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"He seems to be an old friend. You never told me about him." "He doesn't like being told about. He has a troublesome wife." I winced inwardly, but all I said was, "I see." "He's a stock-broker; and he got 'squeezed, so he says, and it's made him cross and careful with his money, too. That's trying, in a stock-broker, you must admit." She laughed.
That afternoon, accompanied by his secretary, he sold the annuities to a stock-broker and realized forty-six thousand francs. Whatever Madame Imbert might have said about it, Arsene Lupin did not feel at home in the Imbert house. On the contrary, his position there was a peculiar one. He learned that the servants did not even know his name. They called him "monsieur."
If she'd been Maizie Bounderby, with two lines in each hand and one in her teeth, she couldn't have done more to hook that old stock-broker. She cooked little special dishes for his dyspepsy to play with, and set with him on the piazza evenings, and laughed at his jokes, and the land knows what.
Then we'll get the treasure, and we'll divide it among us fair and even. "This was a dangerous moment for me. The men had recovered from their fright. They saw I was no spirit, and they believed that I had been trying to deceive and defraud them. A good many of them drew their knives and came toward me, the stock-broker urging them on.
While Mr Handycock was rubbing his boots on the mat, I went upstairs, rather mortified, I must own, as my father had told me that Mr Handycock was his stock-broker, and would do all he could to make me comfortable. When I returned to the parlour, Mrs Handycock whispered to me, "Never mind, my dear, it's only because there's something wrong on 'Change. Mr Handycock is a bear just now."
As soon as my helmet was unscrewed and I was out of my diving-suit I went below with the captain; and although the stock-broker followed us close and nearly pushed himself into the cabin, we shut the door on him and kept him out. Then I told the captain everything, and I showed him the three gold coins, which I had kept all the time tightly clinched in my right hand.
The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property, and lost it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes.
And the last thing I heard as I went under the water was the stock-broker howling and yelling and rampaging around the deck. "As I told you before, miss, I had never been down in a diving-suit; but I paid the greatest attention to everything I knew, and I got down to the bottom all right, having a hard time to keep from being scratched to pieces by the barnacles on the sterns of the big ships.
At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room. She paused with her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his expression as he approached her. "Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!" he exclaimed. "But I forgive you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker.
"At this the stock-broker, frightened nearly out of his wits, and with his hands still tied and the rope around his neck, made a dive for the companionway, and disappeared below. I stood up very bold; I threw out my chest, and gazed around in triumph. The air of the sixteenth century had saved me!
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