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.”
“A stopper, say you? but I don’t understand.”
“You’re going to understand,” went on Père Moche, and adding ocular demonstration to description, he drew from his pocket for his accomplice’s inspection a sort of small india-rubber ball the size of a walnut. Paulet examined the contrivance with interest.
The old man proceeded: “Soon as the client’s got this chestnut in his chops, he won’t be able to say bo! to a goose, for look’ee, Paulet, it’s made of elastic rubber you can swell out as you choose.” So saying, he pressed a spring, while Paulet stood gazing in wonder and admiration at the extraordinary implement of torture—nothing more nor less than an ordinary chokepear or elastic gag.
M. Moche continued his explanations: “You can fancy, when he’s got that between his jaws, how the beggar will kick and dance like a cat on hot bricks; but he won’t be able to articulate one word, and to make the fake more lifelike still, we’ll take care to soap the rubber ball a bit beforehand. Coming in contact with the saliva, the soap will lather, and I bet you a pint of red our friend, what with his wild contortions and the froth all over his snout, will look for all the world like a man in a fit. The cleverest doctor would be deceived. It’ll only be left then to get him packed into a cab, and as it so happens, the cab we shall pop him into will belong to one of our pals ... While I’m busy about him, you, Paulet must be telling the crowd helping us to get him in—you may be sure the crowd will help us—how grieved you are at the occurrence. You must cry in a big voice: ‘Oh! my poor dear friend ... what a calamity ... such a nice fellow, too ... to think he’s always having these attacks ... well, we’ll soon get him home now’—and so on and so forth. You’d never need worry, my boy; you may rest assured the cutest won’t suspect a thing!... I told you before, and I say so again, I’ve a sort of notion in my head that’s getting clearer and clearer ... We’re going to do great, great things, never you fear!”