Read In the Shadows of Paris (The Predator Of Batignolles) for Free Online Page B

inventor?’
    ‘He’s an acquaintance from my youth, who invited me in on the deal.’
    ‘Really…Well, I for one am interested,’ replied the art dealer.
    ‘We’re all interested,’ seconded a tall fellow with the handlebar moustache, close-cropped hair and florid complexion of a hussar.
    ‘My dear Coudray, this is a limited offer only. My “acquaintance” wants to start off slowly. As Racine wrote in Les Plaideurs , Act I, Scene 1: “He who will travel far…”’
    ‘All right, chi va piano va sano, we know the expression. Count me in anyway,’ Coudray went on. ‘I want fifty of these shares.’
    ‘And I’ll have seventy!’ said a man with a monocle.
    ‘I want fifty, too.’
    ‘Count me in! I’ll buy thirty.’
    ‘Don’t forget me! Forty!’
    Edmond Leglantier began to chuckle.
    ‘Calm down, gentlemen, calm down; we’re not on the trading floor now. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll have to make sure there are enough to go round…’
    He opened a jotter and began taking down the orders.
    ‘Two hundred and forty shares…Gentlemen, it’s your lucky day. I think I’m in a position to give you what you want. As long as the shares remain unlisted, I’m the intermediary, but we’ll need to act quickly. Meet me back here at seven o’clock this evening…Oh, and no promissory notes, cash only.’
    Edmond Leglantier left. His performance had been such a resounding success that he allowed himself to pat La Circassienne’s behind on his way back out onto the Boulevard.
    ‘Fiddle dee dee! The simpletons! It’s in the bag. Let’s see, two hundred and forty times five hundred is a hundred and twenty thousand…sixty thousand for me! And if I manage to wheedle at least another hundred thousand francs out of that old codger the Duc de Frioul tonight, I’ll be in clover!’
    A bare-headed young laundress smiled at him.
    He doffed his hat and called out, ‘Mademoiselle, you are utterly delightful!’
    He straightened up. The fair-haired man in the light-coloured suit was leaning against a lamppost. He kept looking at his watch as though waiting for a romantic tryst. Had he been spying on him ever since he arrived at the club?
    Ecce homo, 12 thought Edmond Leglantier.
    It occurred to him to approach the stranger, but he decided against it. He resisted a momentary urge to flee, and instead sat down at a table outside a café. He conjured up the face of the man who had hired him. Edmond Leglantier had sensed that beneath the easy-going exterior he was someone of formidable character and devilish intelligence: setting up a fraud of such complexity required total control of the situation. Was he having Leglantier tailed to make sure he didn’t try to swindle him? Edmond Leglantier shuddered. With a man like that he’d be well advised to play straight.
    His shadow paced up and down, looking as though he were carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
    ‘They’d boo him off stage,’ Edmond Leglantier said to himself. ‘Well, that’s enough of that!’
    Having ordered nothing, he walked back home, making sure he kept to the side streets. He forced himself not to turn round.
    ‘Remember Lot’s wife!’
    When he reached the entrance to his building, he peered carefully about him, but his shadow was nowhere in sight.

Chapter Three
    Tuesday 4 July
    F RÉDÉRIC Daglan was peeling potatoes. The weather was mild and he felt safe in the middle of the overgrown garden with its riot of viburnum, bindweed and elderberry bushes threatening to invade the vegetable patch. Mother Chickweed lived at the foot of the fortifications, which had been built in order to protect Paris but had failed dismally to do so. 13
    Two weeks earlier, when Frédéric Daglan had come to her, she had asked no questions. Anchise had sent him and that was recommendation enough; he could stay here and sleep in the shed, preparing the meals when she was out.
    Mother Chickweed was about forty years old and