“Get along then that’s no way to treat people! What’s he want with me, anyway, the nasty fellow?”

Nini Guinon was furious; turning sharply round, she thus apostrophized an individual who had just signalized his presence by tickling her ribs more roughly than agreeably. It was a Monday, and about two o’clock in the afternoon. Nini had just issued from the Poissonnière Gate; mounting the bank overhanging the moat of the fortifications and turning to the left, she was making for Saint-Ouen. The young woman stared suspiciously at the man who was following her without a word, good, bad or indifferent, a smile of doubtful import on his face.

Presently, reassured more or less by her examination of the stranger, Nini added:

“I thought it was the ‘cops’.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “D’you think I belong to the police? do I look like it?”

“No, you don’t,” Nini admitted; “but come, let’s have a peep at your phiz; what does this here masquerading mean, eh?”

Obeying the young woman’s demand, the other turned his face towards her; the cheeks were muffled in a great yellow silk handkerchief.

“That’s along of my dominoes,” he said; “I’ve had toothache for the last three days.”

“Well, what then?” pursued Nini.

“Why, I’m in funds to-day, especially as how it’s Monday, and I’m going on the spree ... suppose we make the bust together, eh?”

Superciliously, Nini looked her interlocutor up and down.

“Nothing doing to-day,” she told him, “I’ve got my man.”

“Where are you going?”

“Why, yes,” the other agreed, “but as it happens, I’m going there, too.”

“Then, march on in front,” ordered the girl, “and I’ll stick behind; I don’t care to look as if I were making up to chaps about these parts.”

The man was all docility and obeyed instantly; walking a few steps ahead of the young harlot, but every now and then casting a furtive glance over his shoulder to make sure the girl was following on the same road as himself, he stumped off in the direction of the Blue Chestnut, seeming very well pleased with the beginning he had so far made. With a quick movement he swept the hair lower on his forehead and pulled out his handkerchief he had wrapped round his jaws under pretence of protecting his aching teeth against the cold.

“So much to the good,” he thought to himself; “she’s never recognized me—and I have good hopes it’ll be the same with the others.”

Who was this mysterious person who had made bold to squeeze Mlle. Nini’s waist as she was peaceably leaving the city by the Porte de Poissonnière? It was no other in actual fact than Jérôme Fandor!

For some days past the young journalist had been leading an absolutely appalling existence. Events had followed quick on each other’s heels, each more disconcerting, more overwhelming than the other. Chance and mischance had thrown him into adventures that grew more and more baffling, and seemed to him to leave no loophole for escape.

First his meeting with Elisabeth Dollon, then his connection with old Moche—a tricky scamp he felt he could not trust—then after being unjustly accused by Elisabeth, he had been odiously victimized through Fantômas’ vile machinations, bringing him under the strongest suspicion of having caused the death of three policemen. And all this, just a few hours after Parliament had acclaimed him one of the authors of the violent attack on the Minister of Justice.

Yet Fandor was full of courage; he must not give in, it was all important he should remain at liberty, for the journalist was now firmly convinced that he was embarked on the right track, and that it would not be long now before he would unmask Fantômas’ accomplices, perhaps Fantômas himself into the bargain. Luck, good luck, had in fact brought him in touch with a crew of shady individuals, the instruments and intermediaries of old Moche’s nefarious schemes. Now these folks made no concealment amongst themselves of the fact that they were in the habit of receiving orders anonymous but peremptory about the source of which, however, they did not trouble their heads; they served and were glad to serve as Fantômas’ lieutenants, they were in the pay of that notorious brigand. To trace back events to their source would be the surest way to discover the head that set all these arms in motion.

“I’m going to the Blue Chestnut,” Nini Guinon had told him—and Fandor had boldly replied that at that very moment he, too, was on his way to spend the afternoon at that notorious resort of the Paris criminal world. In fact the discovery that Paulet’s mistress was bound for the Blue Chestnut—a suburban semi-rural resort just outside the fortifications, and a favourite rendezvous with crooks and demireps of all descriptions—to meet “her man” had given the journalist a lively glow of satisfaction. Days ago he had come to the resolution of shadowing the young street-walker, getting to know her comings and goings, and so through her getting into close touch with the band of her nefarious associates.

Moreover, he was feeling no small satisfaction at the success of his make-up, which had proved so admirable a disguise. Nini Guinon, of course, knew him quite well, she had seen him only a few days before, he was one of the gang and the reputed murderer of the police officers, if not perhaps of the Minister himself. His face and personality could not have faded from the girl’s memory. Yet for five minutes he had been talking with her, and she had not recognized him!

“All goes well,” the journalist congratulated himself, as he made his way into the garden of the Blue Chestnut. Yes, he was certainly in luck. The place that Monday afternoon was crowded with customers, a large number seated about the scattered tables, each of which with its load of wine-bottles formed the nucleus of a group of laughing, chattering men and girls.

Fandor took his seat unobtrusively at the foot of a table, endeavoring to pass unnoticed while he consumed a modest half-pint and listened to his neighbour’s conversation. He was just asking himself how he could best join in the talk himself when circumstances afforded him the opportunity.

A wave of excitement swept the garden from end to end. A gay companion, a musician with an old guitar under his arm, had just appeared, a man Fandor knew of old. It was one Bougille, the vagabond Bougille, the man with the shaggy beard and merry-andrew face, Bougille the honest tramp, the incorrigible wanderer. The old fellow was well known and well loved at the Blue Chestnut, where on fête days he would often come to reap the reward in small change of his talents as a music-maker.

“A dance, a dance! the Sonneuse!” the company demanded with one voice, while all eyes turned in the direction of “The Beadle” and all hands pointed to “Big Ernestine.”

“So, it’s us you want to get at ... must have us dance it you again, eh?... well, well, off we go.”

Cigarette stuck between his lips, cap cocked over one ear, the apache gripped Ernestine by the nape of the neck, whirled the girl round, and round again, to bring her facing him, then ordered her roughly:

“Go ahead, wench; give it ’em, I say!”

At this Bougille struck up the tune, and the couple began their evolutions.

At first it was a slow waltz, with no precise rhythm, but dubious attitudes, languishing poses, embraces suggestive of passionate abandonment. Then, with a sudden brutality, the man hurled his partner away from him, caught her by the shoulders, threw her to the ground, then passing his arm under her supple waist, raised her to her feet, then lifted her up against his breast; then, three times in succession, while “Big Ernestine” lay passive, “The Beadle,” striking an attitude half Hercules, half acrobat, whirled the woman about in his arms and beat her head on the earth.

A thunder of applause broke out on every side. For sure there was not another pair to match “The Beadle” and “Big Ernestine” at dancing the Sonneuse. And what a dance it was, where the cavalier had to mimic the act of breaking his partner’s skull against the ground as apaches beat to death peaceable citizens against the curb of the sidewalk.

It was fine, it was magnificent, the crowd was thrilled, electrified, and a young blackguard, “Beauty Boy” by nickname, caught by the wave of hot enthusiasm that stirred the passions of them all, seized the opportunity to give a bite at the nape of Nini’s neck, who cuffed him soundly for his pains.

Meantime the journalist took good care not to show himself to the dubious individual in whose service he had been engaged for twenty-four hours. He had far from pleasant recollections of his stay at Moche’s, and it might well be the latter was equally out of conceit with him; quite possibly the old advocate believed it was he had killed the police officers, very possibly again, by way of ingratiating himself with the force, he might not hesitate to deliver up the supposed murderer into their clutches, should opportunity offer.

At the same time the young man slipped surreptitiously behind Moche, while the latter was in talk with the “Beauty Boy.” He overheard all they said:

“Lend me a yellow boy,” the young apache was asking his companion; “it’s not just for larks, I tell you, it’s for biz.”

“Why, what are you up to, eh?” the other asked in his turn.

“Beauty Boy” explained: “To-morrow’s Monday, ain’t it? Well, Tuesday’s the day the swell Trans-Atlantic reaches Hâvre with all the rich American travellers aboard; so I’m going to make my little collection, as usual—you know my game, eh, M. Moche?”

“Gad! no, not over well,” declared the old scamp, doubtless with the idea of extracting a more definite account of the other’s plans.

Père Moche nodded approvingly.

“Not bad,” he laughed, “not bad! You’re a cute chap, my boy, for all your silly looks and dandified airs.”

“Only,” pursued the apache, “one must anyway have one’s return ticket, and as it happens, I’m cleaned out just now.”

“Whew!” muttered the old miser.

But “Beauty Boy” returned to his charge:

“Come now, don’t be a mean cuss, hand me over four bulls, won’t you?”

At last Père Moche so far yielded to the other’s eager importunities and forked out. But, like a good business man, he struck a bargain with the borrower that the latter, on his return, that is to say on the next day but one, should pay him back thirty francs.

The cash once in his pocket, the apache vanished.

Fandor had overheard it all, besides catching other scraps of conversation from one and another of the band, from which he gathered only one thing clearly, and that was that at bottom everyone of them was upset about the arrival of the redoubtable and mysterious Tom Bob, whose coming was announced with such a flourish of trumpets and noisy advertisement—a proceeding by-the-by he, Fandor, deemed highly injudicious.

The journalist noted the “Beauty Boy’s” departure, and he could not help thinking that it would be greatly to his advantage, too, if only he could get to Hâvre. But alas! he had not a sou and could not borrow from Père Moche, as the apache had done, inasmuch as he could not very well urge the same reasons to justify the loan. Still the idea tormented him that he must go to Hâvre. It was all important for him to get to know Tom Bob at the earliest possible moment, so to say before everybody else. He was still cudgelling his brains to discover some way of realizing his project when suddenly he shuddered to hear a hoarse, angry voice growling in his ear:

“Scoundrel, brigand, murderer, aren’t you ashamed to show your face? why don’t I have you run in on the spot? will you rid me of the sight of you, now, this instant, you hell-hound of calamity!”

The old scoundrel went on with a hypocritical assumption of righteous indignation.

“When I think how I befriended you, how I saved you in your extremity, and then you came and murdered people in my house and committed atrocious crimes, I don’t know, I really do not know, you villain, what hinders me ...”

Fandor looked his man calmly in the face. For one moment he had entertained the notion of seizing his accuser by the throat and choking him, for instinctively his gorge rose at the outrageous charge brought against him. But he quickly realized that, to begin with, old Moche’s indignation was only pretence, and then, that the least display of violence on his part could only have consequences disastrous to his plans. The journalist had gathered the firm conviction in the course of the two hours he had spent among the dubious frequenters of the Blue Chestnut that Père Moche was possessed of a strange, but indubitable authority over these sinister personages. There was no question that, for some purpose or another, he was in the habit of aiding and abetting them, lending them money at need, or that he possessed an astuteness that made him master of the rest of his associates—and was perhaps the mysterious intermediary who transmitted to them the orders of the elusive autocrat Fantômas.

Postponing all thought of reprisals for the present, Fandor obeyed the old ruffian’s orders and sneaked away; a few moments more and he quitted the Blue Chestnut without his departure being remarked by anyone whatsoever, not even by the landlord, who troubled himself very little about his customer going away, as he invariably observed the excellent custom of making everybody pay in advance.

His feet in the thick mud, his back against the clammy stonework, Fandor stood motionless half way through the tunnel waiting till the train reached him.

The journalist, on leaving the Blue Chestnut, left alone with his thoughts, and now firmly convinced he had at last come upon the gang among whom he must look to find not only the murderer of the bank collector, but likewise the authors of the attack on the Minister of Justice, and to boot, in all likelihood, the assassin of Désiré Ferrand, told himself it was above all things incumbent on him from this time on to dare any and every risk to secure a collaborator in his task. His mind was made up; it was Tom Bob must be his ally and fellow-worker.

Who and what was this Tom Bob? he did not rightly know. Two or three times at most he had heard his friend Juve speak of the man. Juve, this much was certain, admired the American—albeit they were not personally known to one another—as a clever, capable officer, full of modern ideas. Fandor pictured Tom Bob as being in fact a sort of Juve of the New World—with this difference, that the one seemed as fond of self-advertisement and popular applause as the other was an admirer of modesty and reticence.

Summing up the situation Fandor told himself:

“It is impossible, at the present moment, to show myself at the headquarters of the Criminal Department; in their stupid way they would simply arrest me without listening to my story, or even arrest me after they had heard it, if only by way of throwing a sop to public opinion. Juve himself is in gaol; the unfortunate man can do nothing to help me. Rather is it for me to save him, and to have the power I must be free. It may be Tom Bob will not be sorry to have me as a discreet and anonymous fellow-worker. Let us go find Tom Bob!”

He had explored the neighbourhood of the station and made out that by way of the Rue de Rome and utilizing a scaffolding erected by the workmen engaged in enlarging the tunnel, he could easily in the evening dusk climb down the scaffold poles on to the line. But on second thought Fandor had conceived a much simpler plan. At nine twenty for four sous he purchased a ticket for Batignolles and made his way on to the platform, then seizing his opportunity when nobody was looking, he stepped on to the permanent way and so, keeping along the confining walls, reached the entrance of the tunnel and waited there for the passing of the Hâvre train.

He had set his watch by the station clock, and the train being due to start at forty-three minutes past the hour, he was at his post in the tunnel at half a minute before that time. He arched his back against the wall, and in spite of the blinding smoke, watched the line of vehicles as they moved slowly past him.

“Engine, luggage van, another van, several third class coaches, a corridor carriage, a first, a second ... now’s my time!”

The young man sprang on the next coach that came opposite him, it was a risky job, a false step and he would be thrown on to the rails, under the wheels, but the journalist had audacity and fearlessness on his side, and dexterity into the bargain, and he landed safely. In a few seconds, by help of the hand-holds running along the sides and the mouldings of the woodwork, which luckily projected outwards, he succeeded in first hoisting himself between two carriages and then climbing on to the roof of one of them. He stretched himself flat on his face and threw his arms round the projecting top of a lamp, then with legs wide to help maintain his equilibrium, he lay perfectly still.

“Pooh!” the young fellow said to himself, “it’s merely a bad night to get through! I shall be a bit cold perhaps, and a bit dirty, but the great point is, I shall get there. Hâvre is not so far away as they make out; I think we must already be getting near the bridge of Asnières, for the train, I see, is beginning to slow down, as they always do.”

But next moment he let fly a big oath. The train, contrary to all precedent, was taking a big curve, the rails were steeply inclined inwards and the carriages tilted over in the same direction, so that Fandor, who was not expecting it, very nearly slipped off his perch. He would infallibly have tumbled off if he had not made a wild clutch at the top of his lamp. The brakes were applied sharply and a jar ran from carriage to carriage; then the train stopped dead.

Fandor opened his eyes and looked about him. He was in the middle of a vast shed; on either side he saw the roofs of carriages stretching away into infinity. For a moment he was at a loss what to think, then the truth burst upon him.

“Damnation!” he cried, “was it worth my while to lay my plans so carefully, and make such a monstrous mistake after all!”

Instead of taking the train for Hâvre, he had got on to a line of empty coaches which a yard-engine was simply hauling out to its siding for the night.

Even as he realized the fact, in the distance, full steam ahead and brilliantly lighted up, he saw a main line train go by—the Hâvre train without a doubt!