The Golden Triangle Part 25

"Listen to me, Coralie."

He sat down opposite her and said:

"I shall not tell you all the steps that I have taken. I will merely sum up the result of those which led to some result. I went, first of all, to the Mayor of Pa.s.sy's office and from there to the Servian Legation."

"Then you persist in a.s.suming that it was my mother?"

"Yes. I took a copy of her death-certificate, Coralie. Your mother died on the fourteenth of April, 1895."

"Oh!" she said. "That is the date on the tomb!"

"The very date."

"But the name? Coralie? My father used to call her Louise."

"Your mother's name was Louise Coralie Countess Odolavitch."

"Oh, my mother!" she murmured. "My poor darling mother! Then it was she who was murdered. It was for her that I was praying over the way?"

"For her, Coralie, and for my father. I discovered his full name at the mayor's office in the Rue Drouot. My father was Armand Patrice Belval.

He died on the fourteenth of April, 1895."

Patrice was right in saying that a singular light had been thrown upon the past. He had now positively established that the inscription on the tombstone related to his father and Coralie's mother, both of whom were murdered on the same day. But by whom and for what reason, in consequence of what tragedies? This was what Coralie asked him to tell her.

"I cannot answer your questions yet," he replied. "But I addressed another to myself, one more easily solved; and that I did solve. This also makes us certain of an essential point. I wanted to know to whom the lodge belonged. The outside, in the Rue Raynouard, affords no clue.

You have seen the wall and the door of the yard: they show nothing in particular. But the number of the property was sufficient for my purpose. I went to the local receiver and learnt that the taxes were paid by a notary in the Avenue de l'Opera. I called on this notary, who told me . . ."

He stopped for a moment and then said:

"The lodge was bought twenty-one years ago by my father. Two years later my father died; and the lodge, which of course formed part of his estate, was put up for sale by the present notary's predecessor and bought by one Simeon Diodokis, a Greek subject."

"It's he!" cried Coralie. "Simeon's name is Diodokis."

"Well, Simeon Diodokis," Patrice continued, "was a friend of my father's, because my father appointed him the sole executor of his will and because it was Simeon Diodokis who, through the notary in question and a London solicitor, paid my school-fees and, when I attained my majority, made over to me the sum of two hundred thousand francs, the balance of my inheritance."

They maintained a long silence. Many things were becoming manifest, but indistinctly, as yet, and shaded, like things seen in the evening mist.

And one thing stood in sharper outline than the rest, for Patrice murmured:

"Your mother and my father loved each other, Coralie."

The thought united them more closely and affected them profoundly. Their love was the counterpart of another love, bruised by trials, like theirs, but still more tragic and ending in bloodshed and death.

"Your mother and my father loved each other," he repeated. "I should say they must have belonged to that cla.s.s of rather enthusiastic lovers whose pa.s.sion indulges in charming little childish ways, for they had a trick of calling each other, when alone, by names which n.o.body else used to them; and they selected their second Christian names, which were also yours and mine. One day your mother dropped her amethyst rosary.

The largest of the beads broke in two pieces. My father had one of the pieces mounted as a trinket which he hung on his watch-chain. Both were widowed. You were two years old and I was eight. In order to devote himself altogether to the woman he loved, my father sent me to England and bought the lodge in which your mother, who lived in the big house next door, used to go and see him, crossing the lane and using the same key for both doors. It was no doubt in this lodge, or in the garden round it, that they were murdered. We shall find that out, because there must be visible proofs of the murder, proofs which Simeon Diodokis discovered, since he was not afraid to say so in the inscription on the tombstone."

"And who was the murderer?" Coralie asked, under her breath.

"You suspect it, Coralie, as I do. The hated name comes to your mind, even though we have no grounds for speaking with certainty."

"Essares!" she cried, in anguish.

"Most probably."

She hid her face in her hands:

"No, no, it is impossible. It is impossible that I should have been the wife of the man who killed my mother."

"You bore his name, but you were never his wife. You told him so the evening before his death, in my presence. Let us say nothing that we are unable to say positively; but all the same let us remember that he was your evil genius. Remember also that Simeon, my father's friend and executor, the man who bought the lovers' lodge, the man who swore upon their tomb to avenge them: remember that Simeon, a few months after your mother's death, persuaded Essares to engage him as caretaker of the estate, became his secretary and gradually made his way into Essares'

life. His only object must have been to carry out a plan of revenge."

"There has been no revenge."

"What do we know about it? Do we know how Essares met his death?

Certainly it was not Simeon who killed him, as Simeon was at the hospital. But he may have caused him to be killed. And revenge has a thousand ways of manifesting itself. Lastly, Simeon was most likely obeying instructions that came from my father. There is little doubt that he wanted first to achieve an aim which my father and your mother had at heart: the union of our destinies, Coralie. And it was this aim that ruled his life. It was he evidently who placed among the knick-knacks which I collected as a child this amethyst of which the other half formed a bead in your rosary. It was he who collected our photographs. He lastly was our unknown friend and protector, the one who sent me the key, accompanied by a letter which I never received, unfortunately."

"Then, Patrice, you no longer believe that he is dead, this unknown friend, or that you heard his dying cries?"

"I cannot say. Simeon was not necessarily acting alone. He may have had a confidant, an a.s.sistant in the work which he undertook. Perhaps it was this other man who died at nineteen minutes past seven. I cannot say.

Everything that happened on that ill-fated morning remains involved in the deepest mystery. The only conviction that we are able to hold is that for twenty years Simeon Diodokis has worked un.o.btrusively and patiently on our behalf, doing his utmost to defeat the murderer, and that Simeon Diodokis is alive. Alive, but mad!" Patrice added. "So that we can neither thank him nor question him about the grim story which he knows or about the dangers that threaten you."

Patrice resolved once more to make the attempt, though he felt sure of a fresh disappointment. Simeon had a bedroom, next to that occupied by two of the wounded soldiers, in the wing which formerly contained the servants' quarters. Here Patrice found him.

He was sitting half-asleep in a chair turned towards the garden. His pipe was in his mouth; he had allowed it to go out. The room was small, spa.r.s.ely furnished, but clean and light. Hidden from view, the best part of the old man's life was spent here. M. Ma.s.seron had often visited the room, in Simeon's absence, and so had Patrice, each from his own point of view.

The only discovery worthy of note consisted of a crude diagram in pencil, on the white wall-paper behind a chest of drawers: three lines intersecting to form a large equilateral triangle. In the middle of this geometrical figure were three words clumsily inscribed in adhesive gold-leaf:

_The Golden Triangle_

There was nothing more, not another clue of any kind, to further M.

Ma.s.seron's search.

Patrice walked straight up to the old man and tapped him on the shoulder:

"Simeon!" he said.

The other lifted his yellow spectacles to him, and Patrice felt a sudden wish to s.n.a.t.c.h away this gla.s.s obstacle which concealed the old fellow's eyes and prevented him from looking into his soul and his distant memories. Simeon began to laugh foolishly.

"So this," thought Patrice, "is my friend and my father's friend. He loved my father, respected his wishes, was faithful to his memory, raised a tomb to him, prayed on it and swore to avenge him. And now his mind has gone."

Patrice felt that speech was useless. But, though the sound of his voice roused no echo in that wandering brain, it was possible that the eyes were susceptible to a reminder. He wrote on a clean sheet of paper the words that Simeon had gazed upon so often:

_Patrice and Coralie_ _14 April, 1895_

The old man looked, shook his head and repeated his melancholy, foolish chuckle.

The officer added a new line: