The Secret Tomb Maurice Leblanc (best love story novels in english .TXT) 📖

humility as if he regretted not having admitted without opposition all Dorothy’s explanations, and promised to accept all she should consent to give him. Dorothy, who had so clearly announced the peril which threatened them, and so clearly elucidated all the problems of this obscure affair, suddenly appeared to him to be a woman who makes no mistake, who cannot make any mistake. And owing to that fact he saw in her a powerful protection against the attacks which were about to ensue.

Dorothy for her part felt confusedly that the truth was prowling round her, that she was on the point of perceiving with perfect clearness that which had no form, and that it was a thing which must moreover astonish her infinitely. Why could she not guess what was hidden in the shadow? It appeared almost as if she was afraid to guess it and that she was deliberately turning away from a danger which her intelligence would have pointed out to her at once, if her womanly instincts had not suffered her to blind herself for several minutes.

Indeed, those several minutes, she lost them. Like one whom dangers surround and who does not know against which he must first defend himself, she shuffled about on one spot. She wasted time on futile phrases, keeping herself simply to the actual facts of the situation, in the hope perhaps that one of her words might strike the enlightening spark out of its flint.

“Maître Delarue, there’s a death and a crime. We must therefore inform the police. However⁠ ⁠… however I think we could put it off for a day or two.”

“Put it off?” he protested. “That’s a step I won’t take. That is a formality which admits of no delay.”

“You will never get back to Périac.”

“Why not?”

“Because the band which had been able to get rid under our very eyes of a confederate who was in its way, must have taken precautions, and the road which leads to Périac must be guarded.”

“You believe that?⁠ ⁠… You believe that?” stuttered Maître Delarue.

“I believe it.”

She answered in a hesitating fashion. At the moment she was suffering bitterly, being one of those creatures to whom uncertainty is torture. She had a profound impression that an essential element of the truth was lacking. Protected as she was in that tower, with four resolute men beside her, it was not she who directed events. She was under the constraint of the law of the enemy who was oppressing and in a way directing her as his fancy took him.

“But it’s terrible,” lamented Maître Delarue. “I cannot stay here forever.⁠ ⁠… My practice demands my attention.⁠ ⁠… I have a wife⁠ ⁠… children.”

“Go, Maître Delarue. But first of all hand over to us the envelope of the codicil that I gave back to you. We will open it in your presence.”

“Have you the right?”

“Why not? The letter of the Marquis is explicit: ‘In the event of Destiny having betrayed me and your finding no trace of me, you will yourselves open the envelope, and learning their hiding-place, take possession of the diamonds.’ That’s clear, isn’t it? And since we know that the Marquis is dead and quite dead, we have the right to take possession of the four diamonds of which we are the proprietors⁠—all five of us⁠ ⁠… all five.”

She stopped short. She had uttered words which, as the saying goes, clashed curiously. The contradiction of the terms she had used⁠—four diamonds, five proprietors⁠—was so flagrant that the young men were struck by them, and that Maître Delarue himself, absorbed as he was in other matters, received a considerable shock.

“As a matter of fact that’s true: you are five. How was it we didn’t notice that detail? You are five and there are only four diamonds.”

Dario explained.

“Doubtless that arises from the fact that there are four men and that we have only paid attention to this number four, four strangers in contrast with you, mademoiselle, who are French.”

“But you can’t get away from the fact that you are five,” said Maître Delarue.

“And what about it?” said Webster.

“Well, you’re five; and the Marquis, according to his letter, had only four sons to whom he left four gold medals. You understand, four gold medals?”

Webster made the objection:

“He could have bequeathed four⁠ ⁠… and left five.”

He looked at Dorothy. She was silent. Was she going to find in this unexpected incident the solution of the enigma which escaped him? She said thoughtfully:

“Always supposing that a fifth medal has not been fabricated since on the model of the others and then transmitted to us by a process of fraud.”

“How are we to know it?”

“Let us compare our medals,” she said. “An examination of them will enlighten us perhaps.”

Webster was the first to present his medal:

It showed no peculiarity which gave them to believe that it was not one of the four original pieces struck by the instructions of the Marquis and controlled by him. An examination of the medals of Dario, Kourobelef, and Errington showed the same. Maître Delarue who had taken all four of them and was examining them minutely, held out his hand for Dorothy’s medal.

She had taken out the little leather purse which she had slipped into her bodice. She untied the strings and stood amazed. The purse was empty.

She shook it, turned it inside out. Nothing.

“It’s gone.⁠ ⁠… It’s gone,” she said in a hushed voice.

An astonished silence followed her declaration. Then the notary asked:

“You haven’t lost it by any chance?”

“No,” she said. “I can’t have lost it. If I had, I should have lost the little bag at the same time.”

“But how do you explain it?” said the notary.

Dario intervened a trifle dryly:

“Mademoiselle has no need to explain. For you don’t pretend.⁠ ⁠…”

“Of course none of us supposes that mademoiselle has come here without having the right,” said the notary. “In the place of four medals there are five, that’s all I meant to say.”

Dorothy said again in the most positive tones: “I have not lost it. From the moment it was missing⁠—”

She