash girls of La Chapelle that he was far too pretty a lad ever to do any work.

For all that, Paulet was scarcely to be styled an Adonis; slenderly built and under the middle height, he had into the bargain a pasty complexion, colourless hair and a pair of pale, watery eyes. Still, the features were well cut, almost refined. It was a common saying in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or that for sure his mother must have gone wrong one day with a man of quality to have brought such a piece of goods into the world.

In a word, Paulet was the women’s darling, because not only had the lad pretty manners of his own, but an inexhaustible fund of high spirits and an amazing gift of the gab—a typical “ladies’ man” in all the abomination of the term ... and in all its beauty!

The whole La Chapelle quarter was stirred to its depths when Paulet seduced little Nini Guinon, and had there and then resolved to set up house with the girl. There had been some violent scenes with the child’s family; Mme. Guinon, in particular, had been profoundly grieved at the catastrophe. But there, one must learn to take things as they come—and she had resigned herself to the inevitable.

As a matter of fact, for the two months the pair had been living together as man and wife, the lovers appeared to have grown quite well behaved. Nini kept her little home in decent order, Paulet worked now and then at his trade of stone-mason, which he had learnt once upon a time in a mighty haphazard fashion. Such at any rate was the official, ostensible occupation of the tenant of the fifth floor. But his real business, one which sometimes of evenings he constrained his pretty mistress to follow, was, may we surmise, of a less reputable sort.

An angle in the line of house-front enabled anyone looking out from the staircase window to see what was going on in the kitchen of the flat occupied by this dubious couple. At the moment M. Moche reached this window, Paulet and Nini were engaged in a highly animated conversation; and, be sure, the old man looked on and listened with all his eyes and ears.

M. Moche was lost in astonishment at the strange attitude of the two and the amazing things they were saying! Bending down over the sink, Nini and Paulet were letting the water pour over each other’s hands, which they were soaping in feverish haste, while red soapsuds dripped between their fingers into the trough.

Paulet was saying:

“Buck up, Nini! Don’t let the flies grow on you ... once the stuff dries on our fingers, there’d be the devil’s own job to get it off afterwards!”

“I know that,” muttered Nini in a trembling voice. Then she added:

“But, look, I’ve got some on my apron, too.”

“Lather it well,” her lover told her, “and if it won’t come off, we’ll chuck the thing in the fire.”

Paulet half turned round and reached down from a shelf a heavy hammer stained with blood, which he set to work to sponge carefully.

“That’s mighty dangerous, too,” he observed, “if it’s not wiped clean.”

M. Moche could form a pretty shrewd notion of what had occurred before he arrived. Mechanically he mounted the three or four steps that still separated him from the landing of the floor occupied by Paulet and Nini.

The door stood ajar—a crazy piece of imprudence! M. Moche pushed it open softly and made his way stealthily along the little passage at the end of which was the kitchen.

Suddenly, in the half dark, his foot struck against something. M. Moche, his sight getting accustomed to the dim light, gazed down at this “something” with haggard eyes—it was the body of a man lying quite still, face downwards on the floor!—the body of the bank collector! At the back of the neck showed a fearful wound.

The thing was beyond a doubt—Paulet had murdered the employé from the Comptoir National.

The unfortunate man’s wallet lay beside him, wide open, and M. Moche could see that its contents had not yet been touched. The bank notes stuck half out of the case, like the contents of a parcel that has been ripped up; you had only to stoop to help yourself. It was plain Paulet and Nini, their victim once dead, had merely shut to the door, without making sure it was fastened, calm and confident in their conviction that nobody in the house, empty at this hour of the day, would come in to surprise them.

The deed once done, they had deemed the most urgent thing was to set to work instantly to cleanse their hands and clothes in order to get rid of the evidences of their guilt at the earliest possible moment. The corpse lay absolutely motionless. Not a doubt the bank employé had been killed outright with one blow.

During the few seconds M. Moche stood hesitating before the ghastly sight, he could still hear the two accomplices minutely discussing the details of their cleansing operations. But there was something else that, even more than his curiosity to overhear what they were saying, held the old advocate’s attention—to wit, the bank notes that overflowed the wallet, that were all but out of their receptacle, that seemed to be actually offering themselves to whosoever cared to appropriate them.

It was a strong temptation—and M. Moche did not resist it!

Creeping like a cat, hiding in the semi-darkness of the little passage, with a thousand precautions, he advanced step by step; he reached out his hairy hand, his fingers shook as they touched the brass fittings of the open wallet; then his hand fell on the bundle of notes. Suddenly he sprang back in alarm—Paulet and Nini had stopped talking. Had they heard him?

But presently the same excited conversation began again. Whereupon M. Moche, with an ugly smile on his face, crept down again to his own floor, bolted his door and counted his spoils. Yes, it was a fine stroke of business; not only did he recover his own ten thousand-franc notes, but with them were ten others of the same denomination!

“Ha, ha! Money well invested and that brings in cent. per cent. on the nail, or I don’t know what I’m talking about!” M. Moche muttered in delight, his eyes sparkling with greed.

But next moment, the old man turned ghastly pale. The front-door bell had rung! Instinctively, M. Moche crammed into his pocket the notes he had just stolen so audaciously, and with the aplomb of a hardened thief.

Then he stood stock still, waiting. Would the visitor insist? Yes, he would; the ring was repeated. M. Moche had nothing to fear, for the moment at any rate; had he not taken the precaution to double lock the door? Still, he must find out what was afoot. In one second the old fellow had plotted the whole plan of the line of behaviour he must adopt.

“Bless my soul,” he thought to himself, “it can only be a caller, a client, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t receive him; if by any chance it were Paulet, I need only refuse to open and leave him to kick his heels till the police arrive.”

At the third repetition of the summons, M. Moche put the tentative question:

“Who is it? What do you want?”

Through the door the old advocate caught the sound of a fresh young voice asking timidly:

“Is this M. Moche’s?”

“Yes, madame ... mademoiselle; but I don’t know if he can be seen. What is it about?”

“A lady wishes to speak to him—about a flat to let in the Rue de l’Evangile.”

Rue de l’Evangile, that was where M. Moche owned a property. Most certainly it would never do to send away this inquirer who appeared anxious to take rooms in his house.

So M. Moche turned the key in the lock and half opened the door to make sure his visitor was alone, and that no one suspicious accompanied her. Evidently there was no cause for alarm, and the old man stepped back and threw the portal wide open.

“Pray come in, mademoiselle,” he said with a bow, and ushered her into the little salon.

His visitor was a young woman, quietly but elegantly dressed. Twenty-four at the outside, she was a tall, fair, pretty girl; a heavy veil partly masked the brilliance of her complexion of lilies and roses; she wore mourning weeds.

Moche, after a brief survey, pointed to a chair and invited her to state her business.

“Sir,” began the unknown, “at present I am living in the Rue des Couronnes, but on account of my work—I am employed in the correspondence office of a factory at Aubervilliers—I am anxious, very naturally, to make my home nearer the place where I work. Well, I have been to see a flat in your house in the Rue de l’Evangile that would suit me, provided you would consent, as the concierge led me to hope you would, to make a trifling alteration.”

The girl spoke simply, equally without exaggerated timidity and undue assurance.

Moche looked at her with interest, preoccupied as he was; still he forced himself to attend to the conversation. Meantime, to gain time and recover his equanimity, he asked:

“Whom have I the honour to address?”

“True,” the young woman apologized, “I have not told you my name yet; I am called ... Elisabeth Dollon.”

The girl had pronounced the name only after a momentary hesitation, a fact which did not escape M. Moche’s perspicacity. He said nothing, but cast a long, scrutinizing glance at his visitor. He saw that she was colouring.

“Mademoiselle Elisabeth Dollon,” he repeated the name; “now it’s a curious thing, but somehow the name strikes me as not unfamiliar.”

The young woman had risen, and her brows contracted; she seemed agitated and spoke with difficulty.

“Forgive me, sir; but I always feel strangely moved whenever I have occasion to mention my name.”

“Why, pray?” demanded M. Moche, courteously.

“Why? Oh, sir! some years ago my name acquired a sad notoriety through the tragic, the lamentable deaths of the dearest of my family. First, my father was murdered under mysterious circumstances in a railway carriage; then it was my brother who disappeared, struck down by an odious criminal, who furthermore caused him to be accused, even after his death, of the commission of atrocious crimes.”

These statements, succinct as they were, sufficed to reanimate M. Moche’s recollection.

“I have it,” he cried, “yes, I know ... Dollon ... the Dollon case ... Jacques Dollon ... so he was your brother? Jacques Dollon, whom they called the ‘Messenger of Evil.’”

The girl, greatly agitated by this reminder of a terrible past, merely nodded her head affirmatively, while great tears filled her eyes.

M. Moche expressed his sympathy: “I am truly sorry, mademoiselle,” he said, “to have recalled such mournful memories to your mind; but as landlord of the house where you wish to take rooms, I was bound to know your name; but I assure you that from henceforth ...”

He broke off, but presently resumed:

“You spoke just now of a small alteration in the flat you wish to rent.” He had guessed from the first what it was and was quite ready to agree.

“You think, mademoiselle, that the five rooms of the vacant flat are really more than you require, and you are asking me, I feel convinced of it, to divide the premises in two by having a party-wall constructed?”

Elisabeth Dollon assented: “That, sir, is what the concierge led me to expect.”

“Consider the matter settled,” declared M. Moche; “and accordingly, the premises being only one half as big, the rent will be proportionately less—I will ask you 400 francs. When do you wish to move in?”

“As soon as possible.”

“The rooms are empty; as soon as ever the partition is built, you can take possession.”

Moche went into the adjoining room and returned with a form of contract he had taken from one of the pigeonholes.

“Sign this paper, mademoiselle, if you please.”

Elisabeth Dollon was preparing to do so when he asked another question in a tone of fatherly interest: “You are alone, eh? quite alone?”

“Why, of course,” replied the girl, whose look of surprise clearly showed that she failed to understand what her prospective landlord would be at.

The latter explained: “The house in the Rue de l’Evangile is let out to very desirable tenants—only respectable families.... It is not for me to judge your character, my dear young lady, but if you did happen to have a ‘friend,’ or several ‘friends,’ why, you must not let them come to see you—or not too often, at any rate.”

Mademoiselle Dollon drew herself up.

“Sir,” she declared, a good deal offended, “I don’t know what you take me for, but I am an honest woman—”

“Well, well, I felt sure of it the moment I set eyes on you; but there, it’s as well to understand one another from the beginning ... So please sign your name there, mademoiselle”—and with his great hairy finger, M. Moche pointed out the place.

This formality completed, she bade a hasty farewell to M. Moche, who escorted her politely to the door.

“Brigand, scoundrel, blackguard, thief!”—a torrent of insults, followed by a torrent of blows ... M. Moche was on the point of recrossing his threshold when he was struck full in the face and felled to the ground. As he lay there, he felt the weight of a man’s body crushing him, holding him forcibly down.

But Moche, for all his years, was a wonderfully active man, and quite unexpectedly nimble. In one second he had shaken off the incubus and leapt to the other end of the room, where he stood glaring at his assailant.

It was Paulet he saw, but Paulet changed beyond recognition—eyes starting out of his head, mouth set hard, features convulsed, muscles taut.

The lover of Nini Guinon, knife in hand, was for hurling himself at M. Moche, when suddenly he stopped dead. The sharp click of a cocked pistol had struck him motionless where he stood.

Moche, quick as lightning, had not only dodged the villain’s furious onslaught, but had whipped a revolver from his pocket and pointed the weapon straight at the scoundrel’s breast—

“Not another step,” he vociferated, “or I shoot you like a dog!”

At the same moment a cry of anguish rang out. Behind Paulet appeared the face of Nini Guinon, pale and agonized; her two hands clutched her lover, whom she was holding back with all her strength.

But the man had realized the risk involved in a fresh attack, and was ready to parley. The voice shook that came from between his clenched teeth: “Brigand!” he repeated, looking furiously at Moche, “brigand, give me back my money!”

For a moment the old advocate entertained the idea of shamming ignorance, pretending not to know what the murderer meant by the demand. But a half-dozen words that fell from Nini’s lips decided him. “I saw you fumbling in the money-bag,” she declared, and he knew at once that dissimulation was useless. The wisest policy was to take the bull by the horns there and then—and he had his plan all ready, cut and dried. Best to play the game cards face upwards on the table.

“No,” he declared, grimly, “I will not give you back the money.”

“Ruffian!”

“One minute...!”

A sardonic smile curled the old man’s lips; he cast a searching glance at Nini, questioning with which of his adversaries he should open the attack. They were two to one—was it not judicious to win one of them over to his side so as to reverse the superiority of numbers?

“Poor little Nini,” M. Moche murmured in softened, honeyed tones, “my poor little girl, you’re in a nasty hole; what ever is to become of you?”

The girl looked superciliously at the old man: “I don’t understand,” she told him.

“Oh, yes! you do,” returned the advocate; “nothing easier to understand, my dear child; you’ll be left all alone in life now, it is only a question of days, perhaps of hours—your lover will be arrested by the police and in six months from now guillotined at the back of the prison of La Santé. To do a man in to steal his money is always a bad business!”

Beside himself with rage, Paulet screamed:

“But it was you who stole the money, you will be turned off, too.”

But Moche, in the same quiet voice, yet all the while keeping his revolver levelled at the scoundrel’s breast, retorted:

“Impossible! How prove it? Bank notes can be made to disappear; there’s nothing more like a thousand-franc note than another thousand-franc note, while the dead body of a bank messenger, a body stretched on the floor of a lodging, fifth floor No. 125 Rue Saint-Fargeau, the residence of one Paulet by name, that’s a thing it’s not so easy to stuff away in a pocket-book ... Now, what are you proposing to do with the corpse in question, eh, my young friend?”

Paulet turned ghastly pale. Since he had done the deed, and especially since he had discovered there was nothing to be gained by it, the money having vanished, the scoundrelly apache had completely lost his head. If only things had gone according to plan, the affair might well have been highly advantageous. Paulet had arranged it all with Nini—to kill the collector, to appropriate his takings and fly right away to foreign parts. It was good business, a job well worth the trouble. But, lo and behold! the unlucky and unexpected interference of old Moche upset all their plans, for the old ruffian had left in the wallet nothing but a few small notes—just enough and no more, to pay for a little spree.

It was M. Moche, not a doubt of it, who had stolen the money ... Paulet was to pull the chestnuts out of the fire and the other was to reap the benefit ... Nini, in fact, had actually seen the man making off! If at that very moment the old man had not had a visitor, Paulet would have hurried down at once and had it out with him there and then.

In broken phrases and a breathless voice, Paulet detailed all this to the old advocate, who only smiled enigmatically. After a pause, the latter spoke again:

“You are a fine, brave fellow, Paulet—a bit of a scamp, too, but who can blame you? It’s just your little way, you know.... Now, my man, I’m going to make an offer; put your knife back in your pocket, I will clap my revolver in its case—we shall be more comfortable so for talking; let’s sit down one on either end of the table, and perhaps we can come to some arrangement.”

The young brigand was at a loss, as he gazed alternately at the old lawyer with the sharp eyes and at Nini, who was prompting him in hurried, urgent tones:

“Don’t be a fool, Paulet; do what the old ape says. He’s an artful, knowing beggar, certain sure he’ll find the trick to get us out of the hole we’re in....”

Moche had caught what Nini said. He stepped up boldly to Paulet, with outstretched hands, though the young man had not yet pocketed his weapon:

“There, you see, I trust you,” he declared. “I offer you my hand, mate, as a good comrade—shake, my man, we’ll fix up things yet.”

Paulet gave in. Ten minutes later, seated at the round table in M. Moche’s dining room, the advocate and his two visitors, Paulet and Nini, were just finishing a bottle of wine together.

They clinked glasses for the last time:

“Well, then,” demanded Paulet, “it’s a sure thing, Moche, old man, you’re going to help me?”

Moche, with a superb and impressive gesture, laid his heavy, hairy hand on Nini’s touzled curls, where she sat beside him:

“I swear it, on your lady-love’s glorious tresses, Paulet, and that’s as binding as the Blessed Sacrament!”

“All the same,” Paulet warned his mistress with an air at once peremptory and timid, “you’ll have to shut your jaw tight and not go gassing about the job in hand.”

Nini nodded, laid a finger on her lip, and with a shrug and a look of scorn:

“D’you really suppose,” she scoffed, “I should be such a silly goose as all that?”

She said no more, for the two men were deep in confabulation.

Moche was asseverating:

“I tell you this, Paulet, we’re in for a gorgeous fine thing; don’t you imagine I’ve come to my present respectable and respected age without seeing a thing or two and learning pretty thoroughly what’s what in this world of ours! A smart customer like you, with a smart chap like me to help him, why, we’ll play some fine games together!”

Paulet agreed, smiling a well satisfied smile. But one detail still troubled him:

“The body,” he asked, “the fellow’s body ... upstairs; what’s to be done with it, eh?”

“Never you worry, Paulet, there’s more tricks than one in papa Moche’s pack, trust him for that. If you do what I tell you, the ‘cold meat’ upstairs in your passage will be fixed up, never fear, so he’ll never come back again: it’ll take a mighty clever devil to find him, I can tell you!”

“But I don’t understand,” objected Paulet.

“What’s that matter?” snapped the other.

The old scamp got up, stuffed his hands in his pockets—an ordinary enough gesture seemingly, but in reality to make sure his revolver was still safe in the inside-pocket of his breeches.

Paulet had risen, and he, too, thrust his hands in his pockets, in one of which he mechanically felt for his knife, which lay there open. All very well to have made peace, to have concluded a treaty of alliance over a bottle of wine—prudence is a virtue all the same!

But neither Paulet nor M. Moche had any warlike intentions; the two malefactors had made up their minds it was to their mutual advantage to help one another.

“As a fact, you are a mason by trade, Paulet, aren’t you?”

“H’m, that depends ...”

“Could you undertake to build a wall, a stone wall, a brick wall, a lath and plaster partition, any guess contraption of the sort?”

“Bless my soul, yes,” laughed Paulet, “provided you give me the needful supply of stone or brick or plaster and lime for the job.”

Moche clapped his arm on Paulet’s shoulder:

“Well, my boy, that settles it; there’s not a minute to lose, I engage from to-night.”

Nini Guinon, who had been waiting the result of the colloquy with no small anxiety, Nini, whose gaze fixed first on one, then on the other of the speakers, tender and passionate on Paulet, questioning and admiring on M. Moche, and who had kept her curiosity forcibly in check for all this time, could no longer restrain the question:

“But what are you going to do?”

Moche looked first at her, then at Paulet:

“You’ll see what we’re going to do all in good time,” he announced, “but I can tell you one thing—what we’re going to do is a mighty promising job.”

CHAPTER II
A NIGHT AFFRAY

The Boulevard de Belleville at nine o’clock at night presents a grim and forbidding aspect. Long rows of flickering gaslamps cast wan reflections over the far-stretching pavements, on which sinister figures—drunken men, dejected-looking street-walkers and apaches—show momentarily in the ruddy glow from the lighted window of dram-shops of the sort Belleville used to build or American bars of a later fashion.

Along the sidewalk, with slow steps and head bent in deep thought, moved a young man of twenty-five or so, with a fine, intelligent face, but so preoccupied an air he scarce seemed to know where his feet were carrying him. The man was talking to himself; anyone overhearing his monologue, or reading, if that could be, the thoughts that surged within, would have been amazed, perhaps terrified.

“An odd thing, life! an odd thing and a repulsive!” he was muttering. “Six months ago, seven months at most—God knows how I have lived meantime—I was a King, I was greeted with a string of pompous titles; gold jingled in my pockets ... Six months ago I was on the path to glory, the highest glory I could conceive of; was on the road, with my old friend Juve, after saving the Sovereign of Hesse-Weimar, to share the honour of Fantômas’ arrest! in a word, I was in the full tide of success. Then the luck changed, that devil Fantômas eluded us—more than that, he contrived that Juve was nabbed in place of himself. Juve in prison, I am myself liable to arrest as an accomplice, forced to fly, to take to hiding. The good days are over and done for me. I, ex-King of Hesse-Weimar as I am, find myself, this eighteenth day of May, starving, without a penny-piece in my pocket, and in imminent danger of being gaoled ... oh, instability of human fortune!”

The young man was Jérôme Fandor. The excellent journalist’s history to date was summed up in the few words his despair had just wrung from his lips. By Juve’s arrest under the guise of Fantômas, and that thanks to the deep duplicity of the Grand Duchess Alexandra, Jérôme Fandor had been plunged into the most alarming embarrassments.

That Juve was really Fantômas, Fandor had not, of course, for one moment admitted. To him the thing was a sheer impossibility, a supposition not only inconceivable, but positively insane. But alas! the conviction he held as to his friend’s innocence, and even the hope he entertained that Juve would soon succeed in exposing the monstrous error whereof he was the victim, did little or nothing towards bettering Fandor’s personal predicament.

On leaving the Gare du Nord, as they were carrying off Juve to prison, the young man had clearly realized that he must disappear unless he wished to be clapped in gaol, too. Now it would never do for him to be arrested, in the first place because, if still at liberty, he could perhaps help Juve to get out of the mess, secondly, because now Juve was under lock and key, he, Fandor, was the only one left to fight Fantômas and paralyse the machinations of the brigand whom he still held to be at liberty, inasmuch as he refused to believe Juve to be Fantômas.

At the time the journalist had some money in his possession. Without a moment’s delay he had changed his costume, and dressed out as a “ragged rascal,” had plunged into the underworld, the social stratum where an artful and wary fugitive can most easily cover up his tracks. This done, he had waited events. Day followed day, however, without bringing him any further information. Juve was in prison, the authorities still believing him to be Fantômas, and this evening Fandor, who had hitherto been living by casual odd jobs, was penniless and starving; what was he to do, he asked himself.

The young man continued to follow the Boulevard de Belleville, hesitating between the notion of going to find a night’s lodging under the arch of a bridge and his fear of being run in by a police-patrol, an eventuality he was far from desiring, when his attention was attracted to a passer-by, a woman who brushed past him, walking very fast, and rapidly outdistanced him.

“Hello!” muttered Fandor, looking after the form of the young woman, “doubtless a Paris workgirl; now, if I were really what I seem, an apache, I should profit by the opportunity. A little woman of this sort would be better in bed at this time of night than out and about on the Boulevard de Belleville! and she carries a bag in her hand—how imprudent! I’d wager twopence something will happen to the girl.”

Jérôme Fandor possessed something of that extraordinary instinct to be found in some veteran detectives. He seemed to have a presentiment of crime, to divine beforehand the possibility of acts of violence; and being a man of courage, he never failed to forestall and try to prevent the mischief. Mechanically, Fandor followed the young woman, keeping some distance behind, and as he went, took stock of her appearance. Small black toque, black jacket, a flowing veil, a slim umbrella, small shoes, a quite simple frock.

“A workgirl, a respectable workgirl, on her way home after doing a bit of overtime ... Good!—but, well, one may be mistaken!”

The young woman Jérôme Fandor was following had just been accosted by a street-walker, a little dark-haired creature with a touzled head, outrageously powdered and painted, clad in the typical spotted corsage of her class, the swaying skirts, the apron with scarlet bib, its pockets bulging, stuffed full of silk handkerchiefs.

“Hello! hello!” thought Fandor, “so here’s my workgirl in very odd company!—oh! dear, oh! dear.”

Next moment the young fellow darted forward at a run. From the shadow two men had just sprung out on the women; seizing them roughly by the arms, they were hustling and dragging them away.

The street-walker put her head down, fighting hard, but without uttering a sound; the workwoman gave a piercing shriek for help.

To fly to the rescue, to save the woman in this perilous strait, Jérôme Fandor’s mind was made up in an instant.

Someone else came hurrying up behind him at the same moment. A voice shouted:

“Have at ’em, mate!”

“A gallant working man,” thought Fandor, as he caught a glimpse of a young man running across the road dressed in a blue jacket, the sort plumbers wear; “there’s still honest folk left who won’t let women be molested.”

But the time for action was come; he was level by now with the two women, who were still struggling, and cried in a peremptory voice to the assailants:

“Let the women go!—or I strike.”

At this the two bullies, finding it was their turn to be attacked, suddenly loosed hold of their victims and wheeling round to face Fandor and his companion, stood on the defensive.

In an instant Jérôme Fandor realized the state of affairs; one of the fellows was putting a hand in his pocket—his purpose was manifest.

“By God!” yelled the young man, “none of your tricks here!—or you’ll make me angry.”

Fandor was wrestling savagely, locked in a close embrace with the fellow who had first laid hands on the workgirl; behind him he could hear the laboured breath and fierce cries and oaths of the working man who had hurried to the rescue, and knew that the same battle was raging between him and the second ruffian.

A few seconds, and all was over.

At the very moment Fandor, with a masterly trip, stretched his adversary on the ground, where he held him down by main force, he heard the workman give an exultant shout of victory:

“Ah, ha! I’ve got you, you hound!”

Jérôme Fandor looked round.

“Bravo, mate!” he cried, “so you’ve downed your man, too?”

A thick, hoarse, common, ignoble voice replied:

“Downed him, have I ... yes, by gosh! and what’s more I’m busy fixing the bloke up workmanlike, I am!”

“Workmanlike, eh?”—and Fandor looked, and could scarcely believe his eyes. In the calmest way possible, but with surprising dexterity, the man he had taken for a working man had whipped a coil of rope from his pocket and tied up the victim of his prowess.

“And now for your man!” he cried, pointing to the wretch Fandor held captive under his knee, and who had now ceased to offer the slightest resistance.

“Must truss him up, too—but I think we’d best not do ’em in ...”

“Well and good!” thought Fandor, “why, by Gad! this beats cock-fighting; it’s just the finest scoop I’ve ever been in!”

The other went on: “It’s the street officers, look’ee—the swine! I just love it when I can spoil their little game. And it’s all to the good for our gals, eh?”

“For sure it is,” Fandor agreed, and getting to his feet, for his companion had by this time roped up his man, too, and rolled him into the gutter, not without planting a shrewd kick or two on his carcass

, the journalist proceeded to scrutinize his companion.

He was not a working man at all! True, he wore a plumber’s short blue jacket, but it only needed to note his flat cap, his brown muffler, to say nothing of the broad red sash round his waist, his velvet Zouave breeches, his elegant, down-at-heel shoes, the whole vicious cut of the fellow, to guess his vile trade.

“A fancy-man!” thought Fandor, “it was a fancy-man, a bully, was his ally! ... and the two we’ve just planted on the sidewalk are purely and simply a couple of police officers!”

But once more the other broke in on his reflections.

“’Pon my soul!” he burst out, drawing Fandor away with a friendly grip on his shoulder, “it’s a rum business, this here! ... all the same let’s pad the hoof, mate, the boulevard ain’t a healthy place for us just now, if more cops should come up.”

So Fandor and his companion raced down the street at tip-top speed and dodged in and out of a maze of dark alleys ... In five minutes the apache called a halt.

“Easy does it now,” he panted, “they’ll never nab us here.”

And then, suddenly confidential: “You know, don’t you, why my donna stopped the wench?”

Fandor, without showing a trace of surprise, replied emphatically in the negative.

“Why, look’ee, old chap, I’d told Nini—Nini my doxy’s called—I’d told her when I saw your girl go by, ‘Look,

sure as my name’s Paulet, there goes a wench who is bound to have a bit of money in her bag! ... you go and talk to her, pitch her a tale, tell her you have a sick brat at home, some jeremy diddler or other, eh? and entice her down a dark street—and you and I’ll deal with the baggage.’”

Spitting on the ground to give more weight to his words, the apache Paulet—for Paulet it was—added: “I take my oath I never dreamt she was a night-bird, I took her for a workgirl by her duds.”

Fandor was far from liking the state of affairs, as he realized more and more clearly the nature of the mistake made.

His companion, Paulet, evidently the “bully” of the street-walker Nini who had accosted the young workwoman, took him, Fandor, for the latter’s protector, while the two men, whom he had supposed to be apaches, were just simply guardians of the peace wanting to arrest the two women ...

To tell truth, Jérôme Fandor was half sorry he had rescued the two unfortunates, but, for all his philosophy, he was still more amazed to have involuntarily become the antagonist of the officers of the law and the accomplice of a Belleville “ponce.”

“What’s dead certain,” Paulet summed up the matter, “it’s another evening wasted, old son; our two wenches took their hook during the fight, and I’ll wager they’ll say they’re too much knocked out of time to put in another stroke of business to-night—above all as Nini’s none too fond of work at the best of times. And so, hang it all! we’ll just go drink a glass and have a snack, eh?”

This last proposal was eminently agreeable to Fandor; it was six and thirty hours since he had broken his fast, and a supper, be it in company of an apache or no, was so much to the good.

“The fact is,” he put in, however, for he had no desire for a quarrel with Paulet after their liquor, “the fact is, for the moment I’m stony

-broke, cleaned out, not a brass farthing to my name.”

But Paulet was in a generous mood. “Right O!” he cried, “I’ve got the dibs; it’s my turn this time ... to Korn’s, is it?”

For a bite of bread the unhappy young man would have gone anywhere whatsoever. “That’s the ticket,” he agreed, at once, adding by way of acting up to his rôle: “Maybe, we shall meet some of the boys there?”

At the Rendez-vous des Aminches, the famous tavern kept by old man Korn, the two portals of which opened respectively on the Boulevard de la Chapelle and the Rue de la Charbonnière, Fandor did not at first notice any of the “boys”—or rather he made a pretence of knowing nobody.

In the low-ceiled, smoky room, where seated in state, old Korn, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his bald head shining in the gaslight, was rinsing out glasses stained with the lees of red wine in a basinful of greasy water, Fandor had recognized, with a surprise that bordered on stupefaction, a whole gang of people whom he knew very well. While Paulet was pushing him along towards a little table, where sat an extraordinary-looking individual, head like a broken-down tipstaff surmounted by a well-worn wig, nose decorated with an enormous pair of spectacles, frowsy mutton-chop whiskers framing the face, whom the apache greeted with a “Good-day, Moche, old cock!” Fandor had been taking stock of the other customers.

Later on, when Paulet, after ordering a litre of “Red Seal,” bread and cheese and Bologna sausage, was describing the late encounter to old Moche and his meeting with the “new chum,” Fandor seized the opportunity to scrutinize the group of persons gathered at the further end of the boozing-ken.

So, the old gang was come together again? again the same lot haunted Père Korn’s tavern? Fandor was dumbfounded to meet once more at the Rendez-vous des Aminches the very same ill-omened crowd of apaches that had over and over again been mixed up in the crimes and wild adventures of Fantômas; he could only just contrive to play up to his assumed character and pay decent attention to what Paulet was saying, who meantime was praising him up to the skies to M. Moche.

“Certain sure,” Paulet was asseverating, “you’ll pay for drinks, M. Moche ... yes, yes, your Honour, never say no!... But look’ee here, that chap yonder—I don’t so much as know his blessed name—well, there’d be something to be made out of him, eh?... There’s no flies on that bloke, you bet. Why in two twos and a couple of shakes, crack! he’d downed his gentleman, let me tell you that, sir. Two constables, sir, and we chucked ’em both in the gutter. Cost me a bit of good rope, it did—but there, I don’t care.”

M. Moche, sipping an extraordinary mixture of brandy and absinthe, applauded Paulet’s narrative, and then turning to Fandor, asked:

“So, young sir, things going well with you, eh?” The question roused Fandor from a deep fit of abstraction. The old fellow repeated his remark.

“H’m, no!” Fandor confessed, “by no manner of means!... cleaned out!”

“And you can write?”

With the utmost seriousness the journalist declared he could—“and none so badly either,” he added, “I write quite a good hand.”

For some seconds the old man sat lost in thought; then he brought out his proposal: “Now, what would you say if I asked you to come and work with me? I am a business agent, yes, a business agent—in every kind of business, you must understand.... In one word, if you care to sleep to-night at my place, why, there’s a pile of papers in the garret, where you’d be comfortable enough ... say, does that suit your book, my lad?”

For the moment Fandor hesitated. He asked himself who and what was this dreadful person, and for what shady work was he engaging him—on Paulet’s recommendation, Paulet a common “bully,” and that after he had just heard how he had been an active participator in an assault on officers of the law.

But Paulet gave him a nudge: “Go on,” urged the young blackguard; “you’re cleaned out, ain’t you? so you risk nothing, and you’ll rake in the rhino scratching paper at the old put’s—he’s rolling in money, you ask any of the blokes here.”

So it seemed old Moche, who frequented Korn’s tavern, knew all the crew that met there.

Jérôme Fandor’s mind was made up. No matter what adventures might befall him if he agreed to “work” for M. Moche, he ought by no means to neglect the opportunity thus offered for renewing his observation of the machinations of this amiable confraternity.

“M’sieur Moche,” he gave his answer, purposely exaggerating his vulgar trick of speech, “as you might say, sir, your offer does me proud—and for that there sleeping in your garret, I won’t say no; for all it’s May time, it’s none too cosy, it ain’t, dossing under the stars.”

M. Moche, who wore an enormous great ring on his finger hammered noisily on the zinc-topped table.

“Korn,” he commanded, “another go of the same all round; it’s my treat, I’ve just enlisted a new clerk.”

CHAPTER III
SHADY SCHEMES

Elbows resting on the hand-rail of the bridge, a man stood gazing down pensively at the flowing water.

It was M. Moche. The old man was even dirtier than usual, his hat crammed down over his ears—a huge topper, all dinted and dulled; his brow was wrinkled in deep and serious thought. It was eleven in the forenoon when the usurer of the Rue Saint-Fargeau had taken up his position on the foot-bridge thrown across the narrow sluice-gates separating the basin of La Villette from the Canal de l’Ourcq and connecting the two sections of the Rue de Crimée. Heedless of anything passing about him, M. Moche looked down at the current, in which the man’s common, cunning features were reflected as in a mirror. But at the same time he kept ever and anon casting furtive glances towards the bottom of the street.

At last the old fellow shook off his lethargy. From the far end of the Rue de Crimée he had caught sight of a man dressed in a long white blouse who was pushing before him a wheel-barrow loaded up with a workman’s tools. The barrow bumped up and down over the uneven pavement as the man advanced slowly along the road, for the load seemed a heavy one. Still, in course of time the modest vehicle reached the bridge. The workman let go the handles, mopped his brow—it was a blazing hot day—and then, after a glance round, he saw M. Moche and stepped up to him.

It was plain enough the two had met by appointment, for they seemed in no way surprised at the rencontre. The pair began talking in low tones:

“You were waiting for me, M. Moche?”

“Why, yes, I was waiting for you, waiting without much hoping you’d come; still I waited.”

The workman mopped his forehead again, muttering in a weary voice:

“I’ve had the devil’s own job of it this morning, I can tell you!”

“Poor fellow!” observed Moche, a note of ironical commiseration in his voice. Then the old business man went on: “It’s uncommon seldom, all the same, one sees you sweating yourself; when a man has a ‘bee in his bonnet’ like you ...”

The workman laughed:

“Say a hiveful of ’em, Père Moche, and you’ll be nearer truth. God! I can’t deny it, hard work’s not my strong point.”

But old Moche, suddenly putting on an air of sternness and anxiety, questioned:

“Tell me, Paulet, how goes the work in question?”

The young apache, who for the nonce, bore the stamp of the most respectable of working men, replied eagerly:

“The work’s done, M. Moche. Oh! I give you my word I’ve put in a desperate hard four hours over the job; I’ve never in all my life done such a day’s work for the masters. True,” added the pale-faced young loafer, “it was no ordinary job I had on.... Just you think ...”

But Moche interrupted him:

“That’s all right, that’s all right, Paulet; no need to go gassing here about matters that concern only you and me. You shall tell me the whole story by-and-by if things have gone well. Come along and have a glass with me.”

“And my barrow?” queried Paulet.

“Bah! leave it on the sidewalk; no fear anybody’ll come and pinch it. And besides, if they did make off with it, I guess you’d never care; for you strike me as the very image of a workman out-of-work.”

A good quarter of an hour later the two men were coming out of the dram-shop, looking at once well satisfied and mysterious.

The barrow was still there. Paulet buckled to again and towed it slowly up the slope of the Rue de Crimée, while Père Moche, keeping to the sidewalk, stumped along in a line with the working mason.

The two confederates, who forty-eight hours earlier had come near slaughtering each other over the tragic murder of the bank messenger, presently reached the top of the incline and stopped a moment to take breath behind the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont at the opening of the Rue Botzaris. The place was admirably chosen for people wishing to talk without fear of eavesdroppers. The street was empty and in the park even not a soul could be seen afoot.

Père Moche, pointing to a bench set against the palisade surrounding a piece of waste ground—the very same where some months before a woman’s body had been found hacked to pieces—was saying to his companion:

“Sit down there, my boy, we’ve got to talk.”

Paulet was not sorry to rest a while, for his barrow was heavy; he gladly obeyed, and the two men faced each other.

“Paulet,” began M. Moche, “I told you the day before yesterday we were going to make a mighty fine thing of it, unless you proved a funk.”

The apache lifted his right hand as if to take an oath. “Never,” he asseverated, “I’ve never had cold feet, and you saw yourself how I downed the bank man with a crack on the noddle; he was dead and done for quicker than it takes to tell.”

Père Moche smiled, and resumed:

“Very true, my lad, you know your job. But as you are so clever, d’you think you could run a man in trying the epileptic fake, eh?”

“What’s that?” demanded Paulet, “what’s that mean?”

“That means,” went on M. Moche, “you’ve got to upset your client, tie him up to rights, and pop him in a wheeler before he has the time to say ‘knife’.”

“It’s nothing so very formidable,” remarked Paulet.

But the old man proceeded.

“That depends on the place where the thing’s done. Don’t you go and suppose I’m proposing to do the job in a far-away corner at night when there’s nobody by—that’d be elementary. My dear fellow, the man we’re to pack away—for you may be sure I’ve got an idea at the back of my head—we’re out to do his business in broad daylight, in the open street, in the middle of Paris!”

“That’s a bit more difficult—but not impossible,” Paulet declared.

Père Moche nodded approvingly.

“For sure, you’ve got the guts, my lad, and I begin to think you’ll do finely for yourself yet. But just tell me how you’d set about it?”

Paulet, who in his braggart way had declared the problem old Moche set him as simple as A B C, seemed a trifle nonplussed. He scratched his nose, fingered his chin and growled out some unintelligible remarks, then finally admitted:

“Well, to tell the whole truth, M. Moche, I have the best will in the world, but I shouldn’t know just how to tackle it.”

Père Moche had expected the avowal: “No matter for that, my lad. Now listen carefully to what I’m going to say, for the little scheme I’m talking about must be carried through this very afternoon. Now look here—we’re going to stage the fine old play of the epileptic seizure. Presently, after feeding time, we shall come along, nicely dressed up to look like honest bourgeois, into the high-life streets, say the grand boulevards or the Tuileries—I can’t tell yet exactly where. We must shadow the individual I shall point out to you. We’ll both walk behind him without any concealment, so that he’ll notice us and forget to pay attention to two other crooks who’ll be stumping along before us. At a given moment I’ll give a signal, and one of the two in front will turn sharp round and come into collision with our man, then beg his pardon civilly for his blunder. That’s the time, Paulet, for you—you’ll be behind, you know—to play up. A neat trip, and you’ll roll your gentleman in the mud. Then, like t’other chap, you must pretend to beg pardon, and meantime, when the guy’s got his head down and his heels in the air along of the sudden tumble, you’ll shove a stopper in his mouth.”