Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  To dispel the horror of the idea, they turned the pages of the books, works of fiction and others, which their parents had read. On certain pages, at the end of a chapter or volume, were lines constituting notes which Patrice’s father and Coralie’s mother used to write each other.

  “Darling Patrice,

  “I ran in this morning to recreate our life of yesterday and to dream of our life this afternoon. As you will arrive before me, you will read these lines. You will read that I love you. . . .”

  And, in another book:

  “My own Coralie,

  “You have this minute gone; I shall not see you until to-morrow and I do not want to leave this haven where our love has tasted such delights without once more telling you . . .”

  They looked through most of the books in this way, finding, however, instead of the clues for which they hoped, nothing but expressions of love and affection. And they spent more than two hours waiting and dreading what might happen.

  “There will be nothing,” said Patrice. “And perhaps that is the most awful part of it, for, if nothing occurs, it will mean that we are doomed not to leave this room. And, in that case . . .”

  Patrice did not finish the sentence. Coralie understood. And together they received a vision of the death by starvation that seemed to threaten them. But Patrice exclaimed:

  “No, no, we have not that to fear. No. For people of our age to die of hunger takes several days, three or four days or more. And we shall be rescued before then.”

  “How?” asked Coralie.

  “How? Why, by our soldiers, by Ya-Bon, by M. Masseron! They will be uneasy if we do not come home to-night.”

  “You yourself said, Patrice, that they cannot know where we are.”

  “They’ll find out. It’s quite simple. There is only the lane between the two gardens. Besides, everything we do is set down in my diary, which is in the desk in my room. Ya-Bon knows of its existence. He is bound to speak of it to M. Masseron. And then . . . and then there is Siméon. What will have become of him? Surely they will notice his movements? And won’t he give a warning of some kind?”

  But words were powerless to comfort them. If they were not to die of hunger, then the enemy must have contrived another form of torture. Their inability to do anything kept them on the rack. Patrice began his investigations again. A curious accident turned them in a new direction. On opening one of the books through which they had not yet looked, a book published in 1895, Patrice saw two pages turned down together. He separated them and read a letter addressed to him by his father:

  “Patrice, my dear Son,

  “If ever chance places this note before your eyes, it will prove that I have met with a violent death which has prevented my destroying it. In that case, Patrice, look for the truth concerning my death on the wall of the studio, between the two windows. I shall perhaps have time to write it down.”

  The two victims had therefore at that time foreseen the tragic fate in store for them; and Patrice’s father and Coralie’s mother knew the danger which they ran in coming to the lodge. It remained to be seen whether Patrice’s father had been able to carry out his intention.

  Between the two windows, as all around the room, was a wainscoting of varnished wood, topped at a height of six feet by a cornice. Above the cornice was the plain plastered wall. Patrice and Coralie had already observed, without paying particular attention to it, that the wainscoting seemed to have been renewed in this part, because the varnish of the boards did not have the same uniform color. Using one of the iron dogs as a chisel, Patrice broke down the cornice and lifted the first board. It broke easily. Under this plank, on the plaster of the wall, were lines of writing.

  “It’s the same method,” he said, “as that which old Siméon has since employed. First write on the walls, then cover it up with wood or plaster.”

  He broke off the top of the other boards and in this way brought several complete lines into view, hurried lines, written in pencil and slightly worn by time. Patrice deciphered them with the greatest emotion. His father had written them at a moment when death was stalking at hand. A few hours later he had ceased to live. They were the evidence of his death-agony and perhaps too an imprecation against the enemy who was killing him and the woman he loved.

  Patrice read, in an undertone:

  “I am writing this in order that the scoundrel’s plot may not be achieved to the end and in order to ensure his punishment. Coralie and I are no doubt going to perish, but at least we shall not die without revealing the cause of our death.

  “A few days ago, he said to Coralie, ‘You spurn my love, you load me with your hatred. So be it. But I shall kill you both, your lover and you, in such a manner that I can never be accused of the death, which will look like suicide. Everything is ready. Beware, Coralie.’

  “Everything was, in fact, ready. He did not know me, but he must have known that Coralie used to meet somebody here daily; and it was in this lodge that he prepared our tomb.

  “What manner of death ours will be we do not know. Lack of food, no doubt. It is four hours since we were imprisoned. The door closed upon us, a heavy door which he must have placed there last night. All the other openings, doors and windows alike, are stopped up with blocks of stone laid and cemented since our last meeting. Escape is impossible. What is to become of us?”

  The uncovered portion stopped here. Patrice said:

  “You see, Coralie, they went through the same horrors as ourselves. They too dreaded starvation. They too passed through long hours of waiting, when inaction is so painful; and it was more or less to distract their thoughts that they wrote those lines.”

  He went on, after examining the spot:

  “They counted, most likely, on what happened, that the man who was killing them would not read this document. Look, one long curtain was hung over these two windows and the wall between them, one curtain, as is proved by the single rod covering the whole distance. After our parents’ death no one thought of drawing it, and the truth remained concealed until the day when Siméon discovered it and, by way of precaution, hid it again under a wooden panel and hung up two curtains in the place of one. In this way everything seemed normal.”

  Patrice set to work again. A few more lines made their appearance:

  “Oh, if I were the only one to suffer, the only one to die! But the horror of it all is that I am dragging my dear Coralie with me. She fainted and is lying down now, prostrate by the fears which she tries so hard to overcome. My poor darling! I seem already to see the pallor of death on her sweet face. Forgive me, dearest, forgive me!”

  Patrice and Coralie exchanged glances. Here were the same sentiments which they themselves felt, the same scruples, the same delicacy, the same effacement of self in the presence of the other’s grief.

  “He loved your mother,” Patrice murmured, “as I love you. I also am not afraid of death. I have faced it too often, with a smile! But you, Coralie, you, for whose sake I would undergo any sort of torture . . . !”

  He began to walk up and down, once more yielding to his anger:

  “I shall save you, Coralie, I swear it. And what a delight it will then be to take our revenge! He shall have the same fate which he was devising for us. Do you understand, Coralie? He shall die here, here in this room. Oh, how my hatred will spur me to bring that about!”

  He tore down more pieces of boarding, in the hope of learning something that might be useful to him, since the struggle was being renewed under exactly similar conditions. But the sentences that followed, like those which Patrice had just uttered, were oaths of vengeance:

  “Coralie, he shall be punished, if not by us, then by the hand of God. No, his infernal scheme will not succeed. No, it will never be believed that we had recourse to suicide to relieve ourselves of an existence that was built up of happiness and joy. No, his crime will be known. Hour by hour I shall here set down the undeniable proofs. . . .”

  “Words, words!” cried Patrice, in a tone of
exasperation. “Words of vengeance and sorrow, but never a fact to guide us. Father, will you tell us nothing to save your Coralie’s daughter? If your Coralie succumbed, let mine escape the disaster, thanks to your aid, father! Help me! Counsel me!”

  But the father answered the son with nothing but more words of challenge and despair:

  “Who can rescue us? We are walled up in this tomb, buried alive and condemned to torture without being able to defend ourselves. My revolver lies there, upon the table. What is the use of it? The enemy does not attack us. He has time on his side, unrelenting time which kills of its own strength, by the mere fact that it is time. Who can rescue us? Who will save my darling Coralie?”

  The position was terrible, and they felt all its tragic horror. It seemed to them as though they were already dead, once they were enduring the same trial endured by others and that they were still enduring it under the same conditions. There was nothing to enable them to escape any of the phases through which the other two, his father and her mother, had passed. The similarity between their own and their parents’ fate was so striking that they seemed to be suffering two deaths, and the second agony was now commencing.

  Coralie gave way and began to cry. Moved by her tears, Patrice attacked the wainscoting with new fury, but its boards, strengthened by cross-laths, resisted his efforts:

  At last he read:

  “What is happening? We had an impression that some one was walking outside, in the garden. Yes, when we put our ears to the stone wall built in the embrasure of the window, we thought we heard footsteps. Is it possible? Oh, if it only were! It would mean the struggle, at last. Anything rather than the maddening silence and endless uncertainty!

  “That’s it! . . . That’s it! . . . The sound is becoming more distinct. . . . It is a different sound, like that which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax. Some one is digging the ground, not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen. . . .”

  Patrice redoubled his efforts. Coralie came and helped him. This time he felt that a corner of the veil was being lifted. The writing went on:

  “Another hour, with alternate spells of sound and silence: the same sound of digging and the same silence which suggests work that is being continued.

  “And then some one entered the hall, one person; he, evidently. We recognized his step. . . . He walks without attempting to deaden it. . . . Then he went to the kitchen, where he worked the same way as before, with a pick-ax, but on the stones this time. We also heard the noise of a pane of glass breaking.

  “And now he has gone outside again and there is a new sort of sound, against the house, a sound that seems to travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in order to carry out his plan. . . .”

  Patrice stopped reading and looked at Coralie. Both of them were listening.

  “Hark!” he said, in a low voice.

  “Yes, yes,” she answered, “I hear. . . . Steps outside the house . . . in the garden. . . .”

  They went to one of the windows, where they had left the casement open behind the wall of building-stones, and listened. There was really some one walking; and the knowledge that the enemy was approaching gave them the same sense of relief that their parents had experienced.

  Some one walked thrice round the house. But they did not, like their parents, recognize the sound of the footsteps. They were those of a stranger, or else steps that had changed their tread. Then, for a few minutes, they heard nothing more. And suddenly another sound arose; and, though in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they were nevertheless stupefied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow voice, laying stress upon each syllable, uttered the sentence which his father had written twenty years before:

  “It’s the sound which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax.”

  Yes, It must be that. Some one was digging the ground, not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen.

  And so the abominable miracle of the revived tragedy was continuing. Here again the former act was repeated, a simple enough act in itself, but one which became sinister because it was one of those which had already been performed and because it was announcing and preparing the death once before announced and prepared.

  An hour passed. The work went on, paused and went on again. It was like the sound of a spade at work in a courtyard, when the grave-digger is in no hurry and takes a rest and then resumes his work.

  Patrice and Coralie stood listening side by side, their eyes in each other’s eyes, their hands in each other’s hands.

  “He’s stopping,” whispered Patrice.

  “Yes,” said Coralie; “only I think . . .”

  “Yes, Coralie, there’s some one in the hall. . . . Oh, we need not trouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: ‘He goes to the kitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.’ . . . And then . . . and then . . . oh, Coralie, the same sound of broken glass!”

  It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and the past formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when these took place.

  The enemy went outside again; and, forthwith, the sound seemed “to travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in order to carry out his plans.”

  And then . . . and then what would happen next? They no longer thought of consulting the inscription on the wall, or perhaps they did not dare. Their attention was concentrated on the invisible and sometimes imperceptible deeds that were being accomplished against them outside, an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a mysterious twenty-year-old plan whereof each slightest detail was settled as by clockwork!

  The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling at the bottom of the door, a rustling of soft things apparently being heaped or pushed against the wood. Next came other vague noises in the two adjoining rooms, against the walled doors, and similar noises outside, between the stones of the windows and the open shutters. And then they heard some one on the roof.

  They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last act was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof to them was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceiling and admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the same agonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Would the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last?

  This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shook the zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side of the house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, or rather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a very little way, by a hand which inserted a stick to keep it open.

  And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down the side of the house.

  They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truth that Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting, removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. And what they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. The enemy’s return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, the noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supporting it: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within the same limit of time. Patrice’s father and Coralie’s mother had undergone the same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same paths and making the same movements in seeking the same object.

  And the writing went on:

  “He is going up again, he is going up again. . . . There’s his footsteps on the roof. . . . He is near the skylight. . . . Will he look through? . . . Shall we see his hated face? . . .”

  “He is going up again, he is going up again,” gasped Coralie, nestling against Patrice.

  The enemy’s footsteps were pounding over the zinc.

  “Yes,” said Patrice, “he is going up as before, without departing from the procedure followed by the other. Only we do not kn
ow whose face will appear to us. Our parents knew their enemy.”

  She shuddered at her image of the man who had killed her mother; and she asked:

  “It was he, was it not?”

  “Yes, it was he. There is his name, written by my father.”

  Patrice had almost entirely uncovered the inscription. Bending low, he pointed with his finger:

  “Look. Read the name: Essarès. You can see it down there: it was one of the last words my father wrote.”

  And Coralie read:

  “The skylight rose higher, a hand lifted it and we saw . . . we saw, laughing as he looked down on us — oh, the scoundrel — Essarès! . . . Essarès! . . . And then he passed something through the opening, something that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of the room, over our heads: a ladder, a rope-ladder.

  “We did not understand. It was swinging in front of us. And then, in the end, I saw a sheet of paper rolled round the bottom rung and pinned to it. On the paper, in Essarès’ handwriting, are the words, ‘Send Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved. I give her ten minutes to accept. If not . . .’”

  “Ah,” said Patrice, rising from his stooping posture, “will this also be repeated? What about the ladder, the rope-ladder, which I found in old Siméon’s cupboard?”

  Coralie kept her eyes fixed on the skylight, for the footsteps were moving around it. Then they stopped. Patrice and Coralie had not a doubt that the moment had come and that they also were about to see their enemy. And Patrice said huskily, in a choking voice:

  “Who will it be? There are three men who could have played this sinister part as it was played before. Two are dead, Essarès and my father. And Siméon, the third, is mad. Is it he, in his madness, who has set the machine working again? But how are we to imagine that he could have done it with such precision? No, no, it is the other one, the one who directs him and who till now has remained in the background.”