Apparently such was Jérôme Fandor’s case, for the journalist was walking fast and resolutely under the pitiless downpour along the quays bordering the Seine in the direction of Charenton. As he fought his way against the gale, the belated pedestrian was growling between his teeth: “Good lord! how my ears sting with the cold! and how pitch dark it is! Screw up my eyes as I will, I can’t see a thing. All the same, I’ve got to get to Alfort; but shall I ever find the _rendez-vous_ in this darkness, I wonder! All the same, how right I was to attend the marriage of that fool Ascott with the unspeakable Nini Guinon! What a wedding! and what a crew! And old Moche! what a clever fellow he must be to keep this gang of scoundrels on the job, always promising the fellows money and never giving them the pay for the crimes they do at his bidding! Oh! he’s one in a thousand, he is, the old money-lender of the Rue Saint-Fargeau! If I hadn’t important reasons for not wishing him to see me, I’d just go straight, fair and square, to the abandoned quarry where the confabulation’s to be between the ‘Gasman,’ ‘Bull’s-eye,’ Paulet and the rest of that gang of ruffians. But surely I hear footsteps coming up behind me. Best turn off the road now and make to the right to get time to find a hiding place. Mustn’t let yourself be seen, friend Fandor. True, all these chaps are your ‘pals’ and more or less well disposed; but ’ware Moche, if _he_ spotted you, especially after yesterday’s business, there’d be trouble, and that wouldn’t help on poor Juve’s affairs!” All the while, as he soliloquized thus, Fandor was moving on as fast as he could in the deep shadows that helped to conceal him, sometimes crawling, sometimes walking. Still, he was the first to reach the _rendez-vous_. It was a sinister spot. A sand quarry lay there abandoned, a hundred yards from the bank of the river. A strike of the quarrymen had been on foot for a week, and there appeared no present likelihood of work being resumed. Fantômas’ henchmen were aware of the fact and knew that nobody would come to disturb them. Besides, the river was close at hand, and if interruptors appeared, so much the worse for them! They would make a hole in the water, whether they liked a bath or no. But the look of things would not have been half so grim if, moored by the shore, a dredger had not shown its huge, dark bulk on the black water, lifting to the sky its slanting spar with an endless chain running along its length carrying the great buckets that dredge up the mud and detritus from the bed of the stream.