The Golden Triangle Part 22

When M. Ma.s.seron arrived, Patrice told him what had happened:

"Do you really believe it's all over?" he asked.

"No. You were right and I was wrong," said M. Ma.s.seron. "We must take every precaution to ensure Mme. Essares' safety. The house shall be guarded all night."

A few minutes later the policeman and Ya-Bon returned, after a vain search. The key that had served to open the door was found in the lane.

It was exactly similar to the one in Patrice Belval's possession, equally old and equally rusty. The would-be murderer had thrown it away in the course of his flight.

It was seven o'clock when Patrice, accompanied by Ya-Bon, left the house in the Rue Raynouard and turned towards Neuilly. As usual, Patrice took Ya-Bon's arm and, leaning upon him for support as he walked, he said:

"I can guess what you're thinking, Ya-Bon."

Ya-Bon grunted.

"That's it," said Captain Belval, in a tone of approval. "We are entirely in agreement all along the line. What strikes you first and foremost is the utter incapacity displayed by the police. A pack of addle-pates, you say? When you speak like that, Master Ya-Bon, you are talking impertinent nonsense, which, coming from you, does not astonish me and which might easily make me give you the punishment you deserve.

But we will overlook it this time. Whatever you may say, the police do what they can, not to mention that, in war-time, they have other things to do than to occupy themselves with the mysterious relations between Captain Belval and Mme. Essares. It is I therefore who will have to act; and I have hardly any one to reckon on but myself. Well, I wonder if I am a match for such adversaries. To think that here's one who has the cheek to come back to the house while it is being watched by the police, to put up a ladder, to listen no doubt to my conversation with M.

Ma.s.seron and afterwards to what I said to Little Mother Coralie and, lastly, to send a couple of bullets whizzing past our ears! What do you say? Am I the man for the job? And could all the French police, overworked as they are, give me the indispensable a.s.sistance? No, the man I need for clearing up a thing like this is an exceptional sort of chap, one who unites every quality in himself, in short the type of man one never sees."

Patrice leant more heavily on his companion's arm:

"You, who know so many good people, haven't you the fellow I want concealed about your person? A genius of sorts? A demiG.o.d?"

Ya-Bon grunted again, merrily this time, and withdrew his arm. He always carried a little electric lamp. Switching on the light, he put the handle between his teeth. Then he took a bit of chalk out of his jacket-pocket.

A grimy, weather-beaten plaster wall ran along the street. Ya-Bon took his stand in front of the wall and, turning the light upon it, began to write with an unskilful hand, as though each letter cost him a measureless effort and as though the sum total of those letters were the only one that he had ever succeeded in composing and remembering. In this way he wrote two words which Patrice read out:

_a.r.s.ene Lupin._

"a.r.s.ene Lupin," said Patrice, under his breath. And, looking at Ya-Bon in amazement, "Are you in your right mind? What do you mean by a.r.s.ene Lupin? Are you suggesting a.r.s.ene Lupin to me?"

Ya-Bon nodded his head.

"a.r.s.ene Lupin? Do you know him?"

"Yes," Ya-Bon signified.

Patrice then remembered that the Senegalese used to spend his days at the hospital getting his good-natured comrades to read all the adventures of a.r.s.ene Lupin aloud to him; and he grinned:

"Yes, you know him as one knows somebody whose history one has read."

"No," protested Ya-Bon.

"Do you know him personally?"

"Yes."

"Get out, you silly fool! a.r.s.ene Lupin is dead. He threw himself into the sea from a rock;[2] and you pretend that you know him?"

[Footnote 2: _813_. By Maurice Leblanc. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.]

"Yes."

"Do you mean to say that you have met him since he died?"

"Yes."

"By Jove! And Master Ya-Bon's influence with a.r.s.ene Lupin is enough to make him come to life again and put himself out at a sign from Master Ya-Bon?"

"Yes."

"I say! I had a high opinion of you as it was, but now there is nothing for me but to make you my bow. A friend of the late a.r.s.ene Lupin! We're going it! . . . And how long will it take you to place his ghost at our disposal? Six months? Three months? One month? A fortnight?"

Ya-Bon made a gesture.

"About a fortnight," Captain Belval translated. "Very well, evoke your friend's spirit; I shall be delighted to make his acquaintance. Only, upon my word, you must have a very poor idea of me to imagine that I need a collaborator! What next! Do you take me for a helpless dunderhead?"

CHAPTER IX

PATRICE AND CORALIE

Everything happened as M. Ma.s.seron had foretold. The press did not speak. The public did not become excited. The various deaths were casually paragraphed. The funeral of Essares Bey, the wealthy banker, pa.s.sed unnoticed.

But, on the day following the funeral, after Captain Belval, with the support of the police, had made an application to the military authorities, a new order of things was established in the house in the Rue Raynouard. It was recognized as Home No. 2 attached to the hospital in the Champs-elysees; Mme. Essares was appointed matron; and it became the residence of Captain Belval and his seven wounded men exclusively.

Coralie, therefore, was the only woman remaining. The cook and housemaid were sent away. The seven cripples did all the work of the house. One acted as hall-porter, another as cook, a third as butler. Ya-Bon, promoted to parlor-maid, made it his business to wait on Little Mother Coralie. At night he slept in the pa.s.sage outside her door. By day he mounted guard outside her window.

"Let no one near that door or that window!" Patrice said to him. "Let no one in! You'll catch it if so much as a mosquito succeeds in entering her room."

Nevertheless, Patrice was not easy in his mind. The enemy had given him too many proofs of reckless daring to let him imagine that he could take any steps to ensure her perfect protection. Danger always creeps in where it is least expected; and it was all the more difficult to ward off in that no one knew whence it threatened. Now that Essares Bey was dead, who was continuing his work? Who had inherited the task of revenge upon Coralie announced in his last letter?

M. Ma.s.seron had at once begun his work of investigation, but the dramatic side of the case seemed to leave him indifferent. Since he had not found the body of the man whose dying cries reached Patrice Belval's ears, since he had discovered no clue to the mysterious a.s.sailant who had fired at Patrice and Coralie later in the day, since he was not able to trace where the a.s.sailant had obtained his ladder, he dropped these questions and confined his efforts entirely to the search of the eighteen hundred bags of gold. These were all that concerned him.

"We have every reason to believe that they are here," he said, "between the four sides of the quadrilateral formed by the garden and the house.

Obviously, a bag of gold weighing a hundredweight does not take up as much room, by a long way, as a sack of coal of the same weight. But, for all that, eighteen hundred bags represent a cubic content; and a content like that is not easily concealed."

In two days he had a.s.sured himself that the treasure was hidden neither in the house nor under the house. On the evenings when Essares Bey's car brought the gold out of the coffers of the Franco-Oriental Bank to the Rue Raynouard, Essares, the chauffeur and the man known as Gregoire used to pa.s.s a thick wire through the grating of which the accomplices spoke. This wire was found. Along the wire ran hooks, which were also found; and on these the bags were slung and afterwards stacked in a large cellar situated exactly under the library. It is needless to say that M. Ma.s.seron and his detectives devoted all their ingenuity and all the painstaking patience of which they were capable to the task of searching every corner of this cellar. Their efforts only established beyond doubt that it contained no secret, save that of a staircase which ran down from the library and which was closed at the top by a trap-door concealed by the carpet.

In addition to the grating on the Rue Raynouard, there was another which overlooked the garden, on the level of the first terrace. These two openings were barricaded on the inside by very heavy shutters, so that it was an easy matter to stack thousands and thousands of rouleaus of gold in the cellar before sending them away.

"But how were they sent away?" M. Ma.s.seron wondered. "That's the mystery. And why this intermediate stage in the bas.e.m.e.nt, in the Rue Raynouard? Another mystery. And now we have Fakhi, Bournef and Co.

declaring that, this time, it was not sent away, that the gold is here and that it can be found for the searching. We have searched the house.

There is still the garden. Let us look there."