servitude--New Caledonia, perhaps--"

"Exactly," he said, with the same irritating calmness; "and if you
succeed it means four hundred francs. Take it or leave it, as you
please, but be quick about it. I have no time to waste; it is past
nine o'clock already, and if you won't do the work, someone else
will."

For a few seconds longer I hesitated. Schemes, both varied and
wild, rushed through my active brain: refuse to take this risk, and
denounce the plot to the police; refuse it, and run to warn M. de
Marsan; refuse it, and-- I had little time for reflection. My uncouth
client was standing, as it were, with a pistol to my throat--with a
pistol and four hundred francs! The police might perhaps give me half
a louis for my pains, or they might possibly remember an unpleasant
little incident in connexion with the forgery of some Treasury bonds
which they have never succeeded in bringing home to me--one never
knows! M. de Marsan might throw me a franc, and think himself generous
at that!

All things considered, then, when M. Charles Saurez suddenly said,
"Well?" with marked impatience, I replied, "Agreed," and within five
minutes I had two hundred francs in my pocket, with the prospect of
two hundred more during the next four and twenty hours. I was to have
a free hand in conducting my own share of the business, and M. Charles
Saurez was to call for the document at my lodgings at Passy on the
following morning at nine o'clock.