The Golden Triangle Part 32

"What is happening? We had an impression that some one was walking outside, in the garden. Yes, when we put our ears to the stone wall built in the embrasure of the window, we thought we heard footsteps. Is it possible? Oh, if it only were! It would mean the struggle, at last. Anything rather than the maddening silence and endless uncertainty!

"That's it! . . . That's it! . . . The sound is becoming more distinct. . . . It is a different sound, like that which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax. Some one is digging the ground, not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen. . . ."

Patrice redoubled his efforts. Coralie came and helped him. This time he felt that a corner of the veil was being lifted. The writing went on:

"Another hour, with alternate spells of sound and silence: the same sound of digging and the same silence which suggests work that is being continued.

"And then some one entered the hall, one person; he, evidently. We recognized his step. . . . He walks without attempting to deaden it. . . . Then he went to the kitchen, where he worked the same way as before, with a pick-ax, but on the stones this time. We also heard the noise of a pane of gla.s.s breaking.

"And now he has gone outside again and there is a new sort of sound, against the house, a sound that seems to travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in order to carry out his plan.

Patrice stopped reading and looked at Coralie. Both of them were listening.

"Hark!" he said, in a low voice.

"Yes, yes," she answered, "I hear. . . . Steps outside the house . . .

in the garden. . . ."

They went to one of the windows, where they had left the cas.e.m.e.nt open behind the wall of building-stones, and listened. There was really some one walking; and the knowledge that the enemy was approaching gave them the same sense of relief that their parents had experienced.

Some one walked thrice round the house. But they did not, like their parents, recognize the sound of the footsteps. They were those of a stranger, or else steps that had changed their tread. Then, for a few minutes, they heard nothing more. And suddenly another sound arose; and, though in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they were nevertheless stupefied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow voice, laying stress upon each syllable, uttered the sentence which his father had written twenty years before:

"It's the sound which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax."

Yes, It must be that. Some one was digging the ground, not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen.

And so the abominable miracle of the revived tragedy was continuing.

Here again the former act was repeated, a simple enough act in itself, but one which became sinister because it was one of those which had already been performed and because it was announcing and preparing the death once before announced and prepared.

An hour pa.s.sed. The work went on, paused and went on again. It was like the sound of a spade at work in a courtyard, when the grave-digger is in no hurry and takes a rest and then resumes his work.

Patrice and Coralie stood listening side by side, their eyes in each other's eyes, their hands in each other's hands.

"He's stopping," whispered Patrice.

"Yes," said Coralie; "only I think . . ."

"Yes, Coralie, there's some one in the hall. . . . Oh, we need not trouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: 'He goes to the kitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.' . . .

And then . . . and then . . . oh, Coralie, the same sound of broken gla.s.s!"

It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and the past formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when these took place.

The enemy went outside again; and, forthwith, the sound seemed "to travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in order to carry out his plans."

And then . . . and then what would happen next? They no longer thought of consulting the inscription on the wall, or perhaps they did not dare.

Their attention was concentrated on the invisible and sometimes imperceptible deeds that were being accomplished against them outside, an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a mysterious twenty-year-old plan whereof each slightest detail was settled as by clockwork!

The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling at the bottom of the door, a rustling of soft things apparently being heaped or pushed against the wood. Next came other vague noises in the two adjoining rooms, against the walled doors, and similar noises outside, between the stones of the windows and the open shutters. And then they heard some one on the roof.

They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last act was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof to them was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceiling and admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the same agonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Would the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last?

This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shook the zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side of the house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, or rather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a very little way, by a hand which inserted a stick to keep it open.

And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down the side of the house.

They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truth that Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting, removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. And what they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. The enemy's return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, the noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supporting it: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within the same limit of time. Patrice's father and Coralie's mother had undergone the same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same paths and making the same movements in seeking the same object.

And the writing went on:

"He is going up again, he is going up again. . . .

There's his footsteps on the roof. . . . He is near the skylight. . . . Will he look through? . . . Shall we see his hated face? . . ."

"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: Essares. You can see it down there: it was one of the last words my father wrote."

And Coralie read:

"The skylight rose higher, a hand lifted it and we saw . . . we saw, laughing as he looked down on us--oh, the scoundrel--Essares! . . . Essares! . . . And then he pa.s.sed something through the opening, something that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of the room, over our heads: a ladder, a rope-ladder.

"We did not understand. It was swinging in front of us. And then, in the end, I saw a sheet of paper rolled round the bottom rung and pinned to it. On the paper, in Essares' handwriting, are the words, 'Send Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved. I give her ten minutes to accept. If not . . .'"

"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 Simeon'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, Essares and my father. And Simeon, 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."