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?” “You’re mighty curious, ain’t you? still, as the gentleman wants to know, we’ve arranged to meet at the _Blue Chestnut_—that’s plain and simple enough, what?” “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.