THE STRONG-BOX OF THE MONKS
It was but a passing paralysis such as a boxer suffers from a knock-out
blow. But when Ralph recovered consciousness he found without the
slightest surprise that he was in the same situation as Beaumagnan,
like him bound, and like him set with his back against the wall.
He was very little more surprised to see Josephine stretched on two
chairs in front of the door, a victim of one of those nervous attacks
which too violent emotions, too prolonged always brought on. The blow
she had struck Ralph had thrown her into one of them. Leonard was
tending her, holding a bottle of smelling-salts to her nostrils.
He must have summoned one of his confederates, for Ralph saw the young
man enter whom he knew by the name of Dominique, the young man who had
looked after the carriage in front of the house of Bridget Rousselin.
“Damn it!” said the newcomer on perceiving the two captives. “There
seems to have been a squabble. Beaumagnan! d’Andresy! The chief does
strike hard! Result a fainting fit. What?”
“Yes, but it’s nearly over,” growled Leonard.
“What are we to do?”
“Carry her to the carriage and drive her to the _Nonchalante_,” growled
Leonard.
“And what about me?”
“You’re going to keep guard on these two,” said Leonard nodding towards
the prisoners.
“Hang it! They’re awkward customers. I don’t like the job,” said
Dominique, scowling at them.
Leonard took Josephine by the shoulders, Dominique by the ankles. They
raised her and were carrying her out, when, opening her eyes, she said
to them in a voice so low that she could not suppose that Ralph’s
hearing was fine enough to catch a syllable of what she said:
“No. I’ll walk all right. You will stay here, Leonard. You’re the best
man to guard Ralph.”
“Let me knock him on the head and be done with it,” whispered Leonard.
“This young fellow will bring us bad luck.”
“I love him,” she murmured.
“But he doesn’t love you any longer.”
“Yes. He will come back to me. Besides, whatever happens, I’m not going
to let him go.”
“Then what do you propose to do?” asked Leonard glumly.
“The _Nonchalante_ should be at Caudebec. I’m going to rest there till
early to-morrow morning. I must rest.”
“And the treasure? It will need a gang to handle a stone of that size.”
“To-night I’ll send word to the Corbus to meet me to-morrow at
Jumièges. Then I’ll see to Ralph--unless--But don’t bother me any more
now. I’m done,” she muttered.
“But what about Beaumagnan?” he persisted.
“We’ll set him free when I have the treasure.”
“Aren’t you afraid that that girl will inform the police? It would be
an easy job for them to surround this old lighthouse.”
“Nonsense! Do you think she’s going to put the police on the track of
her father and Ralph?” said Josephine.
She sat up on one of the chairs and fell back again with a groan. Some
minutes passed. At last with an effort which seemed to exhaust her she
succeeded in standing upright, and resting on Dominique, went to Ralph.
“He’s insensible,” she murmured. “Guard him carefully, Leonard, and the
other too. If one of them gets away, the game’s up.”
She went away slowly. Leonard accompanied her to the old barouche and
in a little while came back, after padlocking the gate. He brought with
him a parcel containing food. Then they heard the sound of hoofs on the
stony road.
Ralph had already discovered that he was securely bound. He said to
himself: “The chief is growing rather feeble. Firstly in talking about
the steps she proposes to take before witnesses; secondly in entrusting
stout fellows like Beaumagnan and me to the care of a single man. Those
are mistakes which prove that she’s in a bad state of health.”
All the same it was true that Leonard’s experience would render any
attempt to escape uncommonly difficult.
“Leave those ropes alone,” he said to Ralph as he entered. “If you
don’t I’ll plug you on the jaw.”
This formidable jailor took every precaution to make his task easy.
After running them through the back of a chair he tied together the
ends of the two ropes which bound the prisoners. Then he propped the
chair on two legs so that it would fall over easily, and on it he
set the dagger that Josephine had given him. If one of the prisoners
stirred the chair would fall over.
“You’re less stupid than you look,” said Ralph.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll plug you on the jaw,” said Leonard.
He set about making a meal.
Ralph chanced saying: “I hope you’re enjoying it. If there’s any over,
don’t forget me.”
Leonard rose with his fists clenched.
“All right: I’ll shut up,” said Ralph.
Leonard sat down again.
The hours passed. It grew dusk. Beaumagnan appeared to be asleep.
Leonard smoked pipe after pipe, Ralph scolded himself for having been
so careless as not to have kept an eye on Josephine.
“I ought to have been distrusting her all the time,” he said to
himself. “I’ve a long way to go yet to make her value me at my true
worth. But what decision! What a clear view of the reality! And what
a freedom from scruples! Just one single defect which prevents the
monster from being perfect--her nervous system of a degenerate. And
lucky for me it is to-day that she has that nervous system, since it
will allow me to get to Mesnil-sous-Jumièges before her.”
He had not the slightest doubt that it was possible to escape from
Leonard. He had observed that the bonds which bound his ankles were
loosened by certain movements, and feeling sure of getting his right
leg free, he considered with satisfaction the effect of a kick on the
point of Leonard’s jaw. After that, hell for leather to the treasure!
The darkness thickened in the room. Leonard lit a candle, smoked a last
pipe, and drank a last glass of wine. After that he became so sleepy
that he nodded first to the right and then to the left with such vigor
that he nearly fell off his chair. Then he tried holding the candle
in his hand in order that the hot wax should fall on it and wake him
up. He took a look at the two prisoners, another at the rope that ran
through the back of the chair which was to act as an alarm, and went to
sleep.
Ralph worked away slowly and gently at the task of freeing himself, not
without success. It must be about nine o’clock.
“If I can get away at eleven o’clock,” he said to himself, “I shall
reach Lillebonne by midnight, get some supper there, and at three
o’clock in the morning arrive at the sacred spot. With the first light
of dawn I shall put the strong-box of the monks into my pocket--yes:
into my pocket. I’ve no need of the Corbus, or anyone else.”
But at half-past ten he was practically at the same point.
Loose though the ropes were, he could not free his foot from them, and
he was beginning to give up hope when of a sudden he thought he heard
a slight noise which differed from all the whisperings that break the
deep silence of the night, leaves that rustle, birds that flutter among
the branches, murmurs of the breeze.
The noise came again; and he was certain that it came from the window
he had opened, which Leonard had carelessly pushed to.
Then one side of the window seemed to be moving slowly forward.
Ralph looked at Beaumagnan. He too had heard the noise and was looking
at the window.
Then the hot wax of the candle fell on Leonard’s hand; and he awoke.
He looked at the bonds of the prisoners and the rope of the alarm and
dropped off to sleep again. The noise, which had for the while ceased,
came again--it was plain that the movements of their jailor were being
carefully watched.
What was going on? It was evident that since the gate was locked
someone must have climbed over the wall; and it must be someone
familiar with the lighthouse who knew where to find a spot from which
the broken glass had been cleared. Who? A peasant? A poacher? Was it a
rescuer--some friend of Beaumagnan’s? Or was it just a prowler in the
night?
A head appeared, indistinct in the darkness; and then the figure of a
woman slipped easily over the sill which was at no great height from
the ground.
Before he saw her face, Ralph knew that it was none other than Clarice!
With what pride and delight and thankfulness did he regard her!
Josephine had been wrong, quite wrong in supposing her rival too feeble
to act. In her anxiety, unable to tear herself away in her fear for his
safety, mastering her exhaustion and her fear for herself, she must
have lurked in the wood in which the lighthouse stood, and waited for
the night.
And now she was attempting the impossible to save the man who had so
cruelly betrayed her.
Once more Leonard awoke. But fortunately she was directly behind him.
Once more he fell asleep and she moved noiselessly forward till she
stood beside him, reached forward, and picked up Josephine’s dagger
which lay on the chair which was to act as alarm and add by its jingle
to the noise of its fall. Was she going to strike?
Ralph was terrified. Now that the light of the candle clearly
illuminated her face, it seemed to him to be set in a cold ferocity.
But their eyes met, and she obeyed the unspoken bidding of his will.
She did not strike. Ralph bent forward a little so that the rope which
ran through the back of the chair hung slack. Beaumagnan, seeing what
he would be at, bent forward too.
Then slowly, with a steady hand, she cut the rope.
As luck had it, their enemy did not wake. Had he done so, she would
assuredly have killed him. Her eyes, still holding that threat of
death, never left him. She bent down, her hand fumbled about for
Ralph’s bonds. She freed his wrists.
He whispered: “Give me the knife.”
She handed it to him. But a hand was quicker than his. Beaumagnan
who for hours had also been patiently at work, loosening his bonds,
snatched the knife from her.
Furious, Ralph gripped his arm. If Beaumagnan loosed himself and got
away before he did, farewell all hope of seizing the treasure. There
was a desperate struggle, in which either of them put forth all his
strength, telling himself that the least noise would wake Leonard.
Clarice, trembling with fear, sank to her knees, quite as much in order
not to fall to the ground as to beseech them.
But Beaumagnan’s wound, slight though it was, rendered him incapable of
prolonged resistance. He let go the knife.
At that very moment Leonard moved his head, opened his eyes, and gazed
at the picture before him, the two men half risen, clinging to one
another in a fighting attitude, Clarice on her knees.
His gaze rested on it several seconds, several terrible seconds, for
there was no doubt that, seeing what they were at, he would shoot them
down, and rid himself of them. But his open eyes did not see them; they
were blinded by the clouds of sleep. His eyelids closed down again over
them before the consciousness of what they rested on came to him.
Thereupon Ralph cut through the rest of his bonds. He was free. As
Clarice rose, trembling, to her feet, he whispered: “Be quick! Escape!”
She shook her head and pointed to Beaumagnan.
It was plain that she was not going to leave him behind her, a prisoner
exposed to the vengeance of Leonard.
Ralph protested; but he could not move her.
Tiring of the conflict, he handed the knife to Beaumagnan.
“She’s right,” he said in a whisper. “One must play fair. Here you are.
Free yourself. And afterwards let each look out for himself. What?”
He followed Clarice to the window. One after the other, they slipped
over the sill. Once in the enclosure, she took his hand and led him to
a gap in the wall.
He helped her through it.
But when he had climbed through it himself, he no longer saw anyone.
“Clarice!” he cried. “Where are you?”
The wood lay in the darkness of a starless night. He heard a rustling
among the undergrowth on his right. He plunged into it in pursuit and
ran into tree-trunks and brushes that barred his way. He was compelled
to return to the path.
“She flies from me,” he said to himself sadly. “When I was a prisoner,
she risked everything to free me. Now that I am free, she does not want
to set eyes on me again. My treachery, that monster Josephine, and the
whole disgusting business have filled her with horror.”
As he regained the path, someone came tumbling over the wall. It
was Beaumagnan, escaping in his turn. Then of a sudden reports of a
revolver banged out from some quarter. Leonard had rushed to the gap
and was firing at random into the wood. Ralph made haste to get out of
range.
So, at about eleven o’clock at night, the three adversaries started
from the same point to get to the Queen’s stone, more than thirty miles
away. What were their different mean of getting there? Everything
depended on that.
On the one side were Beaumagnan and Leonard, both of them well
provided with confederates, and at the head of powerful organizations.
Beaumagnan’s friends must be waiting for him; Leonard had but to get to
Josephine; the spoil belonged to whichever was quickest. But Ralph was
the youngest and most active. If he had not made the mistake of leaving
his bicycle at Lillebonne, every chance would have been in his favor.
It must be admitted that he instantly abandoned his search for Clarice
and that the pursuit of the treasure became his only care. Walking
and running he covered the seven miles to Lillebonne in less than an
hour. It was a little before midnight that he awoke the porter of his
hotel, made a hasty meal. Then, having wrapped up two small dynamite
cartridges in brown paper and thrust them into his pocket, he mounted
his machine. Neatly rolled up and fastened below the handle-bar was a
canvas bag in which to bring away the spoil.
He made the following calculations: “From Lillebonne to
Mesnil-sous-Jumièges is about twenty-five miles. I ought to be there
before day-break. The moment it is light I shall find the block of
granite and blow it up with the dynamite. It is possible that Josephine
or Beaumagnan may surprise me in the middle of the operation. In that
case I go halves. All the worse for the third party.”
Having passed Caudebec-en-Caux, he followed along the rising ground the
road which runs through the woods and meadows to the Seine. Just as on
the day on which he had first made love to Josephine, the _Nonchalante_
was there, looming large through the dim light. He saw that the window
of the cabin which she occupied was lit up.
“She must be dressing,” he said to himself. “Her carriage will be
coming for her. Perhaps Leonard has got to her and made her start
sooner than she intended. Too late, my lady!”
He drove on the machine as hard as he could. But half an hour later, as
he was riding down a steep hill, he felt his wheel meet some obstacle;
and he flew over the handles, over a heap of stones by the road side,
and came to a stop scratched and bruised, but with no bones broken, in
a thick and thorny bush twenty feet down the hill.
Two men--he saw them dimly--came out of the bushes and hurried to his
bicycle.
“It was him! It must have been him! The rope got the machine! I told
you it would,” cried Oscar de Bennetot in a tone of great excitement.
“Yes. But where’s he got to?” growled Godfrey d’Etigues.
Ralph made haste to scramble up through the bushes to the top of the
high embankment.
They heard him; but they could not see him. They rushed after him,
cursing furiously. But they had little chance of finding him in that
darkness.
Then Beaumagnan’s voice came faintly from below; “Don’t bother about
him! We’ve no time to waste! Smash his machine! That puts him out of
action.”
They made haste to obey. Ralph heard them go bustling down to the road.
Then he heard them stamping on the wheels of his bicycle.
Then Beaumagnan said: “Come on! The horse has rested long enough. We’ve
got to get there quickly. Confound this wound of mine. The bandage has
shifted; I’m bleeding like a pig.”
Apparently they did as he bade them, for half a minute later there came
a crunching of wheels and a carriage started and went down the hill at
a good pace. Indomitable, Ralph took the canvas bag from the wreck of
his bicycle, and set off after it at a steady trot.
He was furious. Nothing in the world would have induced him to abandon
the struggle. It was no longer merely a matter of millions and millions
which would make the rest of his life magnificent, his vanity was up
in arms. Having solved the insoluble enigma, he must be the first to
arrive at the goal. Not to be there, not to seize the treasure, to let
someone else take it, would have been an intolerable humiliation to the
day of his death.
So, indefatigable, he toiled on behind the carriage, and not so far
behind it either, buoyed up by the thought that the enigma was not yet
solved in its entirety, that his adversaries, like himself, had yet to
find the actual place in which the block of granite stood; and in that
darkness it was going to take time. While they were doing it, he might
once more get the better of them.
Then Fortune relented and helped him. As he entered Jumièges he saw
in front of him the wavering light of a lantern, heard the tinkle
of a bell, and, whereas his adversaries had gone straight through
the village, he dropped into a quiet walk. Then he met the priest
of Jumièges, who, accompanied by a small boy, was returning from
administering extreme unction. Ralph dropped into step beside him,
asked where he could find an inn, and in the course of their talk as
they went in the direction of that inn, pretending that he was an
archæologist, spoke of a curious stone which he had been told he would
find in the neighborhood.
“The dolmen of the queen, or something of that kind, they told me it
was called,” said Ralph. “You ought to know that object of interest,
Monsieur le curé?”
“Of course I do, monsieur,” said the priest. “I’m pretty sure that it
must be what we call Agnes Sorel’s stone.”
“It’s at Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, isn’t it?” asked Ralph.
“That’s where it is, about two and a half miles away. But it’s hardly
an object of interest--just a group of small rocks emerging from a
mound, the tallest of which is three or four feet above the Seine.”
“It’s on common land, isn’t it?” said Ralph.
“It was a few years ago, but the Commune sold it to one of my
parishioners, a M. Simon Thuilard who wished to extend his meadow-land.”
Immensely pleased, Ralph took his leave of the priest, provided with
minute directions for finding the stone. They enabled him to avoid the
big village of Jumièges, plunge into the network of winding roads which
lead to Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, with the result that he got ahead of his
adversaries.
“If they haven’t taken the precaution to provide themselves with a
guide, they’re certain to miss their way,” he said to himself. “It is
impossible to take a carriage straight, such a dark night as this. And
then how are they to pick the right road? Where are they to look for
the stone? Beaumagnan is exhausted and Godfrey d’Etigues is hardly
intelligent enough to find it by himself. I fancy I win this hand.”
At a few minutes to three, he crossed the fence which ran round the
property of Simon Thuilard.
A couple of matches showed him the path across the meadow. At the
end of it he came to an embankment, which seemed to him of recent
construction, along the side of the river. He arrived at the right end
of it and moved down it to the left. Then, not wishing to use up all
his matches, he waited for the dawn.
Already there was a strip of gray sky along the edge of the Eastern
horizon.
He waited, full of a pleasant emotion which wreathed his lips with
a smile. The block of granite was near him, not many feet away. For
centuries, at this very hour of the night perhaps, the monks had come
furtively to this very spot on the broad earth to bury their treasure.
One by one, priors and treasurers had come by the subterranean passage
which led from the abbey to the Manor. Others doubtless had come in
boats along the old river of Normandy which ran through Paris and ran
through Rouen, the waves of which broke against the estates of three of
the seven sacred abbeys.
And now he, Ralph d’Andresy, was a sharer of the great secret. He was
the heir of the thousands and thousands of monks who had worked in
those distant ages, sown throughout the length and breadth of France
and gathered in their harvest without a pause. What a miracle! To have
at his age such a dream come true! To be an equal of the most powerful
and to rule among the lords of the world!
In the paling heaven the Great Bear was fading. You divined, rather
than saw, the luminous point of Alcor, the cabalistic star which, in
the vast expanse of the Heavens, corresponded to the little block of
granite on which Ralph was about to lay the hand of the conqueror. The
stream babbled against the bank in quiet little waves. The surface of
the river rose out of the darkness in shining patches of light.
He walked along the embankment. He began to discern the contours and
colors of things. A solemn instant! His heart was beating quickly. Then
of a sudden thirty yards away he saw a mound of ground which scarcely
rose above the level of the meadow, and in which, among the grass which
covered it rose some points of gray rock.
“It’s there!” he murmured, moved to the very depths of his being. “It’s
there! I have reached the goal!”
His hands were fumbling with the dynamite cartridges in his pocket and
his eyes were seeking wildly the higher stone of which that priest of
Jumièges had spoken. Was it this one, or that? A few seconds would be
enough for him to introduce the cartridge into the cracks which earth
and plants choked. Three minutes later he would be heaping the diamonds
and rubies into the bag which he took from his knapsack. If there
remained a few crumbs among the débris all the better for his enemies.
He walked forward and the nearer he came to it the more the mound took
on an appearance which did not at all conform to what he expected.
There was no higher stone.... There was no block which, in days gone
by, would have afforded to her whom they called the Lady of Beauty, a
seat from which to look for the arrival of the royal barque round the
corner of the reach of the river. Nothing rose above the mound--on the
contrary its top was level. What had happened? Had some sudden rush of
the river, or some storm lately changed a spot which the storms of ages
had respected? or had----
In two bounds Ralph crossed the ten paces which separated him from the
mound.
An oath burst from his lips. The horrible truth was clear to his
eyes. The center of the mound had been disemboweled. The block of
granite, the legendary block was indeed there, but smashed asunder into
fragments, its débris on every side of a gaping hole full of blackened
pebbles and tufts of grass. Not a single jewel! Not a scrap of gold or
silver! The enemy had passed that way.
Ralph did not stand before this paralyzing spectacle for more than
a minute. Motionless, speechless, he studied it absentmindedly, and
mechanically gathered in all the traces and evidence of the work that
had been done some hours before; he marked the prints of a woman’s
heel; but he refused to draw from them the only logical conclusion. He
walked away from it, lit a cigarette and sat down on the bank of the
dyke on the edge of the river.
He did not wish to think. The defeat, and above all the fashion in
which it had been inflicted on him, was too painful for him to suffer
himself to study its causes and effects. At such moments one can only
strive to retain one’s coolness. But, in spite of everything, the
events of the preceding afternoon and evening forced themselves on
his attention. Whether he wished it, or not, the actions of Josephine
Balsamo unfolded themselves before his mind. He saw her striving firmly
against that nervous attack and recovering all the energy necessary at
such a juncture. Rest when the hour of destiny had struck? Not she! Had
he rested? And Beaumagnan, wounded as he was, had he allowed himself
the slightest respite? No! And Josephine Balsamo would never make such
a mistake. Before nightfall she had reached the meadow with her agents;
and then in the daylight and later by the light of lanterns, she had
directed their work. And when he, Ralph, had divined her presence
behind the curtained window of her cabin, she was not making ready for
the final expedition; she had returned from it, once more victorious
because she never allowed mischances, futile hesitation, or superfluous
scruples to prove an obstacle between her and the immediate execution
of her designs.
For more than twenty minutes, letting himself relax from his fatigue in
the warmth of the sun which rose above the hills on the opposite bank,
Ralph considered the bitter reality into which had sunk his dreams of
domination. He must indeed have been deeply absorbed in those bitter
reflections not to hear the noise of a carriage which stopped in the
road and see the three men who got out of it, climb over the fence and
cross the meadow till the very moment at which one of them, on reaching
the mound, uttered a cry of anguish.
It was Beaumagnan; his two friends were supporting him.
If the disappointment of Ralph was deep, what must have been the
despair of a man who had staked all his life on the mysterious
treasure! Livid, with starting eyes, the bandage which ran across
his shoulder oozing blood, he gazed stupidly, as at the most horrible
of spectacles, at the spot on which the miraculous stone had been
violated. One would have said that the world was falling in ruins about
his feet and that he was gazing into a gulf of terror and horror.
Ralph came forward and murmured: “Her work.”
Beaumagnan did not answer him. There was no doubt whatever that it was
her work. Must it not be that the image of that woman mingled with
everything disastrous and overwhelming, with every cataclysm charged
with infernal suffering?
Had he any need, like his companions, to leap into the hole and ransack
its chaos for some forgotten scrap of the treasure? No! After the
passage of the sorceress there was nothing but dust and ashes. She
was the great scourge which devastates and slays. She was the very
incarnation of the Principle of Evil. She was nothingness and death!
He drew himself to his full height, always theatrical and romantic in
his most natural attitudes, gazed round him with dolorous eyes, then,
of a sudden, crossed himself, and drove into his breast the blade of a
dagger--of the dagger which belonged to Josephine Balsamo.
The action was so sudden and so unexpected that no one could have
prevented it. Before his friends and Ralph had even grasped what he had
done, Beaumagnan tumbled into the hole among the débris of what had
been the strong-box of the monks.
His friends sprang to him.
He was still breathing and he muttered: “A priest--a priest.”
De Bennetot hurried away. Some peasants passed. He questioned them and
sprang into the carriage.
On his knees beside his chief, Godfrey d’Etigues was praying and
striking his breast. Doubtless Beaumagnan had revealed to him that
Josephine Balsamo was still alive and knew all his crimes. The suicide
of his chief on the top of that revelation had shattered his mind. His
face was convulsed with terror.
Ralph bent down over Beaumagnan and in slow and measured accents said:
“I swear to you that I will find her. I swear to you that I will take
the treasure from her.”
Love and hate still persisted in the heart of the dying man. Such
words alone could prolong his existence for a few fleeting minutes. At
the hour of his agony, in the shattering of all his dreams, he clung
desperately to every chance of reprisal and vengeance.
His eyes summoned Ralph, who bent down lower and heard him mutter:
“Clarice--Clarice d’Etigues--you must marry her. Listen--Clarice is not
the daughter of the Baron--he confessed it to me--she is the daughter
of another woman he loved.”
Ralph said solemnly: “I swear to you I will marry her--I swear it.”
“Godfrey!” said Beaumagnan.
The Baron went on praying. Ralph laid a hand on his shoulder and made
him bend down to catch Beaumagnan’s faint utterance.
“Clarice is to marry d’Andresy. I wish it.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Baron, incapable of resistance.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.”
“By your eternal salvation?”
“By my eternal salvation.”
“You will give him your money that he may avenge us--all the wealth
you have stolen. Swear it!” said Beaumagnan.
“By the eternal salvation,” said the Baron.
“He knows all your crimes. He has proofs of them,” Beaumagnan
continued. “If you do not obey me, he will hand you over to the police.”
“I will obey.”
“May you be accursed, if you do not,” said Beaumagnan.
His voice was growing fainter broken by harsh gasps between which the
words came more and more indistinct. Bent down, with his ear a little
above his mouth, Ralph just caught them.
“You’ll pursue her, Ralph.... You must tear the jewels from her....
She’s a devil.... Listen.... I have discovered.... At Havre.... She has
a vessel.... The _Glow-worm_.... Listen.”
He was at the very end of his strength. Nevertheless Ralph yet heard:
“Go.... At once.... Hunt her down.... This very day.”
His eyes closed, the death rattle began.
Godfrey d’Etigues still went on beating his breast, on his knees at the
bottom of the hole.
Ralph left them.
* * * * *
That evening one of the Paris papers published in its final issue the
following paragraph:
M. Beaumagnan, a barrister well known in militant royalist circles,
whose death in Spain had already been reported by mistake, committed
suicide this morning at a village in Normandy of the name of
Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, on the banks of the Seine. The reasons for
this suicide are absolutely mysterious. Two of his friends, Baron
d’Etigues and M. Oscar de Bennetot, who were with him, declare that
they were spending the night at the château de Tancarville, where
they were staying for some days, when Monsieur Beaumagnan awoke
them. He was wounded and in a state of great agitation. He insisted
on their harnessing a horse to a dog-cart and driving at once to
Jumièges and from there to a meadow near Mesnil-sous-Jumièges. Why?
Why this nocturnal expedition to a lonely meadow? Why this suicide?
Questions to which they can give no answer.
The next day the Havre papers published accounts of an incident which
are summed up fairly well in the following article:
Last night Prince Lavosneff, who had come to Havre to try a yacht
which he had recently purchased, witnessed a terrible drama. He was
returning to the French coast when he saw a column of flame about a
mile and a half away and heard a loud explosion--an explosion, by the
way, which was heard at several places along the coast. The Prince
at once steered his yacht towards the spot at which this sinister
incident had taken place, and there he found fragments of a wreck. On
one of them was a sailor whom they succeeded in rescuing. But they
had hardly the time to learn from him that the wrecked vessel was
called the _Glow-worm_ and belonged to the Countess of Cagliostro,
when all at once he sprang overboard again crying: “There she is!
There she is!”
By the light of the ship’s lanterns they perceived another fragment
of the wreck, to which a woman was clinging, with her head just above
the water. The man succeeded in swimming to her and getting hold of
her. But she clung to him so tightly that she prevented him using his
arms, and the two of them sank. All efforts to find them were vain.
On his return to Havre Prince Lavosneff made a deposition to this
effect, which was also signed by four of his crew.
The paper added:
Later information leads us to believe that the Countess of Cagliostro
was an adventuress well known under the name of Pellegrini and
sometimes also under the name of Balsamo. Wanted by the police, who
had two or three times just missed capturing her in localities in the
Caux country, where she had recently been operating, she must have
decided to go abroad, and in this way perished with her confederates
in the wreck of her yacht, the _Glow-worm_. We must also mention,
with all proper reservations, that there is a rumor to the effect
that there is a close connection between certain adventures of the
Countess of Cagliostro and the mysterious drama at Mesnil-sous
Jumièges. There is a story going about of treasure unearthed and
stolen, of plots and documents of great antiquity. But at this point
we enter the domain of fable. We will stop therefore and leave it to
justice to throw light on the affair.
On the afternoon of the day on which this article appeared, that is to
say exactly sixty hours after the drama at Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, Ralph
entered the study of the Baron Godfrey at Haie d’Etigues, the study
into which he had made his way one night four months before. How many
roads had he traversed since that night and how many years older had he
grown than the stripling he then was!
At a small table the two cousins were drinking, at a considerable pace,
a bottle of brandy.
Without beating about the bush, Ralph said: “I have come to claim the
hand of Mademoiselle d’Etigues.”
He was hardly wearing the correct costume in which to ask a lady’s hand
in marriage. He was hatless and dressed in an old fisherman’s jersey
and trousers much too short for him which revealed his bare feet in
grass shoes without any laces.
But Ralph’s costume and his errand were of very little interest to
Godfrey d’Etigues. Hollow-eyed, with the face of one of the damned, he
held out towards Ralph a bundle of newspapers and groaned:
“Have you seen them? The Countess?”
“Yes, I know all that,” said Ralph.
He detested the man; and he could not refrain from adding: “All the
better for you. What? The definite death of Josephine Balsamo must have
lifted a heavy burden from your mind.”
“But the sequel--the consequences!” stammered the Baron.
“What consequences?” said Ralph.
“The law. It’s sure to try to get at the bottom of this business.
People are already saying that Josephine Balsamo was mixed up with the
suicide of Beaumagnan. If the police get hold of all the threads of the
affair they will go further--to the very end of it.”
“Yes,” said Ralph in a jeering tone, “to the Widow Rousselin and the
murder of Jaubert. That’s to say to you and cousin de Bennetot.”
The two men shuddered. Ralph set their minds at rest.
“You can drink at your ease, both of you,” he said. “Justice will not
throw any light on this dark story, for the excellent reason that it
will do its best on the contrary to bury it in oblivion. Beaumagnan was
protected by powers who like neither scandal nor the light of day. The
business will be hushed up. The thing that troubles me much more is not
the action of the law----”
“What is it?” said the Baron.
“The vengeance of Josephine Balsamo,” said Ralph somberly.
“But if she’s dead----”
“Even dead, she is formidable,” said Ralph gravely. “And that’s why I
am here. There is at the bottom of the park a small keeper’s lodge. I’m
going to install myself in it--till our marriage. Inform Clarice that I
am here and tell her to allow no one to visit her--not even me. Perhaps
however she will accept this present from me since we are engaged; and
I beg you to give it to her from me.”
And he handed to the astonished Baron a huge sapphire, of an
incomparable fineness, and cut as they used to cut precious stones in
an earlier age.