“Death by hammer! Death by hammer!”

In the stinking lair of the subterraneans, a horrible scene ensued.

Mother Toulouche went groping in a dark corner.

She searched for, and found, a heavy blacksmith’s hammer.

She lifted it with trembling hands and, planting herself in front of the victim, already more dead than alive, she said in a menacing voice:

“You did harm to the Numbers! You wronged them!

Here goes for that then!”

The hammer flashed a quarter of a circle in the air and descended in a smashing blow on the wretched victim’s face, driving out his eyeball! The awful punishment had begun! According to age, one after another, the hooligans passed on the hammer, and, in a blind passion of hate, blow upon bone-shattering blow rained down on the agonised body of Jules! Blood ran in rivers, mixing with sewage and sweat... At last, the terrible retribution was over and done!

The passion of hate, the lust for revenge had burnt themselves out. Jules had paid for the crime they had attributed to him.

The band were now the victims of a paralysing fatigue. Emilet flung the bloodstained hammer into a far corner of their crypt.

“Well done!” said he. “He has paid the price!” Emilet’s eye fell on Nibet. He was leaning against the wall, and, with folded arms, was watching the scene in which he had taken no part. Walking up to the warder, Emilet demanded:

“Ho! Ho! You backed out of it, did you, my boy?...

You didn’t have a bash at his bones, did you? Shy, are we?

Eh?” Nibet grinned sardonically.

“Don’t talk rubbish, Emilet!... If I have stood aside, I had my reasons for so doing... We haven’t done with Jules yet!... not by a long chalk! Now that he’s been killed, he’s got to be got rid of – isn’t that true?... Look at yourselves, my lambs! You are covered with the red splatter– it’ll take you all of an hour to make yourselves presentable!... Now, took at me! I’m neat and clean... and I have a plan... a famous plan to rid us of that carcass there! Now, just you stir your stumps, Emilet!... I am going off to make preparations!... I’ll give you ten minutes to make yourself fit to be seen... it’s we two who are to be the devil’s undertakers; and I swear to you, we’ll give no end of trouble to those trouble-snufflers at Police Headquarters!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE : FROM VAUGIRARD TO MONTMARTRE

On the boulevard du Palais, Jérôme Fandor looked at his watch: it was half an hour after noon.

“The hour for copy! Courage! I will go to La Capitale.”

Scarcely had he put foot in the large hall when the editorial secretary called: