She staggered, dazed by the discovery of the letter and dismayed by Belval’s daring. But, making a last effort to summon up her power of will, she left the room, without giving the signal for which Patrice was longing.

CHAPTER VI
NINETEEN MINUTES PAST SEVEN

“So you consider that your job is over! While I lie tossing about in the dark, my lord sleeps and all’s well! My dear man, you have a jolly elastic conscience.”

The word elastic amused the Senegalese mightily. His mouth opened wider than ever; and he gave a grunt of enjoyment.

“That’ll do, that’ll do,” said the captain. “There’s no getting a word in, once you start talking. Here, take a chair, read this report and give me your reasoned opinion. What? You don’t know how to read? Well, upon my word! What was the good, then, of wearing out the seat of your trousers on the benches of the Senegal schools and colleges? A queer education, I must say!”

He heaved a sigh, and, snatching the manuscript, said:

“Listen, reflect, argue, deduct and conclude. This is how the matter briefly stands. First, we have one Essarès Bey, a banker, rich as Crœsus, and the lowest of rapscallions, who betrays at one and the same time France, Egypt, England, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece . . . as is proved by the fact that his accomplices roast his feet for him. Thereupon he kills one of them and gets rid of four with the aid of as many millions, which millions he orders another accomplice to get back for him before five minutes are passed. And all these bright spirits will duck underground at eleven o’clock this morning, for at twelve o’clock the police propose to enter on the scene. Good.”

Patrice Belval paused to take breath and continued:

“Secondly, Little Mother Coralie—upon my word, I can’t say why—is married to Rapscallion Bey. She hates him and wants to kill him. He loves her and wants to kill her. There is also a colonel who loves her and for that reason loses his life and a certain Mustapha, who tries to kidnap her on the colonel’s account and also loses his life for that reason, strangled by a Senegalese. Lastly, there is a French captain, a dot-and-carry-one, who likewise loves her, but whom she avoids because she is married to a man whom she abhors. And with this captain, in a previous incarnation, she has halved an amethyst bead. Add to all this, by way of accessories, a rusty key, a red silk bowstring, a dog choked to death and a grate filled with red coals. And, if you dare to understand a single word of my explanation, I’ll catch you a whack with my wooden leg, for I don’t understand it a little bit and I’m your captain.”

Ya-Bon laughed all over his mouth and all over the gaping scar that cut one of his cheeks in two. As ordered by his captain, he understood nothing of the business and very little of what Patrice had said; but he always quivered with delight when Patrice addressed him in that gruff tone.

“That’s enough,” said the captain. “It’s my turn now to argue, deduct and conclude.”

He leant against the mantelpiece, with his two elbows on the marble shelf and his head tight-pressed between his hands. His merriment, which sprang from temperamental lightness of heart, was this time only a surface merriment. Deep down within himself he did nothing but think of Coralie with sorrowful apprehension. What could he do to protect her? A number of plans occurred to him: which was he to choose? Should he hunt through the numbers in the telephone-book till he hit upon the whereabouts of that Grégoire, with whom Bournef and his companions had taken refuge? Should he inform the police? Should he return to the Rue Raynouard? He did not know. Yes, he was capable of acting, if the act to be performed consisted in flinging himself into the conflict with furious ardor. But to prepare the action, to divine the obstacles, to rend the darkness, and, as he said, to see the invisible and grasp the intangible, that was beyond his powers.

He turned suddenly to Ya-Bon, who was standing depressed by his silence:

“What’s the matter with you, putting on that lugubrious air? Of course it’s you that throw a gloom over me! You always look at the black side of things . . . like a nigger! . . . Be off.”

Ya-Bon was going away discomfited, when some one tapped at the door and a voice said:

“Captain Belval, you’re wanted on the telephone.”

Patrice hurried out. Who on earth could be telephoning to him so early in the morning?

“Who is it?” he asked the nurse.

“I don’t know, captain. . . . It’s a man’s voice; he seemed to want you urgently. The bell had been ringing some time. I was downstairs, in the kitchen. . . .”

Before Patrice’s eyes there rose a vision of the telephone in the Rue Raynouard, in the big room at the Essarès’ house. He could not help wondering if there was anything to connect the two incidents.

He went down one flight of stairs and along a passage. The telephone was through a small waiting-room, in a room that had been turned into a linen-closet. He closed the door behind him.

“Hullo! Captain Belval speaking. What is it?”

A voice, a man’s voice which he did not know, replied in breathless, panting tones:

“Ah! . . . Captain Belval! . . . It’s you! . . . Look here . . . but I’m almost afraid that it’s too late. . . . I don’t know if I shall have time to finish. . . . Did you get the key and the letter? . . .”

“Who are you?” asked Patrice.

“Did you get the key and the letter?” the voice insisted.

“The key, yes,” Patrice replied, “but not the letter.”

“Not the letter? But this is terrible! Then you don’t know . . .”

A hoarse cry struck Patrice’s ear and the next thing he caught was incoherent sounds at the other end of the wire, the noise of an altercation. Then the voice seemed to glue itself to the instrument and he distinctly heard it gasping:

“Too late! . . . Patrice . . . is that you? . . . Listen, the amethyst pendant . . . yes, I have it on me. . . . The pendant. . . . Ah, it’s too late! . . . I should so much have liked to . . . Patrice. . . . Coralie. . . .”

Then again a loud cry, a heart-rending cry, and confused sounds growing more distant, in which he seemed to distinguish:

“Help! . . . Help! . . .”

These grew fainter and fainter. Silence followed. And suddenly there was a little click. The murderer had hung up the receiver.

All this had not taken twenty seconds. But, when Patrice wanted to replace the telephone, his fingers were gripping it so hard that it needed an effort to relax them.

He stood utterly dumfounded. His eyes had fastened on a large clock which he saw, through the window, on one of the buildings in the yard, marking nineteen minutes past seven; and he mechanically repeated these figures, attributing a documentary value to them. Then he asked himself—so unreal did the scene appear to him—if all this was true and if the crime had not been penetrated within himself, in the depths of his aching heart. But the shouting still echoed in his ears; and suddenly he took up the receiver again, like one clinging desperately to some undefined hope:

“Hullo!” he cried. “Exchange! . . . Who was it rang me up just now? . . . Are you there? Did you hear the cries? . . . Are you there? . . . Are you there? . . .”

There was no reply. He lost his temper, insulted the exchange, left the linen-closet, met Ya-Bon and pushed him about:

“Get out of this! It’s your fault. Of course you ought to have stayed and looked after Coralie. Be off there now and hold yourself at my disposal. I’m going to inform the police. If you hadn’t prevented me, it would have been done long ago and we shouldn’t be in this predicament. Off you go!”

He held him back:

“No, don’t stir. Your plan’s ridiculous. Stay here. Oh, not here in my pocket! You’re too impetuous for me, my lad!”

He drove him out and returned to the linen-closet, striding up and down and betraying his excitement in irritable gestures and angry words. Nevertheless, in the midst of his confusion, one idea gradually came to light, which was that, after all, he had no proof that the crime which he suspected had happened at the house in the Rue Raynouard. He must not allow himself to be obsessed by the facts that lingered in his memory to the point of always seeing the same vision in the same tragic setting. No doubt the drama was being continued, as he had felt that it would be, but perhaps elsewhere and far away from Coralie.

And this first thought led to another: why not investigate matters at once?

“Yes, why not?” he asked himself. “Before bothering the police, discovering the number of the person who rang me up and thus working back to the start, a process which it will be time enough to employ later, why shouldn’t I telephone to the Rue Raynouard at once, on any pretext and in anybody’s name? I shall then have a chance of knowing what to think. . . .”

Patrice felt that this measure did not amount to much. Suppose that no one answered, would that prove that the murder had been committed in the house, or merely that no one was yet about? Nevertheless, the need to do something decided him. He looked up Essarès Bey’s number in the telephone-directory and resolutely rang up the exchange.

The strain of waiting was almost more than he could bear. And then he was conscious of a thrill which vibrated through him from head to foot. He was connected; and some one at the other end was answering the call.

“Hullo!” he said.

“Hullo!” said a voice. “Who are you?”

It was the voice of Essarès Bey.

Although this was only natural, since at that moment Essarès must be getting his papers ready and preparing his flight, Patrice was so much taken aback that he did not know what to say and spoke the first words that came into his head:

“Is that Essarès Bey?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m one of the wounded at the hospital, now under treatment at the home. . . .”

“Captain Belval, perhaps?”

Patrice was absolutely amazed. So Coralie’s husband knew him by name? He stammered:

“Yes . . . Captain Belval.”

“What a lucky thing!” cried Essarès Bey, in a tone of delight. “I rang you up a moment ago, at the home, Captain Belval, to ask . . .”

“Oh, it was you!” interrupted Patrice, whose astonishment knew no bounds.

“Yes, I wanted to know at what time I could speak to Captain Belval in order to thank him.”

“It was you! . . . It was you! . . .” Patrice repeated, more and more thunderstruck.

Essarès’ intonation denoted a certain surprise.

“Yes, wasn’t it a curious coincidence?” he said. “Unfortunately, I was cut off, or rather my call was interrupted by somebody else.”

“Then you heard?”

“What, Captain Belval?”

“Cries.”

“Cries?”

“At least, so it seemed to me; but the connection was very indistinct.”

“All that I heard was somebody asking for you, somebody who was in a great hurry; and, as I was not, I hung up the telephone and postponed the pleasure of thanking you.”

“Of thanking me?”

“Yes, I have heard how my wife was assaulted last night and how you came to her rescue. And I am anxious to see you and express my gratitude. Shall we make an appointment? Could we meet at the hospital, for instance, at three o’clock this afternoon?”

Patrice made no reply. The audacity of this man, threatened with arrest and preparing for flight, baffled him. At the same time, he was wondering what Essarès’ real object had been in telephoning to him without being in any way obliged to. But Belval’s silence in no way troubled the banker, who continued his civilities and ended the inscrutable conversation with a monologue in which he replied with the greatest ease to questions which he kept putting to himself.

In spite of everything, Patrice felt more comfortable. He went back to his room, lay down on his bed and slept for two hours. Then he sent for Ya-Bon.

“This time,” he said, “try to control your nerves and not to lose your head as you did just now. You were absurd. But don’t let’s talk about it. Have you had your breakfast? No? No more have I. Have you seen the doctor? No? No more have I. And the surgeon has just promised to take off this beastly bandage. You can imagine how pleased I am. A wooden leg is all very well; but a head wrapped up in lint, for a lover, never! Get on, look sharp. When we’re ready, we’ll start for the hospital. Little Mother Coralie can’t forbid me to see her there!”

Patrice was as happy as a schoolboy. As he said to Ya-Bon an hour later, on their way to the Porte-Maillot, the clouds were beginning to roll by:

“Yes, Ya-Bon, yes, they are. And this is where we stand. To begin with, Coralie is not in danger. As I hoped, the battle is being fought far away from her, among the accomplices no doubt, over their millions. As for the unfortunate man who rang me up and whose dying cries I overheard, he was obviously some unknown friend, for he addressed me familiarly and called me by my Christian name. It was certainly he who sent me the key of the garden. Unfortunately, the letter that came with the key went astray. In the end, he felt constrained to tell me everything. Just at that moment he was attacked. By whom, you ask. Probably by one of the accomplices, who was frightened of his revelations. There you are, Ya-Bon. It’s all as clear as noonday. For that matter, the truth may just as easily be the exact opposite of what I suggest. But I don’t care. The great thing is to take one’s stand upon a theory, true or false. Besides, if mine is false, I reserve the right to shift the responsibility on you. So you know what you’re in for. . . .”

At the Porte-Maillot they took a cab and it occurred to Patrice to drive round by the Rue Raynouard. At the junction of this street with the Rue de Passy, they saw Coralie leaving the Rue Raynouard, accompanied by old Siméon.

She had hailed a taxi and stepped inside. Siméon sat down by the driver. They went to the hospital in the Champs-Élysées, with Patrice following. It was eleven o’clock when they arrived.

“All’s well,” said Patrice. “While her husband is running away, she refuses to make any change in her daily life.”

He and Ya-Bon lunched in the neighborhood, strolled along the avenue, without losing sight of the hospital, and called there at half-past one.

Patrice at once saw old Siméon, sitting at the end of a covered yard where the soldiers used to meet. His head was half wrapped up in the usual comforter; and, with his big yellow spectacles on his nose, he sat smoking his pipe on the chair which he always occupied.

As for Coralie, she was in one of the rooms allotted to her on the first floor, seated by the bedside of a patient whose hand she held between her own. The man was asleep.

Coralie appeared to Patrice to be very tired. The dark rings round her eyes and the unusual pallor of her cheeks bore witness to her fatigue.

“Poor child!” he thought. “All those blackguards will be the death of you.”

He now understood, when he remembered the scenes of the night before, why Coralie kept her private life secret and endeavored, at least to the little world of the hospital, to be merely the kind sister whom people call by her Christian name. Suspecting the web of crime with which she was surrounded, she dropped her husband’s name and told nobody where she lived. And so well was she protected by the defenses set up by her modesty and determination that Patrice dared not go to her and stood rooted to the threshold.

“Yet surely,” he said to himself, as he looked at Coralie without being seen by her, “I’m not going to send her in my card!”

He was making up his mind to enter, when a woman who had come up the stairs, talking loudly as she went, called out:

“Where is madame? . . . M. Siméon, she must come at once!”

Old Siméon, who had climbed the stairs with her, pointed to where Coralie sat at the far end of the room; and the woman rushed in. She said a few words to Coralie, who seemed upset and at once, ran to the door, passing in front of Patrice, and down the stairs, followed by Siméon and the woman.

“I’ve got a taxi, ma’am,” stammered the woman, all out of breath. “I had the luck to find one when I left the house and I kept it. We must be quick, ma’am. . . . The commissary of police told me to . . .”

Patrice, who was downstairs by this time, heard nothing more; but the last words decided him. He seized hold of Ya-Bon as he passed; and the two of them leapt into a cab, telling the driver to follow Coralie’s taxi.

“There’s news, Ya-Bon, there’s news!” said Patrice. “The plot is thickening. The woman is obviously one of the Essarès’ servants and she has come for her mistress by the commissary’s orders. Therefore the colonel’s disclosures are having their effect. House searched; magistrate’s inquest; every sort of worry for Little Mother Coralie; and you have the cheek to advise me to be careful! You imagine that I would leave her to her own devices at such a moment! What a mean nature you must have, my poor Ya-Bon!”

An idea occurred to him; and he exclaimed:

“Heavens! I hope that ruffian of an Essarès hasn’t allowed himself to be caught! That would be a disaster! But he was far too sure of himself. I expect he’s been trifling away his time. . . .”

All through the drive this fear excited Captain Belval and removed his last scruples. In the end his certainty was absolute. Nothing short of Essarès’ arrest could have produced the servant’s attitude of panic or Coralie’s precipitate departure. Under these conditions, how could he hesitate to interfere in a matter in which his revelations would enlighten the police? All the more so as, by revealing less or more, according to circumstances, he could make his evidence subservient to Coralie’s interests.

The two cabs pulled up almost simultaneously outside the Essarès’ house, where a car was already standing. Coralie alighted and disappeared through the carriage-gate. The maid and Siméon also crossed the pavement.

“Come along,” said Patrice to the Senegalese.

The front-door was ajar and Patrice entered. In the big hall were two policemen on duty. Patrice acknowledged their presence with a hurried movement of his hand and passed them with the air of a man who belonged to the house and whose importance was so great that nothing done without him could be of any use.

The sound of his footsteps echoing on the flags reminded him of the flight of Bournef and his accomplices. He was on the right road. Moreover, there was a drawing-room on the left, the room, communicating with the library, to which the accomplices had carried the colonel’s body. Voices came from the library. He walked across the drawing-room.

At that moment he heard Coralie exclaim in accents of terror:

“Oh, my God, it can’t be! . . .”

Two other policemen barred the doorway.

“I am a relation of Mme. Essarès’,” he said, “her only relation. . . .”

“We have our orders, captain . . .”

“I know, of course. Be sure and let no one in! Ya-Bon, stay here.”

And he went in.

But, in the immense room, a group of six or seven gentlemen, no doubt commissaries of police and magistrates, stood in his way, bending over something which he was unable to distinguish. From amidst this group Coralie suddenly appeared and came towards him, tottering and wringing her hands. The housemaid took her round the waist and pressed her into a chair.

“What’s the matter?” asked Patrice.

“Madame is feeling faint,” replied the woman, still quite distraught. “Oh, I’m nearly off my head!”

“But why? What’s the reason?”

“It’s the master . . . just think! . . . Such a sight! . . . It gave me a turn, too . . .”

“What sight?”

One of the gentlemen left the group and approached:

“Is Mme. Essarès ill?”

“It’s nothing,” said the maid. “A fainting-fit. . . . She is liable to these attacks.”

“Take her away as soon as she can walk. We shall not need her any longer.”

And, addressing Patrice Belval with a questioning air:

“Captain? . . .”

Patrice pretended not to understand:

“Yes, sir,” he said, “we will take Mme. Essarès away. Her presence, as you say, is unnecessary. Only I must first . . .”

He moved aside to avoid his interlocutor, and, perceiving that the group of magistrates had opened out a little, stepped forward. What he now saw explained Coralie’s fainting-fit and the servant’s agitation. He himself felt his flesh creep at a spectacle which was infinitely more horrible than that of the evening before.

On the floor, near the fireplace, almost at the place where he had undergone his torture, Essarès Bey lay upon his back. He was wearing the same clothes as on the previous day: a brown-velvet smoking-suit with a braided jacket. His head and shoulders had been covered with a napkin. But one of the men standing around, a divisional surgeon no doubt, was holding up the napkin with one hand and pointing to the dead man’s face with the other, while he offered an explanation in a low voice.

And that face . . . but it was hardly the word for the unspeakable mass of flesh, part of which seemed to be charred while the other part formed no more than a bloodstained pulp, mixed with bits of bone and skin, hairs and a broken eye-ball.

“Oh,” Patrice blurted out, “how horrible! He was killed and fell with his head right in the fire. That’s how they found him, I suppose?”

The man who had already spoken to him and who appeared to be the most important figure present came up to him once more:

“May I ask who you are?” he demanded.

“Captain Belval, sir, a friend of Mme. Essarès, one of the wounded officers whose lives she has helped to save . . .”

“That may be, sir,” replied the important figure, “but you can’t stay here. Nobody must stay here, for that matter. Monsieur le commissaire, please order every one to leave the room, except the doctor, and have the door guarded. Let no one enter on any pretext whatever. . . .”

“Sir,” Patrice insisted, “I have some very serious information to communicate.”

“I shall be pleased to receive it, captain, but later on. You must excuse me now.”

VII
TWENTY-THREE MINUTES PAST TWELVE

He said nothing more. As for the housemaid, she readily told her story in reply to Patrice’ questions:

“The first surprise, sir, this morning was that there was no butler, no footman, no porter. All the three were gone. Then, at half-past six, M. Siméon came and told us from the master that the master had locked himself in his library and that he wasn’t to be disturbed even for breakfast. The mistress was not very well. She had her chocolate at nine o’clock. . . . At ten o’clock she went out with M. Siméon. Then, after we had done the bedrooms, we never left the kitchen. Eleven o’clock came, twelve . . . and, just as the hour was striking, we heard a loud ring at the front-door. I looked out of the window. There was a motor, with four gentlemen inside. I went to the door. The commissary of police explained who he was and wanted to see the master. I showed them the way. The library-door was locked. We knocked: no answer. We shook it: no answer. In the end, one of the gentlemen, who knew how, picked the lock. . . . Then . . . then . . . you can imagine what we saw. . . . But you can’t, it was much worse, because the poor master at that moment had his head almost under the grate. . . . Oh, what scoundrels they must have been! . . . For they did kill him, didn’t they? I know one of the gentlemen said at once that the master had died of a stroke and fallen into the fire. Only my firm belief is . . .”

Old Siméon had listened without speaking, with his head still half wrapped up, showing only his bristly gray beard and his eyes hidden behind their yellow spectacles. But at this point of the story he gave a little chuckle, came up to Patrice and said in his ear:

“There’s something to fear . . . to fear! . . . Mme. Coralie. . . . Make her go away at once . . . make her go away. . . . If not, it’ll be the worse for her. . . .”

Patrice shuddered and tried to question him, but could learn nothing more. Besides, the old man did not remain. A policeman came to fetch him and took him to the library.

His evidence lasted a long time. It was followed by the depositions of the cook and the housemaid. Next, Coralie’s evidence was taken, in her own room. At four o’clock another car arrived. Patrice saw two gentlemen pass into the hall, with everybody bowing very low before them. He recognized the minister of justice and the minister of the interior. They conferred in the library for half an hour and went away again.

At last, shortly before five o’clock, a policeman came for Patrice and showed him up to the first floor. The man tapped at a door and stood aside. Patrice entered a small boudoir, lit up by a wood fire by which two persons were seated: Coralie, to whom he bowed, and, opposite her, the gentleman who had spoken to him on his arrival and who seemed to be directing the whole enquiry.

He was a man of about fifty, with a thickset body and a heavy face, slow of movement, but with bright, intelligent eyes.

“The examining-magistrate, I presume, sir?” asked Patrice.

“No,” he replied, “I am M. Masseron, a retired magistrate, specially appointed to clear up this affair . . . not to examine it, as you think, for it does not seem to me that there is anything to examine.”

“What?” cried Patrice, in great surprise. “Nothing to examine?”

He looked at Coralie, who kept her eyes fixed upon him attentively. Then she turned them on M. Masseron, who resumed:

“I have no doubt, Captain Belval, that, when we have said what we have to say, we shall be agreed at all points . . . just as madame and I are already agreed.”

“I don’t doubt it either,” said Patrice. “All the same, I am afraid that many of those points remain unexplained.”

“Certainly, but we shall find an explanation, we shall find it together. Will you please tell me what you know?”

Patrice waited for a moment and then said:

“I will not disguise my astonishment, sir. The story which I have to tell is of some importance; and yet there is no one here to take it down. Is it not to count as evidence given on oath, as a deposition which I shall have to sign?”

“You yourself, captain, shall determine the value of your words and the innuendo which you wish them to bear. For the moment, we will look on this as a preliminary conversation, as an exchange of views relating to facts . . . touching which Mme. Essarès has given me, I believe, the same information that you will be able to give me.”

Patrice did not reply at once. He had a vague impression that there was a private understanding between Coralie and the magistrate and that, in face of that understanding, he, both by his presence and by his zeal, was playing the part of an intruder whom they would gladly have dismissed. He resolved therefore to maintain an attitude of reserve until the magistrate had shown his hand.

“Of course,” he said, “I daresay madame has told you. So you know of the conversation which I overheard yesterday at the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“And the attempt to kidnap Mme. Essarès?”

“Yes.”

“And the murder? . . .”

“Yes.”

“Mme. Essarès has described to you the blackmailing scene that took place last night, with M. Essarès for a victim, the details of the torture, the death of the colonel, the handing over of the four millions, the conversation on the telephone between M. Essarès and a certain Grégoire and, lastly, the threats uttered against madame by her husband?”

“Yes, Captain Belval, I know all this, that is to say, all that you know; and I know, in addition, all that I discovered through my own investigations.”

“Of course, of course,” Patrice repeated. “I see that my story becomes superfluous and that you are in possession of all the necessary factors to enable you to draw your conclusions.” And, continuing to put rather than answer questions, he added, “May I ask what inference you have arrived at?”

“To tell you the truth, captain, my inferences are not definite. However, until I receive some proof to the contrary, I propose to remain satisfied with the actual words of a letter which M. Essarès wrote to his wife at about twelve o’clock this morning and which we found lying on his desk, unfinished. Mme. Essarès asked me to read it and, if necessary, to communicate the contents to you. Listen.”

M. Masseron proceeded to read the letter aloud:

“The letter ends there,” said M. Masseron, handing it back to Coralie, “and we know by an unimpeachable sign that the last lines were written immediately before M. Essarès’ death, because, in falling, he upset a little clock which stood on his desk and which marked twenty-three minutes past twelve. I assume that he felt unwell and that, on trying to rise, he was seized with a fit of giddiness and fell to the floor. Unfortunately, the fireplace was near, with a fierce fire blazing in it; his head struck the grate; and the wound that resulted was so deep—the surgeon testified to this—that he fainted. Then the fire close at hand did its work . . . with the effects which you have seen. . . .”

Patrice had listened in amazement to this unexpected explanation:

“Then in your opinion,” he asked, “M. Essarès died of an accident? He was not murdered?”

“Murdered? Certainly not! We have no clue to support any such theory.”

“Still . . .”

“Captain Belval, you are the victim of an association of ideas which, I admit, is perfectly justifiable. Ever since yesterday you have been witnessing a series of tragic incidents; and your imagination naturally leads you to the most tragic solution, that of murder. Only—reflect—why should a murder have been committed? And by whom? By Bournef and his friends? With what object? They were crammed full with bank-notes; and, even admitting that the man called Grégoire recovered those millions from them, they would certainly not have got them back by killing M. Essarès. Then again, how would they have entered the house? And how can they have gone out? . . . No, captain, you must excuse me, but M. Essarès died an accidental death. The facts are undeniable; and this is the opinion of the divisional surgeon, who will draw up his report in that sense.”

Patrice turned to Coralie:

“Is it Mme. Essarès’ opinion also?”

She reddened slightly and answered:

“Yes.”

“And old Siméon’s?”

“Oh,” replied the magistrate, “old Siméon is wandering in his mind! To listen to him, you would think that everything was about to happen all over again, that Mme. Essarès is threatened with danger and that she ought to take to flight at once. That is all that I have been able to get out of him. However, he took me to an old disused door that opens out of the garden on a lane running at right angles with the Rue Raynouard; and here he showed me first the watch-dog’s dead body and next some footprints between the door and the flight of steps near the library. But you know those foot-prints, do you not? They belong to you and your Senegalese. As for the death of the watch-dog, I can put that down to your Senegalese, can’t I?”

Patrice was beginning to understand. The magistrate’s reticence, his explanation, his agreement with Coralie: all this was gradually becoming plain. He put the question frankly:

“So there was no murder?”

“No.”

“Then there will be no magistrate’s examination?”

“No.”

“And no talk about the matter; it will all be kept quiet, in short, and forgotten?”

“Just so.”

Captain Belval began to walk up and down, as was his habit. He now remembered Essarès’ prophecy:

“I sha’n’t be arrested. . . . If I am, I shall be let go. . . . The matter will be hushed up. . . .”

Essarès was right. The hand of justice was arrested; and there was no way for Coralie to escape silent complicity.

Patrice was intensely annoyed by the manner in which the case was being handled. It was certain that a compact had been concluded between Coralie and M. Masseron. He suspected the magistrate of circumventing Coralie and inducing her to sacrifice her own interests to other considerations. To effect this, the first thing was to get rid of him, Patrice.

“Ugh!” said Patrice to himself. “I’m fairly sick of this sportsman, with his cool ironical ways. It looks as if he were doing a considerable piece of thimblerigging at my expense.”

He restrained himself, however, and, with a pretense of wanting to keep on good terms with the magistrate, came and sat down beside him:

“You must forgive me, sir,” he said, “for insisting in what may appear to you an indiscreet fashion. But my conduct is explained not only by such sympathy or feeling as I entertain for Mme. Essarès at a moment in her life when she is more lonely than ever, a sympathy and feeling which she seems to repulse even more firmly than she did before. It is also explained by certain mysterious links which unite us to each other and which go back to a period too remote for our eyes to focus. Has Mme. Essarès told you those details? In my opinion, they are most important; and I cannot help associating them with the events that interest us.”

M. Masseron glanced at Coralie, who nodded. He answered:

“Yes, Mme. Essarès has informed me and even . . .”

He hesitated once more and again consulted Coralie, who flushed and seemed put out of countenance. M. Masseron, however, waited for a reply which would enable him to proceed. She ended by saying, in a low voice:

“Captain Belval is entitled to know what we have discovered. The truth belongs as much to him as to me; and I have no right to keep it from him. Pray speak, monsieur.”

“I doubt if it is even necessary to speak,” said the magistrate. “It will be enough, I think, to show the captain this photograph-album which I have found. Here you are, Captain Belval.”

And he handed Patrice a very slender album, covered in gray canvas and fastened with an india-rubber band.

Patrice took it with a certain anxiety. But what he saw on opening it was so utterly unexpected that he gave an exclamation:

“It’s incredible!”

On the first page, held in place by their four corners, were two photographs: one, on the right, representing a small boy in an Eton jacket; the other, on the left, representing a very little girl. There was an inscription under each. On the right: “Patrice, at ten.” On the left: “Coralie, at three.”

Moved beyond expression, Patrice turned the leaf. On the second page they appeared again, he at the age of fifteen, she at the age of eight. And he saw himself at nineteen and at twenty-three and at twenty-eight, always accompanied by Coralie, first as a little girl, then as a young girl, next as a woman.

“This is incredible!” he cried. “How is it possible? Here are portraits of myself which I had never seen, amateur photographs obviously, which trace my whole life. Here’s one when I was doing my military training. . . . Here I am on horseback . . . Who can have ordered these photographs? And who can have collected them together with yours, madame?”

He fixed his eyes on Coralie, who evaded their questioning gaze and lowered her head as though the close connection between their two lives, to which those pages bore witness, had shaken her to the very depths of her being.

“Who can have brought them together?” he repeated. “Do you know? And where does the album come from?”

M. Masseron supplied the answer:

“It was the surgeon who found it. M. Essarès wore a vest under his shirt; and the album was in an inner pocket, a pocket sewn inside the vest. The surgeon felt the boards through it when he was undressing M. Essarès’ body.”

This time, Patrice’s and Coralie’s eyes met. The thought that M. Essarès had been collecting both their photographs during the past twenty years and that he wore them next to his breast and that he had lived and died with them upon him, this thought amazed them so much that they did not even try to fathom its strange significance.

“Are you sure of what you are saying, sir?” asked Patrice.

“I was there,” said M. Masseron. “I was present at the discovery. Besides, I myself made another which confirms this one and completes it in a really surprising fashion. I found a pendant, cut out of a solid block of amethyst and held in a setting of filigree-work.”

“What’s that?” cried Captain Belval. “What’s that? A pendant? An amethyst pendant?”

“Look for yourself, sir,” suggested the magistrate, after once more consulting Mme. Essarès with a glance.

And he handed Captain Belval an amethyst pendant, larger than the ball formed by joining the two halves which Coralie and Patrice possessed, she on her rosary and he on his bunch of seals; and this new ball was encircled with a specimen of gold filigree-work exactly like that on the rosary and on the seal.

The setting served as a clasp.

“Am I to open it?” he asked.

Coralie nodded. He opened the pendant. The inside was divided by a movable glass disk, which separated two miniature photographs, one of Coralie as a nurse, the other of himself, wounded, in an officer’s uniform.

Patrice reflected, with pale cheeks. Presently he asked:

“And where does this pendant come from? Did you find it, sir?”

“Yes, Captain Belval.”

“Where?”

The magistrate seemed to hesitate. Coralie’s attitude gave Patrice the impression that she was unaware of this detail. M. Masseron at last said:

“I found it in the dead man’s hand.”

“In the dead man’s hand? In M. Essarès’ hand?”

Patrice had given a start, as though under an unexpected blow, and was now leaning over the magistrate, greedily awaiting a reply which he wanted to hear for the second time before accepting it as certain.

“Yes, in his hand. I had to force back the clasped fingers in order to release it.”

Belval stood up and, striking the table with his fist, exclaimed:

“Well, sir, I will tell you one thing which I was keeping back as a last argument to prove to you that my collaboration is of use; and this thing becomes of great importance after what we have just learnt. Sir, this morning some one asked to speak to me on the telephone; and I had hardly answered the call when this person, who seemed greatly excited, was the victim of a murderous assault, committed in my hearing. And, amid the sound of the scuffle and the cries of agony, I caught the following words, which the unhappy man insisted on trying to get to me as so many last instructions: ‘Patrice! . . . Coralie! . . . The amethyst pendant. . . . Yes, I have it on me. . . . The pendant. . . . Ah, it’s too late! . . . I should so much have liked. . . . Patrice. . . . Coralie. . . .’ There’s what I heard, sir, and here are the two facts which we cannot escape. This morning, at nineteen minutes past seven, a man was murdered having upon him an amethyst pendant. This is the first undeniable fact. A few hours later, at twenty-three minutes past twelve, this same amethyst pendant is discovered clutched in the hand of another man. This is the second undeniable fact. Place these facts side by side and you are bound to come to the conclusion that the first murder, the one of which I caught the distant echo, was committed here, in this house, in the same library which, since yesterday evening, witnessed the end of every scene in the tragedy which we are contemplating.”

This revelation, which in reality amounted to a fresh accusation against Essarès, seemed to affect the magistrate profoundly. Patrice had flung himself into the discussion with a passionate vehemence and a logical reasoning which it was impossible to disregard without evident insincerity.

Coralie had turned aside slightly and Patrice could not see her face; but he suspected her dismay in the presence of all this infamy and shame.

M. Masseron raised an objection:

“Two undeniable facts, you say, Captain Belval? As to the first point, let me remark that we have not found the body of the man who is supposed to have been murdered at nineteen minutes past seven this morning.”

“It will be found in due course.”

“Very well. Second point: as regards the amethyst pendant discovered in Essarès’ hand, how can we tell that Essarès Bey found it in the murdered man’s hand and not somewhere else? For, after all, we do not know if he was at home at that time and still less if he was in his library.”

“But I do know.”

“How?”

“I telephoned to him a few minutes later and he answered. More than that, to sweep away any trace of doubt, he told me that he had rung me up but that he had been cut off.”

M. Masseron thought for a moment and then said:

“Did he go out this morning?”

“Ask Mme. Essarès.”

Without turning round, manifestly wishing to avoid Belval’s eyes, Coralie answered:

“I don’t think that he went out. The suit he was wearing at the time of his death was an indoor suit.”

“Did you see him after last night?”

“He came and knocked at my room three times this morning, between seven and nine o’clock. I did not open the door. At about eleven o’clock I started off alone; I heard him call old Siméon and tell him to go with me. Siméon caught me up in the street. That is all I know.”

A prolonged silence ensued. Each of the three was meditating upon this strange series of adventures. In the end, M. Masseron, who had realized that a man of Captain Belval’s stamp was not the sort to be easily thrust aside, spoke in the tone of one who, before coming to terms, wishes to know exactly what his adversary’s last word is likely to be:

“Let us come to the point, captain. You are building up a theory which strikes me as very vague. What is it precisely? And what are you proposing to do if I decline to accept it? I have asked you two very plain questions. Do you mind answering them?”

“I will answer them, sir, as plainly as you put them.”

He went up to the magistrate and said:

“Here, sir, is the field of battle and of attack—yes, of attack, if need be—which I select. A man who used to know me, who knew Mme. Essarès as a child and who was interested in both of us, a man who used to collect our portraits at different ages, who had reasons for loving us unknown to me, who sent me the key of that garden and who was making arrangements to bring us together for a purpose which he would have told us, this man was murdered at the moment when he was about to execute his plan. Now everything tells me that he was murdered by M. Essarès. I am therefore resolved to lodge an information, whatever the results of my action may be. And believe me, sir, my charge will not be hushed up. There are always means of making one’s self heard . . . even if I am reduced to shouting the truth from the house-tops.”

M. Masseron burst out laughing:

“By Jove, captain, but you’re letting yourself go!”

“I’m behaving according to my conscience; and Mme. Essarès, I feel sure, will forgive me. She knows that I am acting for her good. She knows that all will be over with her if this case is hushed up and if the authorities do not assist her. She knows that the enemies who threaten her are implacable. They will stop at nothing to attain their object and to do away with her, for she stands in their way. And the terrible thing about it is that the most clear-seeing eyes are unable to make out what that object is. We are playing the most formidable game against these enemies; and we do not even know what the stakes are. Only the police can discover those stakes.”

M. Masseron waited for a second or two and then, laying his hand on Patrice’s shoulder, said, calmly:

“And, suppose the authorities knew what the stakes were?”

Patrice looked at him in surprise:

“What? Do you mean to say you know?”

“Perhaps.”

“And can you tell me?”

“Oh, well, if you force me to!”

“What are they?”

“Not much! A trifle!”

“But what sort of trifle?”

“A thousand million francs.”

“A thousand millions?”

“Just that. A thousand millions, of which two-thirds, I regret to say, if not three-quarters, had already left France before the war. But the remaining two hundred and fifty or three hundred millions are worth more than a thousand millions all the same, for a very good reason.”

“What reason?”

“They happen to be in gold.”

CHAPTER VIII
ESSARÈS BEY’S WORK

“No, but she suspected a great deal; and last night, before you arrived, she overheard some words spoken between Essarès and his assailants which she repeated to me, thus giving me the key to the riddle. I should have been glad to work out the complete solution without your assistance—for one thing, those were the orders of the minister of the interior; and Mme. Essarès displayed the same wish—but your impetuosity overcomes my hesitation; and, since I can’t manage to get rid of you, Captain Belval, I will tell you the whole story frankly . . . especially as your cooperation is not to be despised.”

“I am all ears,” said Patrice, who was burning to know more.

“Well, the motive force of the plot was here, in this house. Essarès Bey, president of the Franco-Oriental Bank, 6, Rue Lafayette, apparently an Egyptian, in reality a Turk, enjoyed the greatest influence in the Paris financial world. He had been naturalized an Englishman, but had kept up secret relations with the former possessors of Egypt; and he had received instructions from a foreign power, which I am not yet able to name with certainty, to bleed—there is no other word for it—to bleed France of all the gold that he could cause to flow into his coffers. According to documents which I have seen, he succeeded in exporting in this way some seven hundred million francs in two years. A last consignment was preparing when war was declared. You can understand that thenceforth such important sums could not be smuggled out of the country so easily as in times of peace. The railway-wagons are inspected on the frontiers; the outgoing vessels are searched in the harbors. In short, the gold was not sent away. Those two hundred and fifty or three hundred millions remained in France. Ten months passed; and the inevitable happened, which was that Essarès Bey, having this fabulous treasure at his disposal, clung to it, came gradually to look upon it as his own and, in the end, resolved to appropriate it. Only there were accomplices. . . .”

“The men I saw last night?”

“Yes, half-a-dozen shady Levantines, sham naturalized French citizens, more or less well-disguised Bulgarians, secret agents of the little German courts in the Balkans. This gang ran provincial branches of Essarès’ bank. It had in its pay, on Essarès’ account, hundreds of minor agents, who scoured the villages, visited the fairs, were hail-fellow-well-met with the peasants, offered them bank-notes and government securities in exchange for French gold and trousered all their savings. When war broke out the gang shut up shop and gathered round Essarès Bey, who also had closed his offices in the Rue Lafayette.”

“What happened then?”

“Things that we don’t know. No doubt the accomplices learnt from their governments that the last despatch of gold had never taken place; and no doubt they also guessed that Essarès Bey was trying to keep for himself the three hundred millions collected by the gang. One thing is certain, that a struggle began between the former partners, a fierce, implacable struggle, the accomplices wanting their share of the plunder, while Essarès Bey was resolved to part with none of it and pretended that the millions had left the country. Yesterday the struggle attained its culminating-point. In the afternoon the accomplices tried to get hold of Mme. Essarès so that they might have a hostage to use against her husband. In the evening . . . in the evening you yourself witnessed the final episode.”

“But why yesterday evening rather than another?”

“Because the accomplices had every reason to think that the millions were intended to disappear yesterday evening. Though they did not know the methods employed by Essarès Bey when he made his last remittances, they believed that each of the remittances, or rather each removal of the sacks, was preceded by a signal.”

“Yes, a shower of sparks, was it not?”

“Exactly. In a corner of the garden are some old conservatories, above which stands the furnace that used to heat them. This grimy furnace, full of soot and rubbish, sends forth, when you light it, flakes of fire and sparks which are seen at a distance and serve as an intimation. Essarès Bey lit it last night himself. The accomplices at once took alarm and came prepared to go any lengths.”

“And Essarès’ plan failed.”

“Yes. But so did theirs. The colonel is dead. The others were only able to get hold of a few bundles of notes which have probably been taken from them by this time. But the struggle was not finished; and its dying agony has been a most shocking tragedy. According to your statement, a man who knew you and who was seeking to get into touch with you, was killed at nineteen minutes past seven, most likely by Essarès Bey, who dreaded his intervention. And, five hours later, at twenty-three past twelve, Essarès Bey himself was murdered, presumably by one of his accomplices. There is the whole story, Captain Belval. And, now that you know as much of it as I do, don’t you think that the investigation of this case should remain secret and be pursued not quite in accordance with the ordinary rules?”

After a moment’s reflection Patrice said:

“Yes, I agree.”

“There can be no doubt about it!” cried M. Masseron. “Not only will it serve no purpose to publish this story of gold which has disappeared and which can’t be found, which would startle the public and excite their imaginations, but you will readily imagine that an operation which consisted in draining off such a quantity of gold in two years cannot have been effected without compromising a regrettable number of people. I feel certain that my own enquiries will reveal a series of weak concessions and unworthy bargains on the part of certain more or less important banks and credit-houses, transactions on which I do not wish to insist, but which it would be the gravest of blunders to publish. Therefore, silence.”

“But is silence possible?”

“Why not?”

“Bless my soul, there are a good few corpses to be explained away! Colonel Fakhi’s, for instance?”

“Suicide.”

“Mustapha’s, which you will discover or which you have already discovered in the Galliéra garden?”

“Found dead.”

“Essarès Bey’s?”

“An accident.”

“So that all these manifestations of the same power will remain separated?”

“There is nothing to show the link that connects them.”

“Perhaps the public will think otherwise.”

“The public will think what we wish it to think. This is war-time.”

“The press will speak.”

“The press will do nothing of the kind. We have the censorship.”

“But, if some fact or, rather, a fresh crime . . . ?”

“Why should there be a fresh crime? The matter is finished, at least on its active and dramatic side. The chief actors are dead. The curtain falls on the murder of Essarès Bey. As for the supernumeraries, Bournef and the others, we shall have them stowed away in an internment-camp before a week is past. We therefore find ourselves in the presence of a certain number of millions, with no owner, with no one who dares to claim them, on which France is entitled to lay hands. I shall devote my activity to securing the money for the republic.”

Patrice Belval shook his head:

“Mme. Essarès remains, sir. We must not forget her husband’s threats.”

“He is dead.”

“No matter, the threats are there. Old Siméon tells you so in a striking fashion.”

“He’s half mad.”

“Exactly, his brain retains the impression of great and imminent danger. No, the struggle is not ended. Perhaps indeed it is only beginning.”

“Well, captain, are we not here? Make it your business to protect and defend Mme. Essarès by all the means in your power and by all those which I place at your disposal. Our collaboration will be uninterrupted, because my task lies here and because, if the battle—which you expect and I do not—takes place, it will be within the walls of this house and garden.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Some words which Mme. Essarès overheard last night. The colonel repeated several times, ‘The gold is here, Essarès.’ He added, ‘For years past, your car brought to this house all that there was at your bank in the Rue Lafayette. Siméon, you and the chauffeur used to let the sacks down the last grating on the left. How you used to send it away I do not know. But of what was here on the day when the war broke out, of the seventeen or eighteen hundred bags which they were expecting out yonder, none has left your place. I suspected the trick; and we kept watch night and day. The gold is here.’”

“And have you no clue?”

“Not one. Or this at most; but I attach comparatively little value to it.”

He took a crumpled paper from his pocket, unfolded it and continued:

“Besides the pendant, Essarès Bey held in his hand this bit of blotted paper, on which you can see a few straggling, hurriedly-written words. The only ones that are more or less legible are these: ‘golden triangle.’ What this golden triangle means, what it has to do with the case in hand, I can’t for the present tell. The most that I am able to presume is that, like the pendant, the scrap of paper was snatched by Essarès Bey from the man who died at nineteen minutes past seven this morning and that, when he himself was killed at twenty-three minutes past twelve, he was occupied in examining it.”

“And then there is the album,” said Patrice, making his last point. “You see how all the details are linked together. You may safely believe that it is all one case.”

“Very well,” said M. Masseron. “One case in two parts. You, captain, had better follow up the second. I grant you that nothing could be stranger than this discovery of photographs of Mme. Essarès and yourself in the same album and in the same pendant. It sets a problem the solution of which will no doubt bring us very near to the truth. We shall meet again soon, Captain Belval, I hope. And, once more, make use of me and of my men.”

He shook Patrice by the hand. Patrice held him back:

“I shall make use of you, sir, as you suggest. But is this not the time to take the necessary precautions?”

“They are taken, captain. We are in occupation of the house.”

“Yes . . . yes . . . I know; but, all the same . . . I have a sort of presentiment that the day will not end without. . . . Remember old Siméon’s strange words. . . .”

M. Masseron began to laugh:

“Come, Captain Belval, we mustn’t exaggerate things. If any enemies remain for us to fight, they must stand in great need, for the moment, of taking council with themselves. We’ll talk about this to-morrow, shall we, captain?”

He shook hands with Patrice again, bowed to Mme. Essarès and left the room.

Belval had at first made a discreet movement to go out with him. He stopped at the door and walked back again. Mme. Essarès, who seemed not to hear him, sat motionless, bent in two, with her head turned away from him.

“Coralie,” he said.

She did not reply; and he uttered her name a second time, hoping that again she might not answer, for her silence suddenly appeared to him to be the one thing in the world for him to desire. That silence no longer implied either constraint or rebellion. Coralie accepted the fact that he was there, by her side, as a helpful friend. And Patrice no longer thought of all the problems that harassed him, nor of the murders that had mounted up, one after another, around them, nor of the dangers that might still encompass them. He thought only of Coralie’s yielding gentleness.

“Don’t answer, Coralie, don’t say a word. It is for me to speak. I must tell you what you do not know, the reasons that made you wish to keep me out of this house . . . out of this house and out of your very life.”

He put his hand on the back of the chair in which she was sitting; and his hand just touched Coralie’s hair.

“Coralie, you imagine that it is the shame of your life here that keeps you away from me. You blush at having been that man’s wife; and this makes you feel troubled and anxious, as though you yourself had been guilty. But why should you? It was not your fault. Surely you know that I can guess the misery and hatred that must have passed between you and him and the constraint that was brought to bear upon you, by some machination, in order to force your consent to the marriage! No, Coralie, there is something else; and I will tell you what it is. There is something else. . . .”

He was bending over her still more. He saw her beautiful profile lit up by the blazing logs and, speaking with increasing fervor and adopting the familiar tu and toi which, in his mouth, retained a note of affectionate respect, he cried:

“Am I to speak, Little Mother Coralie? I needn’t, need I? You have understood; and you read yourself clearly. Ah, I feel you trembling from head to foot! Yes, yes, I tell you, I knew your secret from the very first day. From the very first day you loved your great beggar of a wounded man, all scarred and maimed though he was. Hush! Don’t deny it! . . . Yes, I understand: you are rather shocked to hear such words as these spoken to-day. I ought perhaps to have waited. And yet why should I? I am asking you nothing. I know; and that is enough for me. I sha’n’t speak of it again for a long time to come, until the inevitable hour arrives when you are forced to tell it to me yourself. Till then I shall keep silence. But our love will always be between us; and it will be exquisite, Little Mother Coralie, it will be exquisite for me to know that you love me. Coralie. . . . There, now you’re crying! And you would still deny the truth? Why, when you cry—I know you, Little Mother—it means that your dear heart is overflowing with tenderness and love! You are crying? Ah, Little Mother, I never thought you loved me to that extent!”

Patrice also had tears in his eyes. Coralie’s were coursing down her pale cheeks; and he would have given much to kiss that wet face. But the least outward sign of affection appeared to him an offense at such a moment. He was content to gaze at her passionately.

And, as he did so, he received an impression that her thoughts were becoming detached from his own, that her eyes were being attracted by an unexpected sight and that, amid the great silence of their love, she was listening to something that he himself had not heard.

And suddenly he too heard that thing, though it was almost imperceptible. It was not so much a sound as the sensation of a presence mingling with the distant rumble of the town. What could be happening?

The light had begun to fade, without his noticing it. Also unperceived by Patrice, Mme. Essarès had opened the window a little way, for the boudoir was small and the heat of the fire was becoming oppressive. Nevertheless, the two casements were almost touching. It was at this that she was staring; and it was from there that the danger threatened.