Act as though we knew nothing."
"As you please, gentlemen."
Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door.
She was on the point of going out when the two managers rushed at her:
"Oh, no!
Oh, no!
We're not going to be 'done' a second time!
Once bitten, twice shy!"
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the old woman, in self-excuse, "you told me to act as though you knew nothing ... Well, if you knew nothing, I should go away with your envelope!"
"And then how would you slip it into my pocket?" argued Richard, whom Moncharmin fixed with his left eye, while keeping his right on Mme. Giry: a proceeding likely to strain his sight, but Moncharmin was prepared to go to any length to discover the truth.
"I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir.
You know that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the evening, and I often go with my daughter to the ballet-foyer, which I am entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about to begin ... in fact, I come and go as I please ...
The subscribers come and go too...
So do you, sir ...
There are lots of people about ...
I go behind you and slip the envelope into the tail-pocket of your dress-coat ...
There's no witchcraft about that!"
"No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. "No witchcraft!
Why, I've just caught you in a lie, you old witch!"
Mme. Giry bristled, with her three teeth sticking out of her mouth.
"And why, may I ask?"
"Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope which you put there.
I did not go to the ballet-foyer for a second."
"No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance ... on the evening when the under-secretary of state for fine arts ..."
At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mme. Giry:
"Yes, that's true, I remember now!
The under-secretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me.
I went down to the ballet-foyer for a moment. I was on the foyer steps ... The under-secretary and his chief clerk were in the foyer itself.
I suddenly turned around ... you had passed behind me, Mme. Giry ... You seemed to push against me ...
Oh, I can see you still, I can see you still!"
"Yes, that's it, sir, that's it.
I had just finished my little business.
That pocket of yours, sir, is very handy!"
And Mme. Giry once more suited the action to the word, She passed behind M. Richard and, so nimbly that Moncharmin himself was impressed by it, slipped the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of M. Richard's dress-coat.
"Of course!" exclaimed Richard, looking a little pale. "It's very clever of O. G.
The problem which he had to solve was this: how to do away with any dangerous intermediary between the man who gives the twenty-thousand francs and the man who receives it.
And by far the best thing he could hit upon was to come and take the money from my pocket without my noticing it, as I myself did not know that it was there.
It's wonderful!"
"Oh, wonderful, no doubt!" Moncharmin agreed. "Only, you forget, Richard, that I provided ten-thousand francs of the twenty and that nobody put anything in my pocket!"
Chapter XVII The Safety-Pin Again
Moncharmin's last phrase so dearly expressed the suspicion in which he now held his partner that it was bound to cause a stormy explanation, at the end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield to all Moncharmin's wishes, with the object of helping him to discover the miscreant who was victimizing them.
This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act, with the strange conduct observed by M. Remy and those curious lapses from the dignity that might be expected of the managers. It was arranged between Richard and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the exact movements which he had made on the night of the disappearance of the first twenty-thousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant lose sight of Richard's coat-tail pocket, into which Mme. Giry was to slip the twenty-thousand francs.
M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had stood when he bowed to the under-secretary for fine arts. M. Moncharmin took up his position a few steps behind him.
Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her twenty-thousand francs in the manager's coat-tail pocket and disappeared ...
Or rather she was conjured away.
In accordance with the instructions received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier took the good lady to the acting-manager's office and turned the key on her, thus making it impossible for her to communicate with her ghost.
Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the under-secretary for fine arts, before him.
Only, though these marks of politeness would have created no astonishment if the under-secretary of state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had no body in front of him.
M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and walked backward ... before nobody ...
And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing in addition to pushing away M. Remy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the manager of the Credit Central "not to touch M. le Directeur."