“As you please, gentlemen.”
Mame 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 Mame 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!”
Mame 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.”