“I shall be rich?” she questioned, “I shall have the nibs?” Moche went on: “Rich, and better than rich, my girl; but for that don’t go and play the fool; just keep yourself in hand for another nine months. Your brat must come into the world strong and healthy; after that there’ll be something new to think about, you can trust Père Moche for that!” While the young Englishman’s queer helpmeet and the enigmatical personage who had passed himself off as her uncle for his own ends were thus debating future projects, Jérôme Fandor, under pretence of paying every attention to the customers’ wants, was never far from the table, picking up scraps of talk as he hovered near. And in spite of himself, Fandor could not keep his eyes off M. Moche’s face. As he stood over him, he could, for the first time, observe otherwise than through the glass of his spectacles the mysterious old fellow’s eyes. And they disconcerted the journalist extremely, their clear, cold, steely glance perplexed him beyond measure. Most certainly Fandor could trace no likeness there, he had no recollection of having seen that expression before; yet it seemed to him that a person like the old business agent of the Rue Saint-Fargeau, whose caricature of a face betrayed the man’s commonness of type, _could_ not have such a look of the eyes as he actually had. And, as a fact, who and what was this man who—Fandor saw it all—had conceived so Machiavellian a scheme as that of marrying the street wench Nini Guinon to Ascott, the wealthy Englishman of the Rue Fortuny, and who, having conceived, had carried it through! Père Moche ... Fantômas? ...? ...? Fandor, as the result of a series of logical deductions, possibly also through giving a certain weight to the presentiments that rarely deceived him, had come to ask himself if the man of the Rue Saint-Fargeau, really too mysterious a personage, was not one of the incarnations of Fantômas himself. Since he had been watching his man, and particularly since he had seen his eyes and their expression, Fandor clung more and more closely to this opinion. Ah! if only he were right! if he had discovered the villain? That would be an extraordinarily fine trump card for him in the grim game he was playing with Fantômas as adversary! And now, many hitherto unexplained details recurred to his memory. Notably he recalled the strange apparition of the man in the black mask on that terrible night he had spent in M. Moche’s garret. He did not forget how on that occasion Fantômas, under pretence of safeguarding him from harm, had involved him in the direst peril, evidently in the hope that the police would discover him hidden in the Chinese lantern. “Why,” he thought presently, “but why did not Fantômas kill me when he had this chance? that is what I cannot understand.”