“Yes, if ‘Beauty Boy’ was pinched working the Yankees on the Trans-Atlantic boat-train, and he so clever fingered, it was because he didn’t have the usual stuff with him. If he hadn’t been forced to pick up just anything he could to fill his belly, he would never have ...” Faces grew ugly, fists clenched, every eye glittered with murderous light. In his hiding-place Fandor congratulated himself on his presence at this unexpected scene. Moche seemed to be racking his brains to find a way to exculpate himself. Still the old ruffian managed to conceal his distress, and it was without any great difficulty he succeeded in breaking in on the “Beadle’s” eloquence and making himself heard instead. “Come, come, you’re never going to eat me, comrades? I’ve got a tough hide, you know, and you’d only get a belly-ache. Now what makes you go howling at me that gate when I’m your best chum? What have you against me, now?” “The infernal cheek of the chap!” snorted out “Big Ernestine,” looking as red as a poppy. “But come now, haven’t I done everything I ought? Sure enough, Fantômas, who set us to work, don’t pay us as we hoped he would. There’s been some good business done, I admit, and without you, without us, it would never have come off. Coin’s been handled by the chief, and it’s all stuck to his fingers, we’ve not had a chance yet to touch it. But I’m not Fantômas, I’m only his lieutenant, and to pass on your complaint to him, I should have to know where he is....” “You don’t know where Fantômas is? D’ye think we’re going to swallow that humbug?” vociferated “Big Ernestine.” “No, I do not know, my pretty dear, and if I did, I should have told you long ago, if only to satisfy your curiosity.” “It’s not a plant, that?” asked the “Gasman,” half inclined to come to the old fellow’s help. “I swear it isn’t! You think I know more than you do, and that my lot’s more enviable. Nobody so blind as those who won’t see. I tell you my look-out is just as pitiable as yours. He owes you your pay, well, he owes me mine, too. All I’ve been able to do for you is to hinder your getting disheartened and thinking Fantômas doesn’t care for you any more. Well, _I_’m convinced Fantômas still looks after us and thinks a deal of us. If we don’t see him, if we have no direct news from him, it’s because he has powerful reasons for acting as he does.... What, isn’t a chap like him cleverer than all the lot of us?” “Hear, hear! Fantômas for ever!” “Well and good! Fantômas for ever!... So then, I still deserve your confidence, eh? I was to come here to explain things. Haven’t I come? did I shirk away?” “That’s true enough; but where is the Chief?”