"What do you mean?"
"I'm dead!"
Mazeroux seemed staggered. The argument struck him fully. He at once perceived it, with all its common sense and all its absurdity. And suddenly he burst into a roar of laughter which bent him in two and convulsed his doleful features in the oddest fashion:
"Oh, Chief, just the same as always!… Lord, how funny!… Will I come along? I should think I would! As often as you like! You're dead and buried and put out of sight!… Oh, what a joke, what a joke!"
Hippolyte Fauville, civil engineer, lived on the Boulevard Suchet, near the fortifications, in a fair-sized private house having on its left a small garden in which he had built a large room that served as his study. The garden was thus reduced to a few trees and to a strip of grass along the railings, which were covered with ivy and contained a gate that opened on the Boulevard Suchet.
Don Luis Perenna went with Mazeroux to the commissary's office at Passy, where Mazeroux, on Perenna's instructions, gave his name and asked to have M. Fauville's house watched during the night by two policemen who were to arrest any suspicious person trying to obtain admission. The commissary agreed to the request.
Don Luis and Mazeroux next dined in the neighbourhood. At nine o'clock they reached the front door of the house.
"Alexandre," said Perenna.
"Yes, Chief?"
"You're not afraid?"
