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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Did you find the cardboard box?” Dorothy asked.

  “Yes. I found it on the table, took the earrings out of it, and put the box back in its place with the rubber ring round it.”

  They went on down the passage.

  Each bedroom had a dressing-room and a closet which served as wardrobe attached to it. They stopped before the last transom; Saint-Quentin climbed through it and opened the door of the dressing-room for Dorothy.

  There was a door between the dressing-room and the bedroom. Dorothy opened it an inch and let a ray from her lantern fall on the bed.

  “He’s asleep,” she whispered.

  She drew a large handkerchief from her bag, uncorked a small bottle of chloroform and poured some drops on the handkerchief.

  Across the bed, in his clothes, like a man suddenly overcome by sleep, d’Estreicher was sleeping so deeply that the young girl switched on the electric light. Then very gently she placed the chloroformed handkerchief over his face.

  The man sighed, writhed, and was still.

  Very cautiously Dorothy and Saint-Quentin passed two slip-knots in a rope over both of his arms and tied the two ends of it round the iron uprights of the bed. Then quickly without bothering about him they wrapped the bedclothes round his body and legs, and tied them round him with the table-cloth and curtain-cords.

  Then d’Estreicher did awake. He tried to defend himself — too late. He called out. Dorothy-gagged him with a napkin.

  Next morning the Count and Countess de Chagny were taking their coffee with Raoul Davernoie in the big dining-room of the château when the porter came to inform them that at daybreak the directress of Dorothy’s Circus had asked him to open the gates and that the caravan had departed. The directress had left a letter addressed to the Count de Chagny. All three of them went upstairs to the Countess’s boudoir-The letter ran as follows:

  “My cousin” — offended by her brusqueness, the Count started — then he went on:

  “My cousin: I took an oath, and I keep it. The man who was making excavations round the château and last night stole the earrings, is the same person who five years ago stole the medal and poisoned my father.

  I hand him over to you. Let justice take its course.

  DOROTHY, PRINCESS OF ARGONNE.

  The Count and Countess and their cousin gazed at one another in amazement. What did it mean? Who was the culprit. How and where had she handed him over?

  “It’s a pity that d’Estreicher isn’t down,” said the Count. “He is so helpful.”

  The Countess took up the cardboard box which d’Estreicher had entrusted to her and opened it with out more ado. The box contained exactly what Dorothy had told them, some white pebbles and shells. Then why did d’Estreicher teem to attach so much importance to his finding it?

  Some one knocked gently at the boudoir door. It was the major-domo, the Count’s confidential man.

  “What is it, Dominique?”

  “The château was broken into last night.”

  “Impossible!” the Count declared in a positive tone. “The doors were all locked. Where did they break in?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve found a ladder against the wall by Monsieur d’Estreicher’s bedroom; and the transom is broken. The criminals made their way into the dressing-room and when they had done the job, came out through the bedroom door.”

  “What job?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I didn’t like to go further into the matter by myself. I put everything back in its place.”

  The Count de Chagny drew a hundred-franc note from his pocket.

  “Not a word of this, Dominique. Watch the corridor and see that no one disturbs us.”

  Raoul and his wife followed him. The door between d’Estreicher’s dressing-room and bedroom was half open. The smell of chloroform filled the room.

  The Count uttered a cry.

  On his bed lay d’Estreicher gagged and safely bound to it. His eyes were rolling wildly. He was groaning.

  Beside him lay the muffler which Dorothy had described as belonging to the man who was engaged in making excavations.

  On the table, well in sight, lay the sapphire earrings.

  But a terrifying, overwhelming sight met the eyes of all three of them simultaneously — the irrefutable proof of the murder of Jean d’Argonne and the theft of the medal. His right arm, bare, was stretched out across the bed, fastened by the wrists And on that arm they read, tattooed: lu robore far tuna.

  CHAPTER VI

  ON THE ROAD

  EVERY DAY, AT the easy walk or slack trot of One-eyed Magpie, Dorothy’s Circus moved on. In the afternoon they gave their performance; after it they strolled about those old towns of France, the picturesque charm of which appealed so strongly to the young girl. Domfront, Mortain, Avranches, Fougères, Vitré, feudal cities, girdled in places by their fortifications, or bristling with their ancient keeps... Dorothy visited them with all the emotion of a creature who understands the past and evokes it with a passionate enthusiasm.

  She visited them alone, even as she walked alone along the high roads, with so manifest a desire to keep to herself that the others, while watching her with anxious eyes and silently begging for a glance from their little mother, did not speak a word to her.

  That lasted a week, a very dull week for the children. The pale Saint-Quentin walked at the head of One-eyed Magpie as he would have walked at the head of a horse drawing a hearse. Castor and Pollux fought no longer. As for the captain he buried himself in the perusal of his lesson-books and wore himself out over addition and subtraction, knowing that Dorothy, the school-mistress of the troupe, as a rule deeply appreciated these fits of industry. His efforts were vain. Dorothy was thinking of something else.

  Every morning, at the first village they went through, she bought a newspaper, looked through it and crumpled it up with a movement of irritation, as if she had failed to find what she was looking for. Saint-Quentin at once picked it up and in his turn ran his eye through it. Nothing. Nothing about the crime of which she had informed him in a few words. Nothing about the arrest of that infamous d’Estreicher whom the two of them had trussed up on his bed.

  At last on the eighth day, as the sun shines after unceasing rain, the smile appeared. It did not spring from any outside cause. It was that life recovered its grip on her. Dorothy’s spirit was throwing off the distant tragedy in which her father lost his life. She became the light-hearted, cheerful, and affectionate Dorothy of old. Castor, Pollux, and the captain were smothered with kisses. Saint-Quentin was thumped and shaken warmly by the hand. At the performance they gave under the ramparts of Vitré she displayed an astonishing energy and gayety. And when the audience had departed, she hustled off her four comrades on one of those mad rounds which were for them the most exquisite of treats.

  Saint-Quentin wept with joy:

  “I thought you didn’t love us any more,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I love my four brats any more?”

  “Because you’re a princess.”

  “Wasn’t I a princess before, idiot?”

  In taking them through the narrow streets of old Vitré, amid the huddle of wooden houses, roofed with rough tiles, by fits and starts she told them for the first time about her early years.

  She had always been happy, never having known shackles, boredom, or discipline, things which cramp the free instincts and deform the disposition. Not that she had been a rebel. She was quite ready to submit to rules and obligations, but she had had to choose them herself; they had had to be such that her child’s reason, already very clear and direct, could accept them as just and necessary.

  It had been the same with the education she had given herself: she had only learnt from others that which it had pleased her to know, extracting from the village priest at Argonne all the Latin he knew, and letting him keep his catechism to himself; learning many things with the schoolmaster, many others from the books she borrowed, and very many more from the old couple who farmed her father’s
land, in whose charge her parents had left her.

  “I owe most to those two,” she said. “But for them I should not know what a bird is, or a plant, or a tree — the meaning of real things.”

  “It wasn’t them, however, who taught you to dance on a tight rope and manage a circus,” said Saint-Quentin, chaffing her.

  “I’ve always danced on the tight rope. Some people are born poets. I was born a rope-dancer. Dancing is part of me. I get that from my mother who was by no means a theatrical star, but simply a fine little dancer, a dancing-girl of the music-halls and the English circus. I see her still. She was adorable; she could never keep still; and she loved stuffs of gorgeous colors... and beautiful jewels even more.”

  “Like you,” said Saint-Quentin in a low voice. “Like me,” she said. “Yes: I take an extravagant pleasure in handling them and looking at them. I love things that shine. All these stones throw out flames which dazzle me. I should like to be very rich in order to have very fine ones that I should wear always — on my fingers and round my neck.”

  “And since you will never be rich?’

  “Then I shall do without them.”

  For all that she had been brought up anyhow, deprived of mentors and good advice, having only-before her eyes as example the frivolous life her parents led, she had acquired strong moral principles, always maintained! a considerable natural dignity, and remained untroubled by the reproaches of conscience. That which is evil is evil — no traffic in it.

  “One is happy,” she said, “when one is in perfect agreement with good people. I am a good girl. If one lets one’s self be guilty of a doubtful action, one repeats it without knowing it and one ends by yielding to temptation as one picks flowers and fruit over the hedge by the roadside.”

  Dorothy did not pick flowers and fruit over the hedge.

  For a long while she went on telling them all about herself. Saint-Quentin listened open-mouthed.

  “Goodness! Wherever did you learn all that? You’re always surprising me, Dorothy. And then how do you guess what you do guess? Guess what is passing in people’s minds? The other day at Roborey, I didn’t understand what was going on, not a scrap of it.”

  “Ah, that’s quite another matter. It’s a need to combine, to organize, to command, a need to undertake and to succeed. When I was a child I gathered together all the urchins in the village and formed bands. I was always the chief of the band. Only the others used to rob the farm-yards and kitchen-gardens, and, go poaching. With me, it was quite the opposite. We used to form a league against an evil-doer and hunt for the sheep or duck stolen from an old woman, or again we exercised our wits in making inquiries. Oh those inquiries! They were my strong point. Before the police could be informed, I would unravel an affair in such a way that the country people roundabout came to consult the little girl of thirteen or fourteen that I was. ‘A perfect little witch,’ they used to say. Goodness, no! You know as well as I, Saint-Quentin, if I sometimes play the clairvoyant or tell fortunes by cards, everything I tell people I arrive at from facts which I observe and interpret. And I also arrive at those facts, I must admit, by a kind of intuition which shows me things under an aspect which does not at once appear to other people. Yes, very often I see, before comprehending. Then, most complicated affairs appear to me, at the first glance, very simple, and I am always astonished that no one has picked out such and such a detail which contains in it the whole of the truth.”

  Saint-Quentin, convinced, reflected. He threw back his head:

  “That’s it! That’s it! Nothing escapes you; you think of everything. And that’s how it came about that the earrings, instead of having been stolen by Saint-Quentin, were stolen by d’Estreicher. And it is d’Estreicher and not Saint-Quentin who will go to prison because you willed it so.”

  She began to laugh:

  “Perhaps I did will it so. But Justice shows no sign of submitting to my will. The newspapers do not speak of anything happening. There is no mention of the drama of Roborey.”

  “Then what has become of that scoundrel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And won’t you be able to learn?”

  “Yes,” she said confidently.

  “How?”

  “From Raoul Davernoie.”

  “You’re going to see him then?”

  “I’ve written to him.”

  “Where to?”

  “At Roborey.”

  “He answered you.”

  “Yes — a telegram which I went to the Post Office to find before the performance.”

  “And he’s going to meet us?”

  “Yes. On leaving Roborey and returning home, he is to meet us at Vitré at about three o’clock. It’s three now.”

  They had climbed up to a point in the city from which one had a view of a road which wound in and out among meadows and woods.

  “There,” she said. “His car ought not to be long coming into sight. That’s his road.”

  “You realty believe—”

  “I realty believe that that excellent young fellow will not raise an opportunity of seeing me again,” she said, smiling.

  Saint-Quentin, always rather jealous and easily upset, sighed:

  “All the people you talk to are like that, obliging and full of attention.”

  They waited several minutes. A car came into right between two hedges. They went forward and so came close to the caravan, round which the three urchins were playing.

  Presently the car came up the ascent and emerged from a turning, driven by Raoul Davernoie. Running to meet him and preventing him by a gesture from getting out of the car, Dorothy called out to him:

  “Well, what has happened? Arrested?”

  “Who? D’Estreicher?” said Raoul, a little taken aback by this greeting.

  “D’Estreicher of course... He has been handed over to the police, hasn’t he? He’s under lock and key?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He escaped.”

  The answer gave her a shock.

  “D’Estreicher free!... Free to act!...It’s frightful!”

  And under her breath she muttered:

  “Good heavens! Why — why didn’t I stay? I should have prevented this escape.”

  But repining was of no avail and Dorothy was not the girt to waste much time on it. Without farther delay she began to question the young man. “Why did you stay on at the château?”

  “To be exact — because of d’Estreicher.”

  “Granted. But an hour after Ms escape you ought to have started for home.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Your grandfather... I warned you at Roborey.”

  Raoul Davernoie protested:

  ‘“First of all I have written to him to be on his guard for reasons which I would explain to him. And then, as a matter of fact, the risk that he runs is a trifle problematical.”

  “In what way? He is the possessor of that indispensable key to the treasure, the gold medal. D’Estreicher knows it. And you do not believe in his danger.”

  “But this key to the treasure, d’Estreicher also possesses it, since on the day he murdered your father, he stole the gold medal from him.”

  Dorothy stood beside the door of the car, her hand on the handle to prevent Raoul from opening it.

  “Start at once, I beg you. I certainly don’t understand the whole of the affair. Is d’Estreicher, who already is the possessor of the medal, going to try to steal a second? Has the one he stole from my father been stolen from him by an accomplice? As yet I don’t know anything about it But I am certain that from now on the real ground of the struggle is younder, at your home. I’m so sure of it that I’m going there myself as well. Look: here is any road-map. Hillocks Manor near Clisson — still nearly a hundred miles to go — eight stages for the caravan. Be off; you will get there to-night. I shall be there in eight days.”

  Dominated by her, he gave way.

  “Perhaps you’re right. I ou
ght to have thought of all this myself — especially since my father will be alone to-night.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. All the servants are keeping holiday. One of them is getting married at a neighboring village.” She started.

  “Does d’Estreicher know?”

  “I think so. I fancy I spoke of this fête before him, during my stay at Roborey.”

  “And when did he escape?”

  “The day before yesterday.”

  “So since the day before yesterday—”

  She did not finish the sentence. She ran to the caravan, up the steps, into it. Almost on the instant she came out of it with a small suit-case and a cloak.

  “I’m off,” she said. “I’m coming with you. There isn’t a moment to be lost!”

  She cranked up the engine herself, giving her orders the while:

  “I give the car and the three children into your charge, Saint-Quentin. Follow the red line I have drawn on the map. Double stages — no performances. You can be there in five days.”

  She took the seat beside Davernoie. The car was already starting when she caught up the captain who was stretching out his hands to her. She dropped him among the portmanteaux and bags in the tonneau.

  “There — keep quiet. Au revoir, Saint-Quentin, Castor and Pollux — no fighting!”

  She waved good-bye to them.

  The whole scene had not lasted three minutes.

  Raoul Davernoie’s car was by way of being an old, old model. Therefore its pace was but moderate, and Raoul, delighted to be taking with him this charming creature, who was also his cousin, and his relations with whom, thanks to what had happened, were uncommonly intimate, was able to relate in detail what had taken place, the manner of their finding d’Estreicher, and the incidents of his captivity.

  “What saved him,” said he, “was a rather deep wound he had made in his head by striking it against the iron bed-head in his efforts to rid himself of his bonds. He lost a lot of blood. Fever declared itself; and my cousin de Chagny — you must have noticed that he is of a timid disposition — at once said to us:

  “‘That gives us time.’”

  “Time for what?” I asked him.