The Golden Triangle Part 24

"I have something curious to show you," he said, "something I have found which will interest both you, madame, and you, captain, particularly."

He led them to the very end of the terrace, outside the occupied part of the house next to the library. Two detectives were standing mattock in hand. In the course of their searching, M. Ma.s.seron explained, they had begun by removing the ivy from the low wall adorned with terra-cotta vases. Thereupon M. Ma.s.seron's attention was attracted by the fact that this wall was covered, for a length of some yards, by a layer of plaster which appeared to be more recent in date than the stone.

"What did it mean?" said M. Ma.s.seron. "I had to presuppose some motive.

I therefore had this layer of plaster demolished; and underneath it I found a second layer, not so thick as the first and mingled with the rough stone. Come closer . . . or, rather, no, stand back a little way: you can see better like that."

The second layer really served only to keep in place some small white pebbles, which const.i.tuted a sort of mosaic set in black pebbles and formed a series of large, written letters, spelling three words. And these three words once again were:

_Patrice and Coralie_

"What do you say to that?" asked M. Ma.s.seron. "Observe that the inscription goes several years back, at least ten years, when we consider the condition of the ivy clinging to this part of the wall."

"At least ten years," Patrice repeated, when he was once more alone with Coralie. "Ten years ago was when you were not married, when you were still at Salonica and when n.o.body used to come to this garden . . .

n.o.body except Simeon and such people as he chose to admit. And among these," he concluded, "was our unknown friend who is now dead. And Simeon knows the truth, Coralie."

They saw old Simeon, late that afternoon, as they had seen him constantly since the tragedy, wandering in the garden or along the pa.s.sages of the house, restless and distraught, with his comforter always wound round his head and his spectacles on his nose, stammering words which no one could understand. At night, his neighbor, one of the maimed soldiers, would often hear him humming to himself.

Patrice twice tried to make him speak. He shook his head and did not answer, or else laughed like an idiot.

The problem was becoming complicated; and nothing pointed to a possible solution. Who was it that, since their childhood, had promised them to each other as a pair betrothed long beforehand by an inflexible ordinance? Who was it that arranged the pansy-bed last autumn, when they did not know each other? And who was it that had written their two names, ten years ago, in white pebbles, within the thickness of a wall?

These were haunting questions for two young people in whom love had awakened quite spontaneously and who suddenly saw stretching behind them a long past common to them both. Each step that they took in the garden seemed to them a pilgrimage amid forgotten memories; and, at every turn in a path, they were prepared to discover some new proof of the bond that linked them together unknown to themselves.

As a matter of fact, during those few days, they saw their initials interlaced twice on the trunk of a tree, once on the back of a bench.

And twice again their names appeared inscribed on old walls and concealed behind a layer of plaster overhung with ivy.

On these two occasions their names were accompanied by two separate dates:

_Patrice and Coralie, 1904_ _Patrice and Coralie, 1907_

"Eleven years ago and eight years ago," said the officer. "And always our two names: Patrice and Coralie."

Their hands met and clasped each other. The great mystery of their past brought them as closely together as did the great love which filled them and of which they refrained from speaking.

In spite of themselves, however, they sought out solitude; and it was in this way that, a fortnight after the murder of Essares Bey, as they pa.s.sed the little door opening on the lane, they decided to go out by it and to stroll down to the river bank. No one saw them, for both the approach to the door and the path leading to it were hidden by a screen of tall bushes; and M. Ma.s.seron and his men were exploring the old green-houses, which stood at the other side of the garden, and the old furnace and chimney which had been used for signaling.

But, when he was outside, Patrice stopped. Almost in front of him, in the opposite wall, was an exactly similar door. He called Coralie's attention to it, but she said:

"There is nothing astonishing about that. This wall is the boundary of another garden which at one time belonged to the one we have just left."

"But who lives there?"

"n.o.body. The little house which overlooks it and which comes before mine, in the Rue Raynouard, is always shut up."

"Same door, same key, perhaps," Patrice murmured, half to himself.

He inserted in the lock the rusty key, which had reached him by messenger. The lock responded.

"Well," he said, "the series of miracles is continuing. Will this one be in our favor?"

The vegetation had been allowed to run riot in the narrow strip of ground that faced them. However, in the middle of the exuberant gra.s.s, a well-trodden path, which looked as if it were often used, started from the door in the wall and rose obliquely to the single terrace, on which stood a dilapidated lodge with closed shutters. It was built on one floor, but was surmounted by a small lantern-shaped belvedere. It had its own entrance in the Rue Raynouard, from which it was separated by a yard and a very high wall. This entrance seemed to be barricaded with boards and posts nailed together.

They walked round the house and were surprised by the sight that awaited them on the right-hand side. The foliage had been trained into rectangular cloisters, carefully kept, with regular arcades cut in yew- and box-hedges. A miniature garden was laid out in this s.p.a.ce, the very home of silence and tranquillity. Here also were wall-flowers and pansies and hyacinths. And four paths, coming from four corners of the cloisters, met round a central s.p.a.ce, where stood the five columns of a small, open temple, rudely constructed of pebbles and unmortared building-stones.

Under the dome of this little temple was a tombstone and, in front of it, an old wooden praying-chair, from the bars of which hung, on the left, an ivory crucifix and, on the right, a rosary composed of amethyst beads in a gold filigree setting.

"Coralie, Coralie," whispered Patrice, in a voice trembling with emotion, "who can be buried here?"

They went nearer. There were bead wreaths laid in rows on the tombstone.

They counted nineteen, each bearing the date of one of the last nineteen years. Pushing them aside, they read the following inscription in gilt letters worn and soiled by the rain:

HERE LIE PATRICE AND CORALIE, BOTH OF WHOM WERE MURDERED ON THE 14th OF APRIL, 1895.

REVENGE TO ME: I WILL REPAY.

CHAPTER X

THE RED CORD

Coralie, feeling her legs give way beneath her, had flung herself on the prie-dieu and there knelt praying fervently and wildly. She could not tell on whose behalf, for the repose of what unknown soul her prayers were offered; but her whole being was afire with fever and exaltation and the very action of praying seemed able to a.s.suage her.

"What was your mother's name, Coralie?" Patrice whispered.

"Louise," she replied.

"And my father's name was Armand. It cannot be either of them, therefore; and yet . . ."

Patrice also was displaying the greatest agitation. Stooping down, he examined the nineteen wreaths, renewed his inspection of the tombstone and said:

"All the same, Coralie, the coincidence is really too extraordinary. My father died in 1895."

"And my mother died in that year too," she said, "though I do not know the exact date."

"We shall find out, Coralie," he declared. "These things can all be verified. But meanwhile one truth becomes clear. The man who used to interlace the names of Patrice and Coralie was not thinking only of us and was not considering only the future. Perhaps he thought even more of the past, of that Coralie and Patrice whom he knew to have suffered a violent death and whom he had undertaken to avenge. Come away, Coralie.

No one must suspect that we have been here."

They went down the path and through the two doors on the lane. They were not seen coming in. Patrice at once brought Coralie indoors, urged Ya-Bon and his comrades to increase their vigilance and left the house.

He came back in the evening only to go out again early the next day; and it was not until the day after, at three o'clock in the afternoon, that he asked to be shown up to Coralie.

"Have you found out?" she asked him at once.

"I have found out a great many things which do not dispel the darkness of the present. I am almost tempted to say that they increase it. They do, however, throw a very vivid light on the past."

"Do they explain what we saw two days ago?" she asked, anxiously.