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: