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

The enemy’s footsteps were pounding over the zinc.

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

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

“It was he, was it not?”

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

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

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

And Coralie read:

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

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

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

He felt Coralie’s fingers clutching his arm.

“Hush,” she said, “here he is!”

“No, no.”

“Yes, I’m sure of it.”

Her imagination had foretold what was preparing; and in fact, as once before, the skylight was raised higher. A hand lifted it. And suddenly they saw a head slipping under the open framework.

It was the head of old Siméon.

“The madman!” Patrice whispered, in dismay. “The madman!”

“But perhaps he isn’t mad,” she said. “He can’t be mad.”

She could not check the trembling that shook her.

The man overhead looked down upon them, hidden behind his spectacles, which allowed no expression of satisfied hatred or joy to show on his impassive features.

“Coralie,” said Patrice, in a low voice, “do what I say. . . . Come. . . .”

He pushed her gently along, as though he were supporting her and leading her to a chair. In reality he had but one thought, to reach the table on which he had placed his revolvers, take one of them and fire.

Siméon remained motionless, like some evil genius come to unloose the tempest. . . . Coralie could not rid herself of that glance which weighted upon her.

“No,” she murmured, resisting Patrice, as though she feared that his intention would precipitate the dreaded catastrophe, “no, you mustn’t. . . .”

But Patrice, displaying greater determination, was near his object. One more effort and his hand would hold the revolver.

He quickly made up his mind, took rapid aim and fired a shot.

The head disappeared from sight.

“Oh,” said Coralie, “you were wrong, Patrice! He will take his revenge on us. . . .”

“No, perhaps not,” said Patrice, still holding his revolver. “I may very well have hit him. The bullet struck the frame of the skylight. But it may have glanced off, in which case . . .”

They waited hand in hand, with a gleam of hope, which did not last long, however.

The noise on the roof began again. And then, as before—and this they really had the impression of not seeing for the first time—as before, something passed through the opening, something that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of the room, a ladder, a rope-ladder, the very one which Patrice had seen in old Siméon’s cupboard.

As before, they looked at it; and they knew so well that everything was being done over again, that the facts were inexorably, pitilessly linked together, they were so certain of it that their eyes at once sought the sheet of paper which must inevitably be pinned to the bottom rung.

It was there, forming a little scroll, dry and discolored and torn at the edges. It was the sheet of twenty years ago, written by Essarès and now serving, as before, to convey the same temptation and the same threat:

CHAPTER XIII
THE NAILS IN THE COFFIN

There was a long silence, full of uncertainty and anguish between the two lovers. They were coming to grips with something; and the drama was no longer taking place absolutely outside them, without their playing any other part than that of helpless victims. It was being enacted within themselves; and they had the power to alter its ending. It was a terrible problem. It had already been set to the earlier Coralie; and she had solved it as a lover would, for she was dead. And now it was being set again.

Patrice read the inscription; and the rapidly scrawled words became less distinct:

Patrice looked at Coralie. He had read the words in a very low voice; and she had not heard them. Then, in a burst of passion, he drew her eagerly to him and exclaimed:

“You must go, Coralie! You can understand that my not saying so at once was not due to hesitation. No, only . . . I was thinking of that man’s offer . . . and I am frightened for your sake. . . . What he asks, Coralie, is terrible. His reason for promising to save your life is that he loves you. And so you understand. . . . But still, Coralie, you must obey . . . you must go on living. . . . Go! It is no use waiting for the ten minutes to pass. He might change his mind and condemn you to death as well. No, Coralie, you must go, you must go at once!”

“I shall stay,” she replied, simply.

He gave a start:

“But this is madness! Why make a useless sacrifice? Are you afraid of what might happen if you obeyed him?”

“No.”

“Then go.”

“I shall stay.”

“But why? Why this obstinacy? It can do no good. Then why stay?”

“Because I love you, Patrice.”

He stood dumfounded. He knew that she loved him and he had already told her so. But that she loved him to the extent of preferring to die in his company, this was an unexpected, exquisite and at the same time terrible delight.

“Ah,” he said, “you love me, Coralie! You love me!”

“I love you, my own Patrice.”

She put her arms around his neck; and he felt that hers was an embrace too strong to be sundered. Nevertheless, he was resolved to save her; and he refused to yield:

“If you love me,” he said, “you must obey me and save your life. Believe me, it is a hundred times more painful for me to die with you than to die alone. If I know that you are free and alive, death will be sweet to me.”

She did not listen and continued her confession, happy in making it, happy in uttering words which she had kept to herself so long:

“I have loved you, Patrice, from the first day I saw you. I knew it without your telling me; and my only reason for not telling you earlier was that I was waiting for a solemn occasion, for a time when it would be a glory to tell you so, while I looked into the depths of your eyes and offered myself to you entirely. As I have had to speak on the brink of the grave, listen to me and do not force upon me a separation which would be worse than death.”

“No, no,” he said, striving to release himself, “it is your duty to go.”

He made another effort and caught hold of her hands:

“It is your duty to go,” he whispered, “and, when you are free, to do all that you can to save me.”

“What are you saying, Patrice?”

“Yes,” he repeated, “to save me. There is no reason why you should not escape from that scoundrel’s clutches, report him, seek assistance, warn our friends. You can call out, you can play some trick. . . .”

She looked at him with so sad a smile and such a doubting expression that he stopped speaking.

“You are trying to mislead me, my poor darling,” she said, “but you are no more taken in by what you say than I am. No, Patrice, you well know that, if I surrender myself to that man, he will reduce me to silence or imprison me in some hiding-place, bound hand and foot, until you have drawn your last breath.”

“You really think that?”

“Just as you do, Patrice. Just as you are sure of what will happen afterwards.”

“Well, what will happen?”

“Ah, Patrice, if that man saves my life, it will not be out of generosity. Don’t you see what his plan is, his abominable plan, once I am his prisoner? And don’t you also see what my only means of escape will be? Therefore, Patrice, if I am to die in a few hours, why not die now, in your arms . . . at the same time as yourself, with my lips to yours? Is that dying? Is it not rather living, in one instant, the most wonderful of lives?”

He resisted her embrace. He knew that the first kiss of her proffered lips would deprive him of all his power of will.

“This is terrible,” he muttered. “How can you expect me to accept your sacrifice, you, so young, with years of happiness before you?”

“Years of mourning and despair, if you are gone.”

“You must live, Coralie. I entreat you to, with all my soul.”

“I cannot live without you, Patrice. You are my only happiness. I have no reason for existence except to love you. You have taught me to love. I love you!”

Oh, those heavenly words! For the second time they rang between the four walls of that room. The same words, spoken by the daughter, which the mother had spoken with the same passion and the same glad acceptance of her fate! The same words made twice holy by the recollection of death past and the thought of death to come!

Coralie uttered them without alarm. All her fears seemed to disappear in her love; and it was love alone that shook her voice and dimmed the brightness of her eyes.

Patrice contemplated her with a rapt look. He too was beginning to think that minutes such as these were worth dying for. Nevertheless, he made a last effort:

“And if I ordered you to go, Coralie?”

“That is to say,” she murmured, “if you ordered me to go to that man and surrender myself to him? Is that what you wish, Patrice?”

The thought was too much for him.

“Oh, the horror of it! That man . . . that man . . . you, my Coralie, so stainless and undefiled! . . .”

Neither he nor she pictured the man in the exact image of Siméon. To both of them, notwithstanding the hideous vision perceived above, the enemy retained a mysterious character. It was perhaps Siméon. It was perhaps another, of whom Siméon was but the instrument. Assuredly it was the enemy, the evil genius crouching above their heads, preparing their death-throes while he pursued Coralie with his foul desire.

Patrice asked one more question:

“Did you ever notice that Siméon sought your company?”

“No, never. If anything, he rather avoided me.”

“Then it’s because he’s mad. . . .”

“I don’t think he is mad: he is revenging himself.”

“Impossible. He was my father’s friend. All his life long he worked to bring us together: surely he would not kill us deliberately?”

“I don’t know, Patrice, I don’t understand. . . .”

They discussed it no further. It was of no importance whether their death was caused by this one or that one. It was death itself that they had to fight, without troubling who had set it loose against them. And what could they do to ward it off?

“You agree, do you not?” asked Coralie, in a low voice.

He made no answer.

“I shall not go,” she went on, “but I want you to be of one mind with me. I entreat you. It tortures me to think that you are suffering more than I do. You must let me bear my share. Tell me that you agree.”

“Yes,” he said, “I agree.”

“My own Patrice! Now give me your two hands, look right into my eyes and smile.”

Mad with love and longing they plunged themselves for an instant into a sort of ecstasy. Then she asked:

“What is it, Patrice? You seem distraught again.”

He gave a hoarse cry:

“Look! . . . Look . . .”

This time he was certain of what he had seen. The ladder was going up. The ten minutes were over.

He rushed forward and caught hold of one of the rungs. The ladder no longer moved.

He did not know exactly what he intended to do. The ladder afforded Coralie’s only chance of safety. Could he abandon that hope and resign himself to the inevitable?

One or two minutes passed. The ladder must have been hooked fast again, for Patrice felt a firm resistance up above.

Coralie was entreating him:

“Patrice,” she asked, “Patrice, what are you hoping for?”

He looked around and above him, as though seeking an idea, and he seemed also to look inside himself, as though he were seeking that idea amid all the memories which he had accumulated at the moment when his father also held the ladder, in a last effort of will. And suddenly, throwing up his leg, he placed his left foot on the fifth rung of the ladder and began to raise himself by the uprights.

It was an absurd attempt to scale the ladder, to reach the skylight, to lay hold of the enemy and thus save himself and Coralie. If his father had failed before him, how could he hope to succeed?

It was all over in less than three seconds. The ladder was at once unfastened from the hook that kept it hanging from the skylight; and Patrice and the ladder came to the ground together. At the same time a strident laugh rang out above, followed the next moment by the sound of the skylight closing.

Patrice picked himself up in a fury, hurled insults at the enemy and, as his rage increased, fired two revolver shots, which broke two of the panes. He next attacked the doors and windows, banging at them with the iron dog which he had taken from the fender. He hit the walls, he hit the floor, he shook his fist at the invisible enemy who was mocking him. But suddenly, after a few blows struck at space, he was compelled to stop. Something like a thick veil had glided overhead. They were in the dark.

He understood what had happened. The enemy had lowered a shutter upon the skylight, covering it entirely.

“Patrice! Patrice!” cried Coralie, maddened by the blotting out of the light and losing all her strength of mind. “Patrice! Where are you, Patrice? Oh, I’m frightened! Where are you?”

They began to grope for each other, like blind people, and nothing that had gone before seemed to them more horrible than to be lost in this pitiless blackness.

“Patrice! Oh, Patrice! Where are you?”

Their hands touched, Coralie’s poor little frozen fingers and Patrice’s hands that burned with fever, and they pressed each other and twined together and clutched each other as though to assure themselves that they were still living.

“Oh, don’t leave me, Patrice!” Coralie implored.

“I am here,” he replied. “Have no fear: they can’t separate us.”

“You are right,” she panted, “they can’t separate us. We are in our grave.”

The word was so terrible and Coralie uttered it so mournfully that a reaction overtook Patrice.

“No! What are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “We must not despair. There is hope of safety until the last moment.”

Releasing one of his hands, he took aim with his revolver. A few faint rays trickled through the chinks around the skylight. He fired three times. They heard the crack of the wood-work and the chuckle of the enemy. But the shutter must have been lined with metal, for no split appeared.

Besides, the chinks were forthwith stopped up; and they became aware that the enemy was engaged in the same work that he had performed around the doors and windows. It was obviously very thorough and took a long time in the doing. Next came another work, completing the first. The enemy was nailing the shutter to the frame of the skylight.

It was an awful sound! Swift and light as were the taps of the hammer, they seemed to drive deep into the brain of those who heard them. It was their coffin that was being nailed down, their great coffin with a lid hermetically sealed that now bore heavy upon them. There was no hope left, not a possible chance of escape. Each tap of the hammer strengthened their dark prison, making yet more impregnable the walls that stood between them and the outer world and bade defiance to the most resolute assault:

“Patrice,” stammered Coralie, “I’m frightened . . . That tapping hurts me so!” . . .

She sank back in his arms. Patrice felt tears coursing down her cheeks.

Meanwhile the work overhead was being completed. They underwent the terrible experience which condemned men must feel on the morning of their last day, when from their cells they hear the preparations: the engine of death that is being set up, or the electric batteries that are being tested. They hear men striving to have everything ready, so that not one propitious chance may remain and so that destiny may be fulfilled. Death had entered the enemy’s service and was working hand in hand with him. He was death itself, acting, contriving and fighting against those whom he had resolved to destroy.

“Don’t leave me,” sobbed Coralie, “don’t leave me! . . .”

“Only for a second or two,” he said. “We must be avenged later.”

“What is the use, Patrice? What can it matter to us?”

He had a box containing a few matches. Lighting them one after the other, he led Coralie to the panel with the inscription.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I will not have our death put down to suicide. I want to do what our parents did before us and to prepare for the future. Some one will read what I am going to write and will avenge us.”

He took a pencil from his pocket and bent down. There was a free space, right at the bottom of the panel. He wrote:

But, as he finished writing, he noticed a few words of the former inscription which he had not yet read, because they were placed outside it, so to speak, and did not appear to form part of it.

“One more match,” he said. “Did you see? There are some words there, the last, no doubt, that my father wrote.”

She struck a match. By the flickering light they made out a certain number of misshapen letters, obviously written in a hurry and forming two words:

The match went out. They rose in silence. Asphyxiated! They understood. That was how their parents had perished and how they themselves would perish. But they did not yet fully realize how the thing would happen. The lack of air would never be great enough to suffocate them in this large room, which contained enough to last them for many days.

“Unless,” muttered Patrice, “unless the quality of the air can be impaired and therefore . . .”

He stopped. Then he went on:

“Yes, that’s it. I remember.”

He told Coralie what he suspected, or rather what conformed so well with the reality as to leave no room for doubt. He had seen in old Siméon’s cupboard not only the rope-ladder which the madman had brought with him, but also a coil of lead pipes. And now Siméon’s behavior from the moment when they were locked in, his movements to and fro around the lodge, the care with which he had stopped up every crevice, his labors along the wall and on the roof: all this was explained in the most definite fashion. Old Siméon had simply fitted to a gas-meter, probably in the kitchen, the pipe which he had next laid along the wall and on the roof. This therefore was the way in which they were about to die, as their parents had died before them, stifled by ordinary gas.

Panic-stricken, they began to run aimlessly about the room, holding hands, while their disordered brains, bereft of thought or will, seemed like tiny things shaken by the fiercest gale. Coralie uttered incoherent words. Patrice, while imploring her to keep calm, was himself carried away by the storm and powerless to resist the terrible agony of the darkness wherein death lay waiting. At such times a man tries to flee, to escape the icy breath that is already chilling his marrow. He must flee, but where? Which way? The walls are insurmountable and the darkness is even harder than the walls.

They stopped, exhausted. A low hiss was heard somewhere in the room, the faint hiss that issues from a badly-closed gas-jet. They listened and perceived that it came from above. The torture was beginning.

“It will last half an hour, or an hour at most,” Patrice whispered.

Coralie had recovered her self-consciousness:

“We shall be brave,” she said.

“Oh, if I were alone! But you, you, my poor Coralie!”

“It is painless,” she murmured.

“You are bound to suffer, you, so weak!”

“One suffers less, the weaker one is. Besides, I know that we sha’n’t suffer, Patrice.”

She suddenly appeared so placid that he on his side was filled with a great peace. Seated on a sofa, their fingers still entwined, they silently steeped themselves in the mighty calm which comes when we think that events have run their course. This calm is resignation, submission to superior forces. Natures such as theirs cease to rebel when destiny has manifested its orders and when nothing remains but acquiescence and prayer.

She put her arm round Patrice’s neck:

“I am your bride in the eyes of God,” she said. “May He receive us as He would receive a husband and wife.”

Her gentle resignation brought tears to his eyes. She dried them with her kisses, and, of her own seeking, offered him her lips.

They sat wrapped in an infinite silence. They perceived the first smell of gas descending around them, but they felt no fear.

“Everything will happen as it did before, Coralie,” whispered Patrice, “down to the very last second. Your mother and my father, who loved each other as we do, also died in each other’s arms, with their lips joined together. They had decided to unite us and they have united us.”

“Our grave will be near theirs,” she murmured.

Little by little their ideas became confused and they began to think much as a man sees through a rising mist. They had had nothing to eat; and hunger now added its discomfort to the vertigo in which their minds were imperceptibly sinking. As it increased, their uneasiness and anxiety left them, to be followed by a sense of ecstasy, then lassitude, extinction, repose. The dread of the coming annihilation faded out of their thoughts.

Coralie, the first to be affected, began to utter delirious words which astonished Patrice at first:

“Dearest, there are flowers falling, roses all around us. How delightful!”

Presently he himself grew conscious of the same blissful exaltation, expressing itself in tenderness and joyful emotion. With no sort of dismay he felt her gradually yielding in his arms and abandoning herself; and he had the impression that he was following her down a measureless abyss, all bathed with light, where they floated, he and she, descending slowly and without effort towards a happy valley.

Minutes or perhaps hours passed. They were still descending, he supporting her by the waist, she with her head thrown back a little way, her eyes closed and a smile upon her lips. He remembered pictures showing gods thus gliding through the blue of heaven; and, drunk with pure, radiant light and air, he continued to circle above the happy valley.

But, as he approached it, he felt himself grow weary. Coralie weighed heavily on his bent arm. The descent increased in speed. The waves of light turned to darkness. A thick cloud came, followed by others that formed a whirl of gloom.

And suddenly, worn out, his forehead bathed in sweat and his body shaking with fever, he pitched forward into a great black pit. . . .

CHAPTER XIV
A STRANGE CHARACTER

Next hours passed . . . or seconds. In the end Patrice had a feeling that he was falling asleep, but as a man sleeps in hell, suffering the moral and physical tortures of the damned. He was back at the bottom of the black pit, which he was making desperate efforts to leave, like a man who has fallen into the sea and is trying to reach the surface. In this way, with the greatest difficulty, he passed through one waste of water after another, the weight of which stifled him. He had to scale them, gripping with his hands and feet to things that slipped, to rope-ladders which, possessing no points of support, gave way beneath him.

Meanwhile the darkness became less intense. A little muffled daylight mingled with it. Patrice felt less greatly oppressed. He half-opened his eyes, drew a breath or two and, looking round, beheld a sight that surprised him, the embrasure of an open door, near which he was lying in the air, on a sofa. Beside him he saw Coralie, on another sofa. She moved restlessly and seemed to be in great discomfort.

“She is climbing out of the black pit,” he thought to himself. “Like me, she is struggling. My poor Coralie!”

There was a small table between them, with two glasses of water on it. Parched with thirst, he took one of them in his hand. But he dared not drink.

At that moment some one came through the open door, which Patrice perceived to be the door of the lodge; and he observed that it was not old Siméon, as he had thought, but a stranger whom he had never seen before.

“I am not asleep,” he said to himself. “I am sure that I am not asleep and that this stranger is a friend.”

And he tried to say it aloud, to make certainty doubly sure. But he had not the strength.

The stranger, however, came up to him and, in a gentle voice, said:

“Don’t tire yourself, captain. You’re all right now. Allow me. Have some water.”

The stranger handed him one of the two glasses; Patrice emptied it at a draught, without any feeling of distrust, and was glad to see Coralie also drinking.

“Yes, I’m all right now,” he said. “Heavens, how good it is to be alive! Coralie is really alive, isn’t she?”

He did not hear the answer and dropped into a welcome sleep.

When he woke up, the crisis was over, though he still felt a buzzing in his head and a difficulty in drawing a deep breath. He stood up, however, and realized that all these sensations were not fanciful, that he was really outside the door of the lodge and that Coralie had drunk the glass of water and was peacefully sleeping.

“How good it is to be alive!” he repeated.

He now felt a need for action, but dared not go into the lodge, notwithstanding the open door. He moved away from it, skirting the cloisters containing the graves, and then, with no exact object, for he did not yet grasp the reason of his own actions, did not understand what had happened to him and was simply walking at random, he came back towards the lodge, on the other front, the one overlooking the garden.

Suddenly he stopped. A few yards from the house, at the foot of a tree standing beside the slanting path, a man lay back in a wicker long-chair, with his face in the shade and his legs in the sun. He was sleeping, with his head fallen forward and an open book upon his knees.

Then and not till then did Patrice clearly understand that he and Coralie had escaped being killed, that they were both really alive and that they owed their safety to this man whose sleep suggested a state of absolute security and satisfied conscience.

Patrice studied the stranger’s appearance. He was slim of figure, but broad-shouldered, with a sallow complexion, a slight mustache on his lips and hair beginning to turn gray at the temples. His age was probably fifty at most. The cut of his clothes pointed to dandyism. Patrice leant forward and read the title of the book: The Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin. He also read the initials inside a hat lying on the grass: “L. P.”

“It was he who saved me,” said Patrice to himself, “I recognize him. He carried us both out of the studio and looked after us. But how was the miracle brought about? Who sent him?”

He tapped him on the shoulder. The man was on his feet at once, his face lit up with a smile:

“Pardon me, captain, but my life is so much taken up that, when I have a few minutes to myself, I use them for sleeping, wherever I may be . . . like Napoleon, eh? Well, I don’t object to the comparison. . . . But enough about myself. How are you feeling now? And madame—‘Little Mother Coralie’—is she better? I saw no use in waking you, after I had opened the doors and taken you outside. I had done what was necessary and felt quite easy. You were both breathing. So I left the rest to the good pure air.”

He broke off, at the sight of Patrice’s disconcerted attitude; and his smile made way for a merry laugh:

“Oh, I was forgetting: you don’t know me! Of course, it’s true, the letter I sent you was intercepted. Let me introduce myself. Don Luis Perenna,[3] a member of an old Spanish family, genuine patent of nobility, papers all in order. . . . But I can see that all this tells you nothing,” he went on, laughing still more gaily. “No doubt Ya-Bon described me differently when he wrote my name on that street-wall, one evening a fortnight ago. Aha, you’re beginning to understand! . . . Yes, I’m the man you sent for to help you. Shall I mention the name, just bluntly? Well, here goes, captain! . . . Arsène Lupin, at your service.”

Patrice was stupefied. He had utterly forgotten Ya-Bon’s proposal and the unthinking permission which he had given him to call in the famous adventurer. And here was Arsène Lupin standing in front of him, Arsène Lupin, who, by a sheer effort of will that resembled an incredible miracle, had dragged him and Coralie out of their hermetically-sealed coffin.

He held out his hand and said:

“Thank you!”

“Tut!” said Don Luis, playfully. “No thanks! Just a good hand-shake, that’s all. And I’m a man you can shake hands with, captain, believe me. I may have a few peccadilloes on my conscience, but on the other hand I have committed a certain number of good actions which should win me the esteem of decent folk . . . beginning with my own. And so . . .”

He interrupted himself again, seemed to reflect and, taking Patrice by a button of his jacket, said:

“Don’t move. We are being watched.”

“By whom?”

“Some one on the quay, right at the end of the garden. The wall is not high. There’s a grating on the top of it. They’re looking through the bars and trying to see us.”

“How do you know? You have your back turned to the quay; and then there are the trees.”

“Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything out of the way.”

“Yes, the sound of an engine . . . the engine of a stopping car. Now what would a car want to stop here for, on the quay, opposite a wall with no house near it?”

“Then who do you think it is?”

“Why, old Siméon, of course!”

“Old Siméon!”

“Certainly. He’s looking to see whether I’ve really saved the two of you.”

“Then he’s not mad?”

“Mad? No more mad than you or I!”

“And yet . . .”

“What you mean is that Siméon used to protect you; that his object was to bring you two together; that he sent you the key of the garden-door; and so on and so on.”

“Do you know all that?”

“Well, of course! If not, how could I have rescued you?”

“But,” said Patrice, anxiously, “suppose the scoundrel returns to the attack. Ought we not to take some precautions? Let’s go back to the lodge: Coralie is all alone.”

“There’s no danger.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m here.”

Patrice was more astounded than ever:

“Then Siméon knows you?” he asked. “He knows that you are here?”

“Yes, thanks to a letter which I wrote you under cover to Ya-Bon and which he intercepted. I told you that I was coming; and he hurried to get to work. Only, as my habit is on these occasions, I hastened on my arrival by a few hours, so that I caught him in the act.”

“At that moment you did not know he was the enemy; you knew nothing?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Was it this morning?”

“No, this afternoon, at a quarter to two.”

Patrice took out his watch:

“And it’s now four. So in two hours . . .”

“Not that. I’ve been here an hour.”

“Did you find out from Ya-Bon?”

“Do you think I’ve no better use for my time? Ya-Bon simply told me that you were not there, which was enough to astonish me.”

“After that?”

“I looked to see where you were.”

“How?”

“I first searched your room and, doing so in my own thorough fashion, ended by discovering that there was a crack at the back of your roll-top desk and that this crack faced a hole in the wall of the next room. I was able therefore to pull out the book in which you kept your diary and acquaint myself with what was going on. This, moreover, was how Siméon became aware of your least intentions. This was how he knew of your plan to come here, on a pilgrimage, on the fourteenth of April. This was how, last night, seeing you write, he preferred, before attacking you, to know what you were writing. Knowing it and learning, from your own words, that you were on your guard, he refrained. You see how simple it all is. If M. Masseron had grown uneasy at your absence, he would have been just as successful. Only he would have been successful to-morrow.”

“That is to say, too late.”

“Yes, too late. This really isn’t his business, however, nor that of the police. So I would rather that they didn’t meddle with it. I asked your wounded soldiers to keep silent about anything that may strike them as queer. Therefore, if M. Masseron comes to-day, he will think that everything is in order. Well, having satisfied my mind in this respect and possessing the necessary information from your diary, I took Ya-Bon with me and walked across the lane and into the garden.”

“Was the door open?”

“No, but Siméon happened to be coming out at that moment. Bad luck for him, wasn’t it? I took advantage of it boldly. I put my hand on the latch and we went in, without his daring to protest. He certainly knew who I was.”

“But you didn’t know at that time that he was the enemy?”

“I didn’t know? And what about your diary?”

“I had no notion . . .”

“But, captain, every page is an indictment of the man. There’s not an incident in which he did not take part, not a crime which he did not prepare.”

“In that case you should have collared him.”

“And if I had? What good would it have done me? Should I have compelled him to speak? No, I shall hold him tightest by leaving him his liberty. That will give him rope, you know. You see already he’s prowling round the house instead of clearing out. Besides, I had something better to do: I had first to rescue you two . . . if there was still time. Ya-Bon and I therefore rushed to the door of the lodge. It was open; but the other, the door of the studio, was locked and bolted. I drew the bolts; and to force the lock was, for me, child’s play. Then the smell of gas was enough to tell me what had happened, Siméon must have fitted an old meter to some outside pipe, probably the one which supplied the lamps on the lane, and he was suffocating you. All that remained for us to do was to fetch the two of you out and give you the usual treatment: rubbing, artificial respiration and so on. You were saved.”

“I suppose he removed all his murderous appliances?” asked Patrice.

“No, he evidently contemplated coming back and putting everything to rights, so that his share in the business could not be proved, so too that people might believe in your suicide, a mysterious suicide, death without apparent cause; in short, the same tragedy that happened with your father and Little Mother Coralie’s mother.”

“Then you know? . . .”

“Why, haven’t I eyes to read with? What about the inscription on the wall, your father’s revelations? I know as much as you do, captain . . . and perhaps a bit more.”

“More?”

“Well, of course! Habit, you know, experience! Plenty of problems, unintelligible to others, seem to me the simplest and clearest that can be. Therefore . . .”

Don Luis hesitated whether to go on:

“No,” he said, “it’s better that I shouldn’t speak. The mystery will be dispelled gradually. Let us wait. For the moment . . .”

He again stopped, this time to listen:

“There, he must have seen you. And now that he knows what he wants to, he’s going away.”

Patrice grew excited:

“He’s going away! You really ought to have collared him. Shall we ever find him again, the scoundrel? Shall we ever be able to take our revenge?”

Don Luis smiled:

“There you go, calling him a scoundrel, the man who watched over you for twenty years, who brought you and Little Mother Coralie together, who was your benefactor!”

“Oh, I don’t know! All this is so bewildering! I can’t help hating him. . . . The idea of his getting away maddens me. . . . I should like to torture him and yet . . .”

He yielded to a feeling of despair and took his head between his two hands. Don Luis comforted him:

“Have no fear,” he said. “He was never nearer his downfall than at the present moment. I hold him in my hand as I hold this leaf.”

“But how?”

“The man who’s driving him belongs to me.”

“What’s that? What do you mean?”

“I mean that I put one of my men on the driver’s seat of a taxi, with instructions to hang about at the bottom of the lane, and that Siméon did not fail to take the taxi in question.”

“That is to say, you suppose so,” Patrice corrected him, feeling more and more astounded.

“I recognized the sound of the engine at the bottom of the garden when I told you.”

“And are you sure of your man?”

“Certain.”

“What’s the use? Siméon can drive far out of Paris, stab the man in the back . . . and then when shall we get to know?”

“Do you imagine that people can get out of Paris and go running about the high-roads without a special permit? No, if Siméon leaves Paris he will have to drive to some railway station or other and we shall know of it twenty minutes after. And then we’ll be off.”

“How?”

“By motor.”

“Then you have a pass?”

“Yes, valid for the whole of France.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“I do; and a genuine pass at that! Made out in the name of Don Luis Perenna, signed by the minister of the interior and countersigned . . .”

“By whom?”

“By the President of the Republic.”

Patrice felt his bewilderment change all at once into violent excitement. Hitherto, in the terrible adventure in which he was engaged, he had undergone the enemy’s implacable will and had known little besides defeat and the horrors of ever-threatening death. But now a more powerful will suddenly arose in his favor. And everything was abruptly altered. Fate seemed to be changing its course, like a ship which an unexpected fair wind brings back into harbor.

“Upon my word, captain,” said Don Luis, “I thought you were going to cry like Little Mother Coralie. Your nerves are overstrung. And I daresay you’re hungry. We must find you something to eat. Come along.”

He led him slowly towards the lodge and, speaking in a rather serious voice:

“I must ask you,” he said, “to be absolutely discreet in this whole matter. With the exception of a few old friends and of Ya-Bon, whom I met in Africa, where he saved my life, no one in France knows me by my real name. I call myself Don Luis Perenna. In Morocco, where I was soldiering, I had occasion to do a service to the very gracious sovereign of a neighboring neutral nation, who, though obliged to conceal his true feelings, is ardently on our side. He sent for me; and, in return, I asked him to give me my credentials and to obtain a pass for me. Officially, therefore, I am on a secret mission, which expires in two days. In two days I shall go back . . . to whence I came, to a place where, during the war, I am serving France in my fashion: not a bad one, believe me, as people will see one day.”

They came to the settee on which Coralie lay sleeping. Don Luis laid his hand on Patrice’s arm:

“One word more, captain. I swore to myself and I gave my word of honor to him who trusted me that, while I was on this mission, my time should be devoted exclusively to defending the interests of my country to the best of my power. I must warn you, therefore, that, notwithstanding all my sympathy for you, I shall not be able to prolong my stay for a single minute after I have discovered the eighteen hundred bags of gold. They were the one and only reason why I came in answer to Ya-Bon’s appeal. When the bags of gold are in our possession, that is to say, to-morrow evening at latest, I shall go away. However, the two quests are joined. The clearing up of the one will mean the end of the other. And now enough of words. Introduce me to Little Mother Coralie and let’s get to work! Make no mystery with her, captain,” he added, laughing. “Tell her my real name. I have nothing to fear: Arsène Lupin has every woman on his side.”

Forty minutes later Coralie was back in her room, well cared for and well watched. Patrice had taken a substantial meal, while Don Luis walked up and down the terrace smoking cigarettes.

“Finished, captain? Then we’ll make a start.”

He looked at his watch:

“Half-past five. We have more than an hour of daylight left. That’ll be enough.”

“Enough? You surely don’t pretend that you will achieve your aim in an hour?”

“My definite aim, no, but the aim which I am setting myself at the moment, yes . . . and even earlier. An hour? What for? To do what? Why, you’ll be a good deal wiser in a few minutes!”

Don Luis asked to be taken to the cellar under the library; where Essarès Bey used to keep the bags of gold until the time had come to send them off.

“Was it through this ventilator that the bags were let down?”

“Yes.”

“Is there no other outlet?”

“None except the staircase leading to the library and the other ventilator.”

“Opening on the terrace?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s clear. The bags used to come in by the first and go out by the second.”

“But . . .”

“There’s no but about it, captain: how else would you have it happen? You see, the mistake people always make is to go looking for difficulties where there are none.”

They returned to the terrace. Don Luis took up his position near the ventilator and inspected the ground immediately around. It did not take long. Four yards away, outside the windows of the library, was the basin with the statue of a child spouting a jet of water through a shell.

Don Luis went up, examined the basin and, leaning forwards, reached the little statue, which he turned upon its axis from right to left. At the same time the pedestal described a quarter of a circle.

“That’s it,” he said, drawing himself up again.

“What?”

“The basin will empty itself.”

He was right. The water sank very quickly and the bottom of the fountain appeared.

Don Luis stepped into it and squatted on his haunches. The inner wall was lined with a marble mosaic composing a wide red-and-white fretwork pattern. In the middle of one of the frets was a ring, which Don Luis lifted and pulled. All that portion of the wall which formed the pattern yielded to his effort and came down, leaving an opening of about twelve inches by ten.

“That’s where the bags of gold went,” said Don Luis. “It was the second stage. They were despatched in the same manner, on a hook sliding along a wire. Look, here is the wire, in this groove at the top.”

“By Jove!” cried Captain Belval. “But you’ve unraveled this in a masterly fashion! What about the wire? Can’t we follow it?”

“No, but it will serve our purpose if we know where it finishes. I say, captain, go to the end of the garden, by the wall, taking a line at right angles to the house. When you get there, cut off a branch of a tree, rather high up. Oh, I was forgetting! I shall have to go out by the lane. Have you the key of the door? Give it me, please.”

Patrice handed him the key and then went down to the wall beside the quay.

“A little farther to the right,” Don Luis instructed him. “A little more still. That’s better. Now wait.”

He left the garden by the lane, reached the quay and called out from the other side of the wall:

“Are you there, captain?”

“Yes.”

“Fix your branch so that I can see it from here. Capital.”

Patrice now joined Don Luis, who was crossing the road. All the way down the Seine are wharves, built on the bank of the river and used for loading and unloading vessels. Barges put in alongside, discharge their cargoes, take in fresh ones and often lie moored one next to the other. At the spot where Don Luis and Patrice descended by a flight of steps there was a series of yards, one of which, the one which they reached first, appeared to be abandoned, no doubt since the war. It contained, amid a quantity of useless materials, several heaps of bricks and building-stones, a hut with broken windows and the lower part of a steam-crane. A placard swinging from a post bore the inscription:

BERTHOU
WHARFINGER & BUILDER.

Don Luis walked along the foot of the embankment, ten or twelve feet high, above which the quay was suspended like a terrace. Half of it was occupied by a heap of sand; and they saw in the wall the bars of an iron grating, the lower half of which was hidden by the sand-heap shored up with planks.

Don Luis cleared the grating and said, jestingly:

“Have you noticed that the doors are never locked in this adventure? Let’s hope that it’s the same with this one.”

His theory was confirmed, somewhat to his own surprise, and they entered one of those recesses where workmen put away their tools.

“So far, nothing out of the common,” said Don Luis, switching on an electric torch. “Buckets, pick-axes, wheelbarrows, a ladder. . . . Ah! Ah! Just as I expected: rails, a complete set of light rails! . . . Lend me a hand, captain. Let’s clear out the back. Good, that’s done it.”

Level with the ground and opposite the grating was a rectangular opening exactly similar to the one in the basin. The wire was visible above, with a number of hooks hanging from it.

“So this is where the bags arrived,” Don Luis explained. “They dropped, so to speak, into one of the two little trollies which you see over there, in the corner. The rails were laid across the bank, of course at night; and the trollies were pushed to a barge into which they tipped their contents.”

“So that . . . ?”

“So that the French gold went this way . . . anywhere you like . . . somewhere abroad.”

“And you think that the last eighteen hundred bags have also been despatched?”

“I fear so.”

“Then we are too late?”

Don Luis reflected for a while without answering. Patrice, though disappointed by a development which he had not foreseen, remained amazed at the extraordinary skill with which his companion, in so short a time, had succeeded in unraveling a portion of the tangled skein.

“It’s an absolute miracle,” he said, at last. “How on earth did you do it?”

Without a word, Don Luis took from his pocket the book which Patrice had seen lying on his knees, The Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, and motioned to him to read some lines which he indicated with his finger. They were written towards the end of the reign of Louis XVI and ran: