He listened to what was happening outside with an attention whose real meaning Patrice was soon to understand. And, continuing to give ear, he resumed:
“The golden triangle? There are problems which we solve more or less by accident, without trying. We are guided to a right solution by external events, among which we choose unconsciously, feeling our way in the dark, examining this one, thrusting aside that one and suddenly beholding the object aimed at. . . . Well, this morning, after taking you to the tombs and burying you under the stone, Essarès Bey came back to me. Believing me to be locked into the studio, he had the pretty thought to turn on the gas-meter and then went off to the quay above Berthou’s Wharf. Here he hesitated; and his hesitation provided me with a precious clue. He was certainly then thinking of releasing Coralie. People passed and he went away. Knowing where he was going, I returned to your assistance, told your friends at Essarès’ house and asked them to look after you. Then I came back here. Indeed, the whole course of events obliged me to come back. It was unlikely that the bags of gold were inside the conduit; and, as the Belle Hélène had not taken them off, they must be beyond the garden, outside the conduit and therefore somewhere near here. I explored the barge we are now on, not so much with the object of looking for the bags as with the hope of finding some unexpected piece of information and also, I confess, the four millions in Grégoire’s possession. Well, when I start exploring a place where I fail to find what I want, I always remember that capital story of Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Purloined Letter. Do you recollect? The stolen diplomatic document which was known to be hidden in a certain room. The police investigate every nook and corner of the room and take up all the boards of the floor, without results. But Dupin arrives and almost immediately goes to a card-rack dangling from a little brass knob on the wall and containing a solitary soiled and crumpled letter. This is the document of which he was in search. Well, I instinctively adopted the same process. I looked where no one would dream of looking, in places which do not constitute a hiding-place because it would really be too easy to discover. This gave me the idea of turning the pages of four old directories standing in a row on that shelf. The four millions were there. And I knew all that I wanted to know.”
“About what?”
“About Essarès’ temperament, his habits, the extent of his attainments, his notion of a good hiding-place. We had plunged on the expectation of meeting with difficulties; we ought to have looked at the outside, to have looked at the surface of things. I was assisted by two further clues. I had noticed that the uprights of the ladder which Ya-Bon must have taken from here had a few grains of sand on them. Lastly, I remembered that Ya-Bon had drawn a triangle on the pavement with a piece of chalk and that this triangle had only two sides, the third side being formed by the foot of the wall. Why this detail? Why not a third line in chalk? . . . To make a long story short, I lit a cigarette, sat down upstairs, on the deck of the barge, and, looking round me, said to myself, ‘Lupin, my son, five minutes and no more.’ When I say, ‘Lupin, my son,’ I simply can’t resist myself. By the time I had smoked a quarter of the cigarette, I was there.”
“You had found out?”
“I had found out. I can’t say which of the factors at my disposal kindled the spark. No doubt it was all of them together. It’s a rather complicated psychological operation, you know, like a chemical experiment. The correct idea is formed suddenly by mysterious reactions and combinations among the elements in which it existed in a potential stage. And then I was carrying within myself an intuitive principle, a very special incentive which obliged me, which inevitably compelled me, to discover the hiding-place: Little Mother Coralie was there! I knew for certain that failure on my part, prolonged weakness or hesitation would mean her destruction. There was a woman there, within a radius of a dozen yards or so. I had to find out and I found out. The spark was kindled. The elements combined. And I made straight for the sand-heap. I at once saw the marks of footsteps and, almost at the top, the signs of a slight stamping. I started digging. You can imagine my excitement when I first touched one of the bags. But I had no time for excitement. I shifted a few bags. Coralie was there, unconscious, hardly protected from the sand which was slowly stifling her, trickling through, stopping up her eyes, suffocating her. I needn’t tell you more, need I? The wharf was deserted, as usual. I got her out. I hailed a taxi. I first took her home. Then I turned my attention to Essarès, to Vacherot the porter; and, when I had discovered our enemy’s plans, I went and made my arrangements with Dr. Géradec. Lastly, I had you moved to the private hospital on the Boulevard de Montmorency and gave orders for Coralie to be taken there too. And there you are, captain! All done in three hours. When the doctor’s car brought me back to the hospital, Essarès arrived at the same time, to have his injuries seen to. I had him safe.”
Don Luis ceased speaking. There were no words necessary between the two men. One had done the other the greatest services which a man has it in his power to render; and the other knew that these were services for which no thanks are adequate. And he also knew that he would never have an opportunity to prove his gratitude. Don Luis was in a manner above those proofs, owing to the mere fact that they were impossible. There was no service to be rendered to a man like him, disposing of his resources and performing miracles with the same ease with which we perform the trivial actions of everyday life.
Patrice once again pressed his hand warmly, without a word. Don Luis accepted the homage of this silent emotion and said:
“If ever people talk of Arsène Lupin before you, captain, say a good word for him, won’t you? He deserves it.” And he added, with a laugh, “It’s funny, but, as I get on in life, I find myself caring about my reputation. The devil was old, the devil a monk would be!”
He pricked up his ears and, after a moment, said:
“Captain, it is time for us to part. Present my respects to Little Mother Coralie. I shall not have known her, so to speak, and she will not know me. It is better so. Good-by, captain.”
“Then we are taking leave of each other?”
“Yes, I hear M. Masseron. Go to him, will you, and have the kindness to bring him here?”
Patrice hesitated. Why was Don Luis sending him to meet M. Masseron? Was it so that he, Patrice, might intervene in his favor?
The idea appealed to him; and he ran up the companion-way.
Then a thing happened which Patrice was destined never to understand, something very quick and quite inexplicable. It was as though a long and gloomy adventure were to finish suddenly with melodramatic unexpectedness.
Patrice met M. Masseron on the deck of the barge.
“Is your friend here?” asked the magistrate.
“Yes. But one word first: you don’t mean to . . . ?”
“Have no fear. We shall do him no harm, on the contrary.”
The answer was so definite that the officer could find nothing more to say. M. Masseron went down first, with Patrice following him.
“Hullo!” said Patrice. “I left the cabin-door open!”
He pushed the door. It opened. But Don Luis was no longer in the cabin.
Immediate enquiries showed that no one had seen him go, neither the men remaining on the wharf nor those who had already crossed the gangway.
“When you have time to examine this barge thoroughly,” said Patrice, “I’ve no doubt you will find it pretty nicely faked.”
“So your friend has probably escaped through some trap-door and swum away?” asked M. Masseron, who seemed greatly annoyed.
“I expect so,” said Patrice, laughing. “Unless he’s gone off on a submarine!”
“A submarine in the Seine?”
“Why not? I don’t believe that there’s any limit to my friend’s resourcefulness and determination.”
But what completely dumbfounded M. Masseron was the discovery, on the table, of a letter directed to himself, the letter which Don Luis had placed there at the beginning of his interview with Patrice.
“Then he knew that I should come here? He foresaw, even before we met, that I should ask him to fulfil certain formalities?”
The letter ran as follows:
“Sir,
“Forgive my departure and believe that I, on my side, quite understand the reason that brings you here. My position is not in fact regular; and you are entitled to ask me for an explanation. I will give you that explanation some day or other. You will then see that, if I serve France in a manner of my own, that manner is not a bad one and that my country will owe me some gratitude for the immense services, if I may venture to use the word, which I have done her during this war. On the day of our interview, I should like you to thank me, sir. You will then — for I know your secret ambition — be prefect of police. Perhaps I shall even be able personally to forward a nomination which I consider well-deserved. I will exert myself in that direction without delay.
“I have the honor to be, etc.”
M. Masseron remained silent for a time.
“A strange character!” he said, at last. “Had he been willing, we should have given him great things to do. That was what I was instructed to tell him.”
“You may be sure, sir,” said Patrice, “that the things which he is actually doing are greater still.” And he added, “A strange character, as you say. And stranger still, more powerful and more extraordinary than you can imagine. If each of the allied nations had had three or four men of his stamp at its disposal, the war would have been over in six months.”
“I quite agree,” said M. Masseron. “Only those men are usually solitary, intractable people, who act solely upon their own judgment and refuse to accept any authority. I’ll tell you what: they’re something like that famous adventurer who, a few years ago, compelled the Kaiser to visit him in prison and obtain his release . . . and afterwards, owing to a disappointment in love, threw himself into the sea from the cliffs at Capri.”
“Who was that?”
“Oh, you know the fellow’s name as well as I do! . . . Lupin, that’s it: Arsène Lupin.”
THE END
The Island of Thirty Coffins
OR, THE SECRET OF SAREK
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I. THE DESERTED CABIN
CHAPTER II. ON THE EDGE OF THE ATLANTIC
CHAPTER III. VORSKI’S SON
CHAPTER IV. THE POOR PEOPLE OF SAREK
CHAPTER V. “FOUR WOMEN CRUCIFIED”
CHAPTER VI. ALL’S WELL
CHAPTER VII. FRANÇOIS AND STÉPHANE
CHAPTER VIII. ANGUISH
CHAPTER IX. THE DEATH-CHAMBER
CHAPTER X. THE ESCAPE
CHAPTER XI. THE SCOURGE OF GOD
CHAPTER XII. THE ASCENT OF GOLGOTHA
CHAPTER XIII. “ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!”
CHAPTER XIV. THE ANCIENT DRUID
CHAPTER XV. THE HALL OF THE UNDERGROUND SACRIFICES
CHAPTER XVI. THE HALL OF THE KINGS OF BOHEMIA
CHAPTER XVII. “CRUEL PRINCE, OBEYING DESTINY”
CHAPTER XVIII. THE GOD-STONE
The original frontispiece
FOREWORD
THE WAR HAS led to so many upheavals that not many people now remember the Hergemont scandal of seventeen years ago. Let us recall the details in a few lines.
One day in July 1902, M. Antoine d’Hergemont, the author of a series of well-known studies on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, was walking in the Bois with his daughter Véronique, when he was assaulted by four men, receiving a blow in the face with a walking-stick which felled him to the ground.
After a short struggle and in spite of his desperate efforts, Véronique, the beautiful Véronique, as she was called by her friends, was dragged away and bundled into a motor-car which the spectators of this very brief scene saw making off in the direction of Saint-Cloud.
It was a plain case of kidnapping. The truth became known next morning. Count Alexis Vorski, a young Polish nobleman of dubious reputation but of some social prominence and, by his own account, of royal blood, was in love with Véronique d’Hergemont and Véronique with him. Repelled and more than once insulted by the father, he had planned the incident entirely without Véronique’s knowledge or complicity.
Antoine d’Hergemont, who, as certain published letters showed, was a man of violent and morose disposition and who, thanks to his capricious temper, his ferocious egoism and his sordid avarice, had made his daughter exceedingly unhappy, swore openly that he would take the most ruthless revenge.
He gave his consent to the wedding, which took place two months later, at Nice. But in the following year a series of sensational events transpired. Keeping his word and cherishing his hatred, M. d’Hergemont in his turn kidnapped the child born of the Vorski marriage and set sail in a small yacht which he had bought not long before.
The sea was rough. The yacht foundered within sight of the Italian coast. The four sailors who formed the crew were picked up by a fishing-boat. According to their evidence M. d’Hergemont and the child had disappeared amid the waves.
When Véronique received the proof of their death, she entered a Carmelite convent.
These are the facts which, fourteen years later, were to lead to the most frightful and extraordinary adventure, a perfectly authentic adventure, though certain details, at first sight, assume a more or less fabulous aspect. But the war has complicated existence to such an extent that events which happen outside it, such as those related in the following narrative, borrow something abnormal, illogical and at times miraculous from the greater tragedy. It needs all the dazzling light of truth to restore to those events the character of a reality which, when all is said, is simple enough.
CHAPTER I. THE DESERTED CABIN
INTO THE PICTURESQUE village of Le Faouet, situated in the very heart of Brittany, there drove one morning in the month of May a lady whose spreading grey cloak and the thick veil that covered her face failed to hide her remarkable beauty and perfect grace of figure.
The lady took a hurried lunch at the principal inn. Then, at about half-past eleven, she begged the proprietor to look after her bag for her, asked for a few particulars about the neighbourhood and walked through the village into the open country.
The road almost immediately branched into two, of which one led to Quimper and the other to Quimperlé. Selecting the latter, she went down into the hollow of a valley, climbed up again and saw on her right, at the corner of another road, a sign-post bearing the inscription, “Locriff, 3 kilometers.”
“This is the place,” she said to herself.
Nevertheless, after casting a glance around her, she was surprised not to find what she was looking for and wondered whether she had misunderstood her instructions.
There was no one near her nor any one within sight, as far as the eye could reach over the Breton country-side, with its tree-lined meadows and undulating hills. Not far from the village, rising amid the budding greenery of spring, a small country house lifted its grey front, with the shutters to all the windows closed. At twelve o’clock, the angelus-bells pealed through the air and were followed by complete peace and silence.
Véronique sat down on the short grass of a bank, took a letter from her pocket and smoothed out the many sheets, one by one.
The first page was headed:
“DUTREILLIS’ AGENCY.
“Consulting Rooms.
“Private Enquiries.
“Absolute Discretion Guaranteed.”
Next came an address:
“Madame Véronique, “Dressmaker, “BESANÇON.”
And the letter ran:
“MADAM,
“You will hardly believe the pleasure which it gave me to fulfill the two commissions which you were good enough to entrust to me in your last favour. I have never forgotten the conditions under which I was able, fourteen years ago, to give you my practical assistance at a time when your life was saddened by painful events. I
t was I who succeeded in obtaining all the facts relating to the death of your honoured father, M. Antoine d’Hergemont, and of your beloved son François. This was my first triumph in a career which was to afford so many other brilliant victories.
“It was I also, you will remember, who, at your request and seeing how essential it was to save you from your husband’s hatred and, if I may add, his love, took the necessary steps to secure your admission to the Carmelite convent. Lastly, it was I who, when your retreat to the convent had shown you that a life of religion did not agree with your temperament, arranged for you a modest occupation as a dressmaker at Besançon, far from the towns where the years of your childhood and the months of your marriage had been spent. You had the inclination and the need to work in order to live and to escape your thoughts. You were bound to succeed; and you succeeded.
“And now let me come to the fact, to the two facts in hand.
“To begin with your first question: what has become, amid the whirlwind of war, of your husband, Alexis Vorski, a Pole by birth, according to his papers, and the son of a king, according to his own statement? I will be brief. After being suspected at the commencement of the war and imprisoned in an internment-camp near Carpentras, Vorski managed to escape, went to Switzerland, returned to France and was re-arrested, accused of spying and convicted of being a German. At the moment when it seemed inevitable that he would be sentenced to death, he escaped for the second time, disappeared in the Forest of Fontainebleau and in the end was stabbed by some person unknown.
“I am telling you the story quite crudely, Madam, well knowing your contempt for this person, who had deceived you abominably, and knowing also that you have learnt most of these facts from the newspapers, though you have not been able to verify their absolute genuineness.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 215
