"'Written this day, the 12th of July, 1721...'"
"'Written this day, the 12th of July, 1721...'"
"Two centuries!" gasped the notary and began again:
"'Written this day, the 12th of July, 1721, the last day of my existence, to be read the 12th of July, 1921, the first day of my resurrection.'"
"'Written this day, the 12th of July, 1721, the last day of my existence, to be read the 12th of July, 1921, the first day of my resurrection.'"
The notary stopped short. The young people looked at one another with an air of stupefaction.
Archibald Webster, of Philadelphia, observed:
"This gentleman was mad."
"The word resurrection is perhaps used in a symbolic sense," said Maître Delarue. "We shall learn from what follows: I will continue:
"'My children'...."
"'My children'...."
He stopped again and said:
"'My children'.... He is addressing you."
"For goodness sake, Maître Delarue, do not stop again, I beg you!" exclaimed Dorothy. "All this is thrilling."
"Nevertheless...."
"No, Maître Delarue, comment is useless. We're eager to know, aren't we, comrades?"
The four young men supported her vehemently.
Thereupon the notary resumed his reading, with the hesitation and repetitions imposed by the difficulties of the text:
"'My children,"'On leaving a meeting of the Academy of the sciences of Paris, to which Monsieur de Fontenelle had had the goodness to invite me, the illustrious author of the "Discourses on the Plurality of Worlds," seized me by the arm and said:"'Marquis, would you mind enlightening me on a point about which, it seems, you maintain a shrinking reserve? How did you get that wound on your left hand, get yourfourth finger cut off at the very root? The story goes that you left that finger at the bottom of one of your retorts, for you have the reputation, Marquis, of being something of an alchemist, and of seeking, inside the walls of your Château of Roche-Périac, the elixir of life.'"'I do not seek it, Monsieur de Fontenelle,' I answered, 'I possess it.'"'Truly?'"'Truly, Monsieur de Fontenelle, and if you will permit me to put you in possession of a small phial, the pitiless Fate will certainly have to wait till your hundredth year.'"'I accept with the greatest pleasure,' he said, laughing—'on condition that you keep me company. We are of the same age—which gives us another forty good years to live.'"'For my part, Monsieur de Fontenelle, to live longer does not greatly appeal to me. What is the good of sticking stubbornly to a world in which no new spectacle can surprise and in which the day that is coming will be the same as the day that is done. What I wish to do is to come to life again, to come to life again in a century or two, to make the acquaintance of my grandchildren's children, and see what men have done since our time. There will be great changes here below, in the government of empires as well as in everyday life. I shall learn about them.'"'Bravo, Marquis!' exclaimed Monsieur de Fontenelle, who seemed more and more amused. 'Bravo! It is another elixir which will give you this marvelous power.'"'Another,' I asserted. 'I brought it back with me from India, where, as you know, I spent ten years of my youth, becoming the friend of the priests of that marvelous country, from which every revelation and every religion came to us. They initiated me into some of their chief mysteries.'"'Why not into all?' asked Monsieur de Fontenelle, with a touch of irony."'There are some secrets which they refused to reveal to me, such as the power to communicate with those other worlds, about which you have just discoursed so admirably, Monsieur de Fontenelle, and the power to live again.'"Nevertheless, Marquis, you claim——'"'That secret, Monsieur de Fontenelle, I stole; and to punish me for the theft they sentenced me to the punishment of having all my fingers torn off. After pulling off the first finger, they offered to pardon me, if I consented to restore the phial I had stolen. I told them where it was hidden. But I had taken the precaution beforehand to change the contents, having poured the elixir into another phial.'"'So that, at the cost of one of your fingers, you have purchased a kind of immortality.... Of which you propose to make use. Eh, Marquis,' said Monsieur de Fontenelle."'As soon as I shall have put my affairs in order,' I answered; 'that is to say, in about a couple of years.'"'You're going to make use of it to live again?'"'In the year of grace 1921.'"My story caused Monsieur de Fontenelle the greatest amusement; and in taking leave of me, he promised to relate it in his Memoirs as a proof of my lively imagination—and doubtless, as he said to himself, of my insanity."
"'My children,
"'On leaving a meeting of the Academy of the sciences of Paris, to which Monsieur de Fontenelle had had the goodness to invite me, the illustrious author of the "Discourses on the Plurality of Worlds," seized me by the arm and said:
"'Marquis, would you mind enlightening me on a point about which, it seems, you maintain a shrinking reserve? How did you get that wound on your left hand, get yourfourth finger cut off at the very root? The story goes that you left that finger at the bottom of one of your retorts, for you have the reputation, Marquis, of being something of an alchemist, and of seeking, inside the walls of your Château of Roche-Périac, the elixir of life.'
"'I do not seek it, Monsieur de Fontenelle,' I answered, 'I possess it.'
"'Truly?'
"'Truly, Monsieur de Fontenelle, and if you will permit me to put you in possession of a small phial, the pitiless Fate will certainly have to wait till your hundredth year.'
"'I accept with the greatest pleasure,' he said, laughing—'on condition that you keep me company. We are of the same age—which gives us another forty good years to live.'
"'For my part, Monsieur de Fontenelle, to live longer does not greatly appeal to me. What is the good of sticking stubbornly to a world in which no new spectacle can surprise and in which the day that is coming will be the same as the day that is done. What I wish to do is to come to life again, to come to life again in a century or two, to make the acquaintance of my grandchildren's children, and see what men have done since our time. There will be great changes here below, in the government of empires as well as in everyday life. I shall learn about them.'
"'Bravo, Marquis!' exclaimed Monsieur de Fontenelle, who seemed more and more amused. 'Bravo! It is another elixir which will give you this marvelous power.'
"'Another,' I asserted. 'I brought it back with me from India, where, as you know, I spent ten years of my youth, becoming the friend of the priests of that marvelous country, from which every revelation and every religion came to us. They initiated me into some of their chief mysteries.'
"'Why not into all?' asked Monsieur de Fontenelle, with a touch of irony.
"'There are some secrets which they refused to reveal to me, such as the power to communicate with those other worlds, about which you have just discoursed so admirably, Monsieur de Fontenelle, and the power to live again.'
"Nevertheless, Marquis, you claim——'
"'That secret, Monsieur de Fontenelle, I stole; and to punish me for the theft they sentenced me to the punishment of having all my fingers torn off. After pulling off the first finger, they offered to pardon me, if I consented to restore the phial I had stolen. I told them where it was hidden. But I had taken the precaution beforehand to change the contents, having poured the elixir into another phial.'
"'So that, at the cost of one of your fingers, you have purchased a kind of immortality.... Of which you propose to make use. Eh, Marquis,' said Monsieur de Fontenelle.
"'As soon as I shall have put my affairs in order,' I answered; 'that is to say, in about a couple of years.'
"'You're going to make use of it to live again?'
"'In the year of grace 1921.'
"My story caused Monsieur de Fontenelle the greatest amusement; and in taking leave of me, he promised to relate it in his Memoirs as a proof of my lively imagination—and doubtless, as he said to himself, of my insanity."
Maître Delarue paused to take breath and looked round the circle with questioning eyes.
Marco Dario, of Genoa, threw back his head and laughed. The Russian showed his white teeth. The two Anglo-Saxons seemed greatly amused.
"Rather a joke," said George Errington, of London, with a chuckle.
"Some farce," said Archibald Webster, of Philadelphia.
Dorothy said nothing; her eyes were thoughtful.
Silence fell and Maître Dalarue continued:
"Monsieur de Fontenelle was wrong to laugh, my children. There was no imagination or insanity about it. The great Indian priests know things that we do not know and never shall know; and I am the master of one of the most wonderful of their secrets. The time has come to make use of it. I am resolved to do so. Last year, my wife was killed by accident, leaving me in bitter sorrow. My four sons, like me of a venturesome spirit, are fighting or in business in foreign lands. I live alone. Shall I drag on to the end an old age that is useless and without charm? No. Everything is ready for my departure ... and for my return. My old servants, Geoffrey and his wife, faithful companions for thirty years, with a full knowledge of my project, have sworn to obey me. I say good-bye to my age."Learn, my children, the events which are about to take place at the Château of Roche-Périac. At two o'clock in the afternoon I shall fall into a stupor. The doctor, summoned by Geoffrey, will ascertain that my heart is no longer beating. I shall be quite dead as far as human knowledge goes; and my servants will nail me up in the coffin which is ready for me. When night comes, Geoffrey and his wife will take me out of that coffin and carry me on a stretcher, to the ruins of Cocquesin tower, the oldest donjon of the Lords of Périac. Then they will fill the coffin with stones and nail it up again."For his part, Master Barbier, executor of my will and administrator of my property, will find in my drawer instructions, charging him to notify my four sons of my death and to convey to each of the four his share of his inheritance. Moreover by means of a special courier he will dispatch to each a gold medal which I have had struck, engraved with my motto and the date the 12th of July, 1921, the day of my resurrection. This medal will be transmitted from hand to hand, from generation to generation, beginning with the eldest son or grandson, in such a manner that not more than two persons shall know the secret at one time. Lastly Master Barbier will keep this letter, which I am going to seal with five seals, and which will be transmitted from scrivener to scrivener till the appointed date."When you read this letter, my children, the hour of noon on the 12th of July, 1921, will have struck. You will be gathered together under the clock of my château, fifty yards from old Cocquesin tower, where I shall have been sleeping for two centuries. I have chosen it as my resting-place, calculating that, if the revolutions which I foresee destroy the buildings in use, they will leave alone that which is already a crumbling ruin. Then, going along the avenue of oaks, which my father planted, you will come to this tower, which will doubtless be much the same as it is to-day. You will stop under the arch from which the draw-bridge was formerly raised, and one of you counting to the left, from the groove of the portcullis, the third stone above it, will push it straight before him, while another, counting on the right, always from the groove, the third stone above it, will do as the first is doing. Under this double pressure, exercised at the same time, the middle of the right wall will swing back inwards and form an incline, which will bring you to the bottom of a stone staircase in the thickness of the wall."Lighted by a torch, you will ascend a hundred and thirty-two steps, they will bring you to a partition of plaster which Geoffrey will have built up after my death. You will break it down with a pick-ax, waiting for you on the last step, and you will see a small massive door, the key of which only turns if one presses at the same time the three bricks which form part of that step."Through that door you will enter a chamber in which there will be a bed behind curtains. You will draw aside those curtains. I shall be sleeping there."Do not be surprised, my children, at finding me younger perhaps than the portrait of me which Monsieur Nicolas de Largillière, the King's painter, painted last year, and which hangs at the head of my bed. Two centuries' sleep, the resting of my heart, which will scarcely beat, will, I have no doubt, have filled up my wrinkles and restored youth to my features. It will not be an old man you will gaze upon."My children, the phial will be on a stool beside the bed, wrapped in linen, corked with virgin wax. You will at once break the neck of the phial. While one of you opens my teeth with the point of a knife, another will pour the elixir, not drop by drop but in a thin trickle, which should flow down to the bottom of my throat. Some minutes will pass. Then little by little life will return. The beating of my heart will grow quicker. My breast will rise and fall; and my eyes will open."Perhaps, my children, it will be necessary for you to speak in low voices, and not light up the room with too bright a light, that my eyes and ears may not suffer any shock. Perhaps on the other hand I shall only see you and hear you indistinctly, with enfeebled organs. I do not know. I foresee a period of torpor and uneasiness, during which I shall have to collect my thoughts as one does on awaking from sleep. Moreover I shall make no haste about it, and I beg you not to try to quicken my efforts. Quiet days and a nourishing diet will insensibly restore me to the sweetness of life."Have no fear at all that I shall need to live at your expense. Unknown to my relations I brought back from the Indies four diamonds of extraordinary size, which I have hidden in a hiding-place there is no finding. They will easily suffice to keep me in luxury befitting my station."Since I have to take into consideration that I may have forgotten the secret hiding-place of the diamonds, I have set forth the secret in some lines enclosed herein in a second envelope bearing the designation 'The Codicil.'"Of this codicil I have not breathed a word, not even to my servant Geoffrey and his wife. If out of human weakness they bequeath to their children an account revealing my secret history, they will not be able to reveal the hiding-place of those four marvelous diamonds, which they have often admired and which they will seek in vain after I am gone."The enclosed envelope then will be handed over to me as soon as I return to life. In the event—to my thinking impossible, but which none the less your interests compel me to take into account—of destiny having betrayed me and of your finding no trace of me, you will yourselves open the envelope and learning the whereabouts of the hiding-place, take possession of the diamonds. Then and thereafter I declare that the ownership of the diamonds is vested in those of my descendants who shall present the gold medal, and that no person shall have the right to intervene in the fair partition of them, on which they shall agree among themselves, and I beg them to make that partition themselves as their consciences shall direct."I have said what I have to say, my children. I am about to enter into the silence and await your coming. I do not doubt that you will come from all the corners of the earth at the imperious summons of the gold medal. Sprung from the same stock, be as brothers and sisters among yourselves. Approach with serious minds him who sleeps, and deliver him from the bonds which keep him in the kingdom of darkness."Written by my own hand, in perfect health of mind and body, this day, the 12th of July, 1721. Delivered under my hand and seal."Jean-Pierre-Augustin de la Roche, Marquis de ——"
"Monsieur de Fontenelle was wrong to laugh, my children. There was no imagination or insanity about it. The great Indian priests know things that we do not know and never shall know; and I am the master of one of the most wonderful of their secrets. The time has come to make use of it. I am resolved to do so. Last year, my wife was killed by accident, leaving me in bitter sorrow. My four sons, like me of a venturesome spirit, are fighting or in business in foreign lands. I live alone. Shall I drag on to the end an old age that is useless and without charm? No. Everything is ready for my departure ... and for my return. My old servants, Geoffrey and his wife, faithful companions for thirty years, with a full knowledge of my project, have sworn to obey me. I say good-bye to my age.
"Learn, my children, the events which are about to take place at the Château of Roche-Périac. At two o'clock in the afternoon I shall fall into a stupor. The doctor, summoned by Geoffrey, will ascertain that my heart is no longer beating. I shall be quite dead as far as human knowledge goes; and my servants will nail me up in the coffin which is ready for me. When night comes, Geoffrey and his wife will take me out of that coffin and carry me on a stretcher, to the ruins of Cocquesin tower, the oldest donjon of the Lords of Périac. Then they will fill the coffin with stones and nail it up again.
"For his part, Master Barbier, executor of my will and administrator of my property, will find in my drawer instructions, charging him to notify my four sons of my death and to convey to each of the four his share of his inheritance. Moreover by means of a special courier he will dispatch to each a gold medal which I have had struck, engraved with my motto and the date the 12th of July, 1921, the day of my resurrection. This medal will be transmitted from hand to hand, from generation to generation, beginning with the eldest son or grandson, in such a manner that not more than two persons shall know the secret at one time. Lastly Master Barbier will keep this letter, which I am going to seal with five seals, and which will be transmitted from scrivener to scrivener till the appointed date.
"When you read this letter, my children, the hour of noon on the 12th of July, 1921, will have struck. You will be gathered together under the clock of my château, fifty yards from old Cocquesin tower, where I shall have been sleeping for two centuries. I have chosen it as my resting-place, calculating that, if the revolutions which I foresee destroy the buildings in use, they will leave alone that which is already a crumbling ruin. Then, going along the avenue of oaks, which my father planted, you will come to this tower, which will doubtless be much the same as it is to-day. You will stop under the arch from which the draw-bridge was formerly raised, and one of you counting to the left, from the groove of the portcullis, the third stone above it, will push it straight before him, while another, counting on the right, always from the groove, the third stone above it, will do as the first is doing. Under this double pressure, exercised at the same time, the middle of the right wall will swing back inwards and form an incline, which will bring you to the bottom of a stone staircase in the thickness of the wall.
"Lighted by a torch, you will ascend a hundred and thirty-two steps, they will bring you to a partition of plaster which Geoffrey will have built up after my death. You will break it down with a pick-ax, waiting for you on the last step, and you will see a small massive door, the key of which only turns if one presses at the same time the three bricks which form part of that step.
"Through that door you will enter a chamber in which there will be a bed behind curtains. You will draw aside those curtains. I shall be sleeping there.
"Do not be surprised, my children, at finding me younger perhaps than the portrait of me which Monsieur Nicolas de Largillière, the King's painter, painted last year, and which hangs at the head of my bed. Two centuries' sleep, the resting of my heart, which will scarcely beat, will, I have no doubt, have filled up my wrinkles and restored youth to my features. It will not be an old man you will gaze upon.
"My children, the phial will be on a stool beside the bed, wrapped in linen, corked with virgin wax. You will at once break the neck of the phial. While one of you opens my teeth with the point of a knife, another will pour the elixir, not drop by drop but in a thin trickle, which should flow down to the bottom of my throat. Some minutes will pass. Then little by little life will return. The beating of my heart will grow quicker. My breast will rise and fall; and my eyes will open.
"Perhaps, my children, it will be necessary for you to speak in low voices, and not light up the room with too bright a light, that my eyes and ears may not suffer any shock. Perhaps on the other hand I shall only see you and hear you indistinctly, with enfeebled organs. I do not know. I foresee a period of torpor and uneasiness, during which I shall have to collect my thoughts as one does on awaking from sleep. Moreover I shall make no haste about it, and I beg you not to try to quicken my efforts. Quiet days and a nourishing diet will insensibly restore me to the sweetness of life.
"Have no fear at all that I shall need to live at your expense. Unknown to my relations I brought back from the Indies four diamonds of extraordinary size, which I have hidden in a hiding-place there is no finding. They will easily suffice to keep me in luxury befitting my station.
"Since I have to take into consideration that I may have forgotten the secret hiding-place of the diamonds, I have set forth the secret in some lines enclosed herein in a second envelope bearing the designation 'The Codicil.'
"Of this codicil I have not breathed a word, not even to my servant Geoffrey and his wife. If out of human weakness they bequeath to their children an account revealing my secret history, they will not be able to reveal the hiding-place of those four marvelous diamonds, which they have often admired and which they will seek in vain after I am gone.
"The enclosed envelope then will be handed over to me as soon as I return to life. In the event—to my thinking impossible, but which none the less your interests compel me to take into account—of destiny having betrayed me and of your finding no trace of me, you will yourselves open the envelope and learning the whereabouts of the hiding-place, take possession of the diamonds. Then and thereafter I declare that the ownership of the diamonds is vested in those of my descendants who shall present the gold medal, and that no person shall have the right to intervene in the fair partition of them, on which they shall agree among themselves, and I beg them to make that partition themselves as their consciences shall direct.
"I have said what I have to say, my children. I am about to enter into the silence and await your coming. I do not doubt that you will come from all the corners of the earth at the imperious summons of the gold medal. Sprung from the same stock, be as brothers and sisters among yourselves. Approach with serious minds him who sleeps, and deliver him from the bonds which keep him in the kingdom of darkness.
"Written by my own hand, in perfect health of mind and body, this day, the 12th of July, 1721. Delivered under my hand and seal.
"Jean-Pierre-Augustin de la Roche, Marquis de ——"
Maître Delarue was silent, bent nearer to the paper, and murmured:
"The signature is scarcely legible: the name begins with a B or an R ... the flourish muddles up all the letters."
Dorothy said slowly:
"Jean-Pierre-Augustin de la Roche, Marquis de Beaugreval."
"Yes, yes: that's it!" cried the notary at once. "Marquis de Beaugreval. How did you know?"
Dorothy did not answer. She was still quite absorbed in the strange will of the Marquis. Her companions, their eyes fixed on her, seemed to be waiting for her to express an opinion; and since she remained silent, George Earrington, of London, said:
"Not a bad joke. What?"
She shook her head:
"Is it quite certain, cousin, that it is a joke?"
"Oh, mademoiselle! This resurrection ... the elixir ... the hidden diamonds!"
"I don't say that it isn't," said Dorothy, smiling. "The old fellow does seem to me a trifle cracked. Nevertheless the letter he has written to us is certainly authentic; at the end of two centuries we have come, as he foresaw that we should, to the rendezvous he appointed, and above all we are certainly members of the same family."
"I think that we might start embracing all over again, mademoiselle."
"I'm sure, if our ancestor permits it, I shall be charmed," said Dorothy.
"But he does permit it."
"We'll go and ask him."
Maître Delarue protested:
"You'll go without me, mademoiselle. Understand once and for all that I am not going to see whether Jean-Pierre-Augustin de la Roche, Marquis de Beaugreval, is still alive at the age of two hundred and sixty-two years!"
"But he isn't as old as all that, Maître Delarue. We need not count the two hundred years' sleep. Then it's only a matter of sixty-two years; that's quite normal. His friend, Monsieur de Fontenelle, as the Marquis predicted and thanks to an elixir of life, lived to be a hundred."
"In fact you do not believe in it, mademoiselle?"
"No. But all the same there should be something in it."
"What else can there be in it?"
"We shall know presently. But at the moment I confess to my shame that I should like before——"
She paused; and with one accord they cried:
"What?"
She laughed.
"Well, the truth is I'm hungry—hungry with a two-hundred-year-old hunger—as hungry as the Marquis de Beaugreval must be. Has any of you by any chance——"
The three young men darted away. One ran to his motor-cycle, the other two to their horses. Each had a haversack full of provisions which they brought and set out on the grass at Dorothy's feet. The Russian Kourobelef, who had only a slice of bread, dragged a large flat stone in front of her by way of table.
"This is really nice!" she said, clapping her hands. "A real family lunch! We invite you to join us, Maître Delarue, and you also, soldier of Wrangel."
The meal, washed down by the good wine of Anjou, was a merry one. They drank the health of the worthy nobleman who had had the excellent idea of bringing them together at his château; and Webster made a speech in his honor.
The diamonds, the codicil, the survival of their ancestor and his resurrection had become so many trifles to which they paid no further attention. For them the adventure came to an end with the reading of the letter and the improvised meal. And even so it was amazing enough!
"And so amusing!" said Dorothy, who kept laughing. "I assure you that I have never been so amused—never."
Her four cousins, as she called them, hung on her lips and never took their eyes off her, amused and astonished by everything she said. At first sight they had understood her and she had understood them, without the five of them having to pass through the usual stages of becoming intimate, through which people who are thrown together for the first time generally have to pass. To them she was grace, beauty, spirit and freshness. She represented the charming country from which their ancestors had long ago departed; they found in her at once a sister of whom they were proud and a woman they burned to win.
Already rivals, each of them strove to appear at his best.
Errington, Webster, and Dario organized contests, feats of strength, exhibitions of balancing; they ran races. The only prize they asked for was that Dorothy, queen of the tourney, should regard them with favor with those beautiful eyes, of which they felt the profound seduction, and which appeared to them the most beautiful eyes they had ever seen.
But the winner of the tournament was Dorothy herself. Directly she took part in it, all that the others could do was to sit down, look on, and wonder. A fragment of wall, of which the top had crumbled so thin that it was nearly a sharp edge, served her as a tight-rope. She climbed trees and let herself drop from branch to branch. Springing upon the big horse of Dario she forced him through the paces of a circus horse. Then, seizing the bridle of the pony, she did a turn on the two of them, lying down, standing up, or astride.
She performed all these feats with a modest grace, full of reserve, without a trace of coquetry. The young men were no less enthusiastic than amazed. The acrobat delighted them. But the young girl inspired them with a respect from which not one of them dreamt of departing. Who was she? They called her princess, laughing; but their laughter was full of deference. Really they did not understand it.
It was not till three in the afternoon that they decided to carry the adventure to its end. They all started to do so in the spirit of picnickers. Maître Delarue, to whose head the good wine of Anjou had mounted in some quantity, with his broad bow unknotted and his tall hat on the back of his head, led the way on his donkey, chanting couplets about the resurrection of Marquis Lazarus. Dario, of Genoa, imitated a mandolin accompaniment. Errington and Webster held over Dorothy's head, to keep the sun off it, an umbrella made of ferns and wild flowers.
They went round the hillock, which was composed of the débris of the old château, behind the clock and along a beautiful avenue of trees centuries old, which ended in a circular glade in the middle of which rose a magnificent oak.
Maître Delarue said in the tone of a guide:
"These are the trees planted by the Marquis de Beaugreval's father. You will observe their vigor. Venerable trees, if ever there were any! Behold the oak king! Whole generations have taken shelter under his boughs. Hats off, gentlemen!"
Then they came to the woody slopes of a small hill, on the summit of which in the middle of a circular embankment, formed by the ruins of the wall that had encircled it, rose a tower oval in shape.
"Cocquesin tower," said Maître Delarue, more and more cheerful. "Venerable ruins, if ever there were any! Remnants of the feudal keep! That's where the sleeping Marquis of the enchanted wood is waiting for us, whom we're going to resuscitate with a thimbleful of foaming elixir."
The blue sky appeared through the empty windows. Whole masses of wall had fallen down. However, the whole of the right side seemed to be intact; and if there really was a staircase and some kind of habitation, as the Marquis had stated, it could only be in that part of the tower.
And now the arch, against which the draw-bridge had formerly been raised opened before them. The approach to it was so blocked by interlaced briars and bushes, that it took them a long time to reach the vault in which were the stones indicated by the Marquis de Beaugreval.
Then, another barrier of fallen stones, and another effort to clear a double path to the two walls.
"Here we are," said Dorothy at last. She had directed their labors. "And we can be quite sure that no one has been before us."
Before beginning the operation which had been enjoined on them they went to the end of the vault. It opened on to the immense nave formed by the interior of the keep, its stories fallen away, its only roof the sky. They saw, one above the other, the embrasures of four fireplaces, under chimney-pieces of sculptured stone, full now of wild plants.
One might have described it as the oval of a Roman amphitheater, with a series of small vaulted chambers above, of which one perceived the gaping openings, separated by passages into distinct groups.
"The visitors who risk coming to Roche-Périac can enter from this side," said Dorothy. "Wedding parties from the neighborhood must come here now and then. Look: there are greasy pieces of paper and sardine-tins scattered about on the ground."
"It's odd that the draw-bridge vault hasn't been cleared out," said Webster.
"By whom? Do you think that picnickers are going to waste their time doing what we have done, when on the opposite side there are easy entrances?"
They did not seem in any hurry to get to work to verify the statements of the Marquis; and it was rather to have their consciences clear and to be able to say to themselves without any equivocation, "The adventure is finished," that they attacked the walls of the vault.
Dorothy, sceptical as the others, again carelessly took command, and said: "Come on, cousins. You didn't come from America and Russia to stand still with folded arms. We owe our ancestor this proof of our good will before we have the right to throw our medals into drawers. Dario, of Genoa—Errington, be so good as to push, each on the side you are, the third stone at the top. Yes: those two, since this is the groove in which the old portcullis worked."
The stones were a good height above the ground, so that the Englishman and the Italian had to raise their arms to reach them. Following Dorothy's advice, they climbed on to the shoulders of Webster and Kourobelef.
"Are you ready?"
"We're ready," replied Errington and Dario.
"Then push gently with a continuous pressure. And above all have faith! Maître Delarue has no faith. So I am not asking him to do anything."
The two young men set their hands against the two stones and pushed hard.
"Come: a little vigor!" said Dorothy in a tone of jest. "The statements of the Marquis are gospel truth. He has written that the stone on the right will slip back. Let the stone on the right slip back."
"Mineismoving," said the Englishman, on the left.
"So is mine," said the Italian, on the right.
"It isn't possible!" cried Dorothy incredulously.
"But it is! But it is!" declared the Englishman. "And the stone above it, too. They are slipping back from the top."
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the two stones, forming one piece, slipped back into the interior of the wall and revealed in the semi-darkness the foot of a staircase and some steps.
The Englishman uttered a cry of triumph:
"The worthy gentleman did not lie! There's the staircase!"
For a moment they remained speechless. Not that there was anything extraordinary in the affair so far; but it was a confirmation of the first part of the Marquis de Beaugreval's statement; and they asked themselves if the rest of his predictions would not be fulfilled with the same exactness.
"If it turns out that there are a hundred and thirty-two steps, I shall declare myself convinced," said Errington.
"What?" said Maître Delarue, who also appeared deeply impressed. "Do you mean to assert that the Marquis——"
"That the Marquis is awaiting us like a man who is expecting our visit."
"You're raving," growled the notary. "Isn't he, mademoiselle?"
The young men hauled themselves on to the landing formed by the stones which had slipped back. Dorothy joined them. Two electric pocket-lamps took the place of the torch suggested by the Marquis de Beaugreval, and they set about mounting the high steps which wound upwards in a very narrow space.
"Fifteen—sixteen—seventeen," Dario counted.
To hearten himself, Maître Delarue sang the couplets of "da Tour, prende garde." But at the thirtieth step he began to save his breath.
"It's a steep climb, isn't it?" said Dorothy.
"Yes it is. But it's chiefly the idea of paying a visit to a dead man. It makes my legs a bit shaky."
At the fiftieth step a hole in the wall let in some light. Dorothy looked out and saw the woods of La Roche-Périac; but a cornice, jutting out, prevented her from seeing the ground at the foot of the keep.
They continued the ascent. Maître Delarue kept singing in a more and more shaky voice, and towards the end it was rather a groaning than a singing.
"A hundred ... a hundred and ten ... a hundred and twenty."
At a hundred and thirty-two he made the announcement:
"It is indeed the last. A wall blocks the staircase. About this also our ancestor was telling the truth."
"And are there three bricks let into the step?"
"There are."
"And a pick-ax?"
"It's here."
"Come: on getting to the top of the staircase and examining what we find there, every detail agrees with the will, so that we have only to carry out the good man's final instructions." She said: "Break down the wall, Webster. It's only a plaster partition."
At the first blow in fact the wall crumbled away, disclosing a small, low door.
"Goodness!" muttered the lawyer, who was no longer trying to dissemble his uneasiness. "The program is indeed being carried out item by item."
"Ah, you're becoming a trifle less sceptical, Maître Delarue. You'll be declaring next that the door will open."
"I do declare it. This old lunatic was a clever mechanician and a scenical producer of the first order."
"You speak of him as if he were dead," observed Dorothy.
The notary seized her arm.
"Of course I do! I'm quite willing to admit that he's behind this door. But alive? No, no! Certainly not!"
She put her foot on one of the bricks. Errington and Dario pressed the two others. The door jerked violently, quivered, and turned on its hinges.
"Holy Virgin!" murmured Dario. "We're confronted by a genuine miracle. Are we going to see Satan?"
By the light of their lamps they perceived a fair-sized room with an arched ceiling. No ornament relieved the bareness of the stone walls. There was nothing in the way of furniture in it. But one judged that there was a small, low room, which formed an alcove, from the piece of tapestry, roughly nailed to a beam, which ran along the left side of it.
The five men and Dorothy did not stir, silent, motionless. Maître Delarue, extremely pale, seemed very ill at ease indeed.
Was it the fumes of wine, or the distress inspired by mystery?
No one was smiling any longer. Dorothy could not withdraw her eyes from the piece of tapestry. So the adventure did not come to an end with the astonishing meeting of the Marquis' heirs, nor with the reading of his fantastic will. It went as far as the hollow stairway in the old tower, to which no one had ever penetrated, to the very threshold of the inviolable retreat in which the Marquis had drunk the draft which brings sleep.... Or which kills. What was there behind the tapestry? A bed, of course ... some garments which kept perhaps the shape of the body they had covered ... and besides, a handful of ashes.
She turned her head to her companions as if to say to them:
"Shall I go first?"
They stood motionless—undecided, ill at ease.
Then she took a step forward—then two. The tapestry was within reach. With a hesitating hand she took hold of the edge of it, while the young men drew nearer.
They turned the light of their lamps into the alcove.
At the back of it was a bed. On that bed lay a man.
This vision was, in spite of everything, so unexpected, that for a few seconds Dorothy's legs almost failed her, and she let the tapestry fall. It was Archibald Webster who, deeply perturbed, raised it quickly, and walked briskly to this sleeping man, as if he were about to shake him and awake him forthwith. The others tumbled into the alcove after him. Archibald stopped short at the bed, with his arm raised, and dared not make another movement.
One might have judged the man on the bed to be sixty years old.
But in the strange paleness of that wholly colorless skin, beneath which flowed no single drop of blood, there was something that was of no age. A face absolutely hairless. Not an eyelash, no eyebrows. The nose, cartilage and all, transparent like the noses of some consumptives. No flesh. A jaw, bones, cheek-bones, large sunken eyelids. That was the face between two sticking-out ears; and above it was an enormous forehead running up into an entirely bald skull.
"The finger—the finger!" murmured Dorothy.
The fourth finger of the left hand was missing, cut exactly level with the palm as the will had stated.
The man was dressed in a coat of chestnut-colored cloth, a black silk waistcoat, embroidered in green, and breeches. His stockings were of fine wool. He wore no shoes.
"Hemustbe dead," said one of the young men in a low voice.
To make sure, it would have been necessary to bend down and apply one's ear to the breast above the heart. But they had an odd feeling that, at the slightest touch, this shape of a man would crumble to dust and so vanish like a phantom.
Besides, to make such an experiment, would it not be to commit sacrilege? To suspect death and question a corpse: none of them dared.
Dorothy shivered, her womanly nerves strained to excess. Maître Delarue besought her:
"Let's get away.... It's got nothing to do with us.... It's a devilish business."
But George Errington had an idea. He took a small mirror from his pocket and held it close to the man's lips. After the lapse of some seconds there was a film on it.
"Oh! I b-b-believe he's alive!" he stammered.
"He's alive! He's alive!" muttered the young people, keeping with difficulty their excitement within bounds.
Maître Delarue's legs were so shaky that he had to sit down on the foot of the bed. He murmured again and again:
"A devilish business! We've no right——"
They kept looking at one another with troubled faces. The idea that this dead man was alive—for he was dead, undeniably dead—the idea that this dead man was alive shocked them as something monstrous.
And yet was not the evidence that he was alive quite as strong as the evidence that he was dead? They believed in his death because it was impossible that he should be alive. But could they deny the evidence of their own eyes because that evidence was against all reason?
Dorothy said:
"Look: his chest rises and falls—you can see it—ever so slowly and ever so little. But it does. Then he isnotdead."
They protested.
"No.... It's out of the question. Such a phenomenon would be inexplicable."
"I'm not so sure ... I'm not so sure. It might be a kind of lethargy ... a kind of hypnotic trance," she murmured.
"A trance which lasted two hundred years?"
"I don't know.... I don't understand it."
"Well?"
"Well, we must act."
"But how?"
"As the will tells us to act. The instructions are quite definite. Our duty is to execute them blindly and without question."
"How?"
"We must try to awaken him with the elixir of which the will speaks."
"Here it is," said Marco Dario, picking up from the stool a small object wrapped in linen. He unfolded the wrapping and displayed a phial, of antique shape, heavy, of crystal, with a round bottom and long neck which terminated in a large wax cork.
He handed it to Dorothy, who broke off the top of the neck with a sharp tap against the edge of the stool.
"Has any of you a knife?" she asked. "Thank you, Archibald. Open the blade and introduce the point between the teeth as the will directs."
They acted as might a doctor confronted by a patient whom he does not know exactly how to handle, but whom he nevertheless treats, without the slightest hesitation, according to the formal prescription in use in similar cases. They would see what happened. The essential thing was to carry out the instructions.
Archibald Webster did not find it easy to perform his task. The lips were tightly closed, the upper teeth, for the most part black and decayed, were so firmly wedged against the lower that the knife-point could not force its way between them. He had to introduce it sideways, and then raise the handle to force the jaws apart.
"Don't move," said Dorothy.
She bent down. Her right hand, holding the phial, tilted it gently. A few drops of a liquid of the color and odor of green Chartreuse fell between the lips; then an even trickle flowed from the phial, which was soon empty.
"That's done," she said, straightening herself.
Looking at her companions, she tried to smile. All of them were staring at the dead man.
She murmured: "We've got to wait. It doesn't work straightaway."
And as she uttered the words she thought:
"And then what? I am ready to admit that it will have an effect and that this man will awake from sleep! Or rather from death.... For such a sleep is nothing but death. No: really we are the victims of a collective hallucination.... No: there was no film on the mirror. No: the chest does not rise and fall. No—a thousand times no! One doesnotcome to life again!"
"Three minutes gone," said Marco Dario.
And watch in hand, he counted, minute by minute, five more minutes—then five more.
The waiting of these six persons would have been incomprehensible, had its explanation not been found in the fact that all the events foretold by the Marquis de Beaugreval had followed one another with mathematical precision. There had been a series of facts which was very like a series of miracles, which compelled the witnesses of those facts to be patient—at least till the moment fixed for the supreme miracle.
"Fifteen minutes," said the Italian.
A few more seconds passed. Of a sudden they quivered. A hushed exclamation burst from the lips of each.The man's eyelids had moved.
In a moment the phenomenon was repeated, and so clearly and distinctly that further doubt was impossible. It was the twitching of two eyes that tried to open. At the same time the arms stirred. The hands quivered.
"Oh!" stuttered the distracted notary. "He's alive! He's alive!"
Dorothy gazed; her eyes missed no slightest movement. Like her, the young men remained motionless, with drawn faces. The Italian, however, just sketched the sign of the cross.
"He's alive!" broke in Maître Delarue. "Look; he's looking at us."
A strange gaze. It did not shift; it did not try to see. The gaze of the newly born, animated by no thought. Vague, unconscious, it shunned the light of the lamps and seemed ready to be extinguished in a new sleep. On the other hand the rest of the body became instinct with life, as if the blood resumed its normal course under the impulsion of a heart which again began to beat. The arms and the hands moved with purposed movements. Then suddenly the legs slipped off the bed. The bust was raised. After several attempts the man sat up.
Then they saw him face to face; and since one of the young men raised his lamp that its light might not shine in his eyes, that lamp lit up on the wall of the alcove above the bed the portrait of which the Marquis had made mention. They could then perceive that it was indeed the portrait of the man. The same enormous brow, the same eyes deeply sunk in their orbits, the same high cheek-bones, the same bony jaw, the same projecting ears. But the man, contrary to the prediction in the letter, had greatly aged and grown considerably thinner, for the portrait represented a nobleman of good appearance and sufficiently plump.
Twice he tried to stand upright without succeeding. He was too weak; his legs refused to support him. He seemed also to be laboring under a heavy oppression and to breathe with difficulty, either because he had lost the habit or because he needed more air. Dorothy observed two planks nailed to the wall, pointed them out to Dario and Webster, and signed to them to pull them down. It was easy to do so, for they were not nailed very firmly to the wall; and they uncovered a small round window, a bull's-eye rather, not more than a foot or fifteen inches across.
A whiff of fresh air blew into the room all round the man sitting on the bed; and for all that he appeared to have no understanding of anything, he turned towards the window, and opening his mouth, drew in great breaths.
All these trifling incidents were spread over a considerable time. The astonished witnesses of them had a feeling that they were taking part in the mysterious phases of a resurrection which they were wholly unable to consider final. Every minute gained by this living dead man appeared to them a new miracle which passed all imagining, and they hoped for the inevitable event which would restore things to their natural order, and which would be as it were the disarticulation and crumbling away of this incredible automaton.
Dorothy stamped her foot impatiently, as if she were struggling against herself and trying to shake off a torpor.
She turned away from this sight which fascinated her, and her face took on an expression of such profound thought, that her companions withdrew their eyes from the man to watch her. Her eyes were seeking something. Their blue irises became of a deeper blue. They seemed to see beyond what ordinary eyes see and to pursue the truth into more distant regions.
At the end of a minute or two she said:
"We must try."
She went firmly to the bed. After all here was a clear and definite phenomenon; it had to be taken into account: this man was alive. It was necessary therefore to treat him as a living being, who has ears to hear and a mouth to speak with, and who distinguishes the things about him by a personal existence. This man had a name. Every circumstance pointed directly to the fact that his presence in this sealed chamber was the result not of a miracle—a hypothesis which they need only examine as a last resort—but of an experiment that had succeeded—a hypothesis which one had no right to set aside fora priorireasons, however astonishing it might appear to be.
Then why not question him?
She sat down beside him, took his hands, which were cold and moist, in hers and said gravely:
"We have hastened hither at your summons.... We are they to whom the gold medal——"
She stopped. The words were not coming easily to her. They seemed to her absurd and childish; and she was quite certain that they must appear so to those who heard them. But she must make an effort to continue:
"In our families the gold medal has passed from hand to hand right down to us.... It is now for two centuries that the tradition has been forming and that your will——"
But she was incapable of continuing on these pompous lines. Another voice within her murmured:
"Goodness, how idiotic what I am saying is!"
However, the hands of the man were growing warm from their contact with hers. He almost wore an air of hearing the noise of her words and of understanding that they were addressed to him. And so, dropping the phrase-making, she brought herself to speak to him simply, as to a poor man whom his resurrection did not set apart from human necessities:
"Are you hungry?... Do you want to eat? ... to drink? Answer. What would you like?... My friends and I will try...."
The old man, with the light full on his face, his mouth open, his lower lip hanging down, preserved a dull and stupid countenance, animated by no expression, no desire.
Without turning away from him, Dorothy called out to the notary:
"Don't you think we ought to offer him the second envelope, Maître Delarue, the codicil? His understanding may perhaps awake at the sight of this paper which formerly belonged to him, and which, according to the instructions in the will, we're to hand over to him."
Maître Delarue agreed with her and passed the envelope to her. She held it out to the old man, saying:
"Here are the directions for finding the diamonds, written by yourself. No one knows these directions. Here they are."
She stretched out her hand. It was clear that the old man tried to respond with a similar movement. She accentuated the gesture. He lowered his eyes towards the envelope; and his fingers opened to receive it.
"You quite understand?" she asked. "You are going to open this envelope. It contains the secret of the diamonds—a fortune."
Once more she stopped abruptly, as if struck by a sudden thought, something she had unexpectedly observed.
Webster said to her:
"He certainly understands. When he opens the letter and reads it, the whole of the past will come back to his memory. We may give it to him."
George Errington supported him.
"Yes, mademoiselle, we may give it to him. It's a secret which belongs to him."
Dorothy however did not perform the action she had suggested. She looked at the old man with the most earnest attention. Then she took the lamp, moved it away, then near, examined the mutilated hand, and then suddenly burst into a fit of wild laughter; it burst out with all the violence of laughter long restrained.
Bent double, holding her ribs, she laughed till it hurt her. Her pretty head shook her wavy hair in a series of jerks. And it was a laugh so fresh and so young, of such irresistible gayety that the young men burst out laughing in their turn. Maître Delarue, on the other hand, irritated by a hilarity which seemed to him out of place in the circumstances protested in a tone of annoyance:
"Really, I'm amazed.... There's nothing to laugh at in all this.... We are in the presence of a really extraordinary occurrence...."
His shocked air re-doubled Dorothy's merriment. She stammered:
"Yes—extraordinary—a miracle! Goodness, how funny it is! And what a pleasure it is to let one's self go! I had been holding myself in quite long enough. Yes, I was manifestly serious ... uneasy.... But all the same I did want to laugh!... It is all so funny!"
The notary muttered:
"I don't see anything funny in it.... The Marquis——"
Dorothy's delight passed all bounds. She repeated, wringing her hands, with tears in her eyes:
"The Marquis!... The friend of Fontenelle! The revivified Marquis! Lazarus de Beaugreval! Then you didn't see?"
"I saw the film on the mirror ... the eyes open."
"Yes, yes: I know. But the rest?"
"What rest?"
"In his mouth?"
"What on earth is it?"
"There's a...."
"A what? Out with it!"
"A false tooth!"
Maître Delarue repeated slowly:
"There's a false tooth?"
"Yes, a molar ... a molar all of gold!"
"Well, what about it?"
Dorothy did not immediately reply. She gave Maître Delarue plenty of time to collect his wits and to grasp the full value of this discovery.
He said again in a less assured tone:
"Well?"
"Well, there you are?" she said, very much out of breath. "I ask myself, with positive anguish: did they make gold teeth in the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV?... Because, you see, if the Marquis was unable to get his gold tooth before he died, he must have had his dentist come here—to this tower—while he was dead. That is to say, he must have learnt from the newspapers, or from some other source, that he could have a false tooth put in the place of the one which used to ache in the days of Louis XIV."
Dorothy had finally succeeded in repressing the ill-timed mirth which had so terribly shocked Maître Delarue. She was merely smiling—but smiling with an extremely mischievous and delighted air. Naturally the four strangers, grouped closely round her, were also smiling with the air of people amused beyond words.
On his bed, the man, always impassive and stupid, continued his breathing exercises. The notary drew his companions out of the alcove, into the outer room so that they formed a group with their backs to the bed, and said in a low voice:
"Then, according to you, mademoiselle, this is a mystification?"
"I'm afraid so," she said, tossing her head with a humorous air.
"But the Marquis?"
"The Marquis has nothing to do with the matter," she said. "The adventure of the Marquis came to an end on the 12th of July, 1721, when he swallowed a drug which put an end to his brilliant existence for good and all. All that remains of the Marquis, in spite of his hopes of a resurrection, is: firstly, a pinch of ashes mingled with the dust of this room; secondly, the authentic and curious letter which Maître Delarue read to us; thirdly, a lot of enormous diamonds hidden somewhere or other; fourthly, the clothes he was wearing at the supreme hour when he voluntarily shut himself up in his tomb, that is to say in this room."
"And those clothes?"
"Our man is dressed in them—unless he bought others, since the old ones must have been in a very bad state."
"But how could he get here? This window is too narrow; besides it's inaccessible. Then how?..."
"Doubtless the same way we did."
"Impossible! Think of all the obstacles, the difficulties, the wall of briers which barred the road."
"Are we sure that this wall was not already pierced in some other place, that the plaster partition had not been broken down and reconstructed, that the door of this room had not been opened before we came?"
"But it would have been necessary for this man to know the secret combinations of the Marquis, the mechanical device of the two stones and so on."
"Why not? Perhaps the Marquis left a copy of his letter ... or a draft of it. But no.... Of course!... Better than that! We know the truth from the Marquis de Beaugreval himself.... He foresaw it, since he alludes to an always possible defection of his old servant, Geoffrey, and takes into account the possibility of the good fellow's writing a description of what had taken place. This description the good fellow did write, and along different lines it has come down to our time."
"It's a simple supposition."
"It's a supposition more than probable, Maître Delarue, since besides us, besides these four young men and myself, there are other families in which the history, or a part of the history of Beaugreval, has been handed down; and as a consequence for some months I've been fighting for the possession of the indispensable gold medal stolen from my father."
Her words made a very deep impression. She entered into details:
"The family of Chagny-Roborey in the Orne, the family of Argonne in the Ardennes, the family of Davernoie in Vendée, are so many focuses of the tradition. And around it dramas, robberies, assassinations, madness, a regular boiling up of passion and violence."
"Nevertheless," observed Errington, "here there is no one but us. What are the others doing?"
"They're waiting. They're waiting for a date of which they are ignorant. They are waiting for the medal. I saw in front of the church of Roche-Périac a tramp and a factory hand, a woman, from Paris. I saw two poor mad people who came to the rendezvous and are waiting at the edge of the water. A week ago I handed over to the police a dangerous criminal of the name of d'Estreicher, a distant connection of my family, who had committed a murder to obtain possession of the gold medal. Will you believe me now when I tell you that we are dealing with an impostor?"
Dario said:
"Then the man who is here has come to play the same part as the Marquis expected to play two hundred years after his death?"
"Of course."
"With what object?"
"The diamonds, I tell you—the diamonds!"
"But since he knew of their existence, he had only to search for them and appropriate them."
"You can take it from me that he has searched for them and without ceasing, but in vain. A fresh proof that the man only knew Geoffrey's story, since Geoffrey had not been informed by his master of their hiding-place. And it is in order to learn where this hiding-place is, to be present at the meeting of the descendants of the Marquis de Beaugreval, that he is playing to-day, the 12th of July, 1921, after months and years of preparation, the part of the Marquis."
"A dangerous part! An impossible part!"
"Possible for at least some hours, which would be enough. What do I say, some hours? But just think: at the end of ten minutes we were all of one mind about giving him the second envelope which contains the key to the enigma, and which was probably the actual object of his enterprise. He must have known of the existence of a codicil, of a document giving directions. But where to find that document. No longer any scrivener Barbier—no longer any successors. But where to find it? Why here! At the meeting on the 12th of July. Logically, the codicil must be brought to that meeting. Logically, it would be handed over to him. And as a matter of fact I had it in my hand. I held it out to him. A second later he would have obtained from it the information he wanted. After that, good-bye. The Marquis de Beaugreval, once possessor of the diamonds of the Marquis de Beaugreval, would retire into the void, that is to say he would bolt at full speed."
Webster asked:
"Why didn't you give him the envelope? Did you guess?"
"Guess? No. But I distrusted him. In offering it to him I was above all things making an experiment. What evidence it would be against him, if he accepted my offer by a gesture of acceptance, inexplicable at the end of such a short period? He did accept. I saw his hand tremble with impatience. I knew where I was. But at the same time Fortune was kind to me; I saw that little bit of gold in his mouth."
It was all linked together in a flawless chain of reasoning. Dorothy had set forth the coördination of events, causes and effects, as one displays a piece of tapestry in which the complicated play of design and color produces the most harmonious unity.
The four young men were astounded; not one of them threw any doubt on her statement.
Archibald Webster said:
"One would think that you had been present throughout the whole adventure."
"Yes," said Dario. "The revivified Marquis played a whole comedy before you."
"What a power of observation and what terrible logic!" said Errington, of London.
And Webster added:
"And what intuition!"
Dorothy did not respond to the praise with her habitual smile. One would have said that events were happening in a manner far from pleasing to her, which seemed to promise others which she distrusted in advance. But what events? What was there to fear?
In the silence Maître Delarue suddenly cried:
"Well, for my part, I assert that you're making a mistake. I'm not at all of your opinion, mademoiselle."
Maître Delarue was one of those people who cling the more firmly to an opinion the longer they have been adopting it. The resurrection of the Marquis suddenly appeared to him a dogma he was bound to defend.
He repeated:
"Not at all of your opinion! You are piling up unfounded hypotheses. No: this man is not an impostor. There is evidence in his favor which you do not take into account."
"What evidence?" she asked.
"Well, his portrait! His indisputable resemblance to the portrait of the Marquis de Beaugreval, executed by Largillière!"
"Who tells you that this is the portrait of the Marquis, and not the portrait of the man himself? It's a very easy way of resembling any one."
"But this old frame? This canvas which dates from earlier days?"
"Let us admit that the frame remained. Let us admit that the old canvas, instead of having been changed, has simply been painted over in such a way as to represent the false Marquis here present."
"And the cut-off finger?" exclaimed Maître Delarue triumphantly.
"A finger can be cut off."
The notary became vehement:
"Oh, no! A thousand times, no! Whatever be the attraction of the benefit to be derived, one does not mutilate oneself. No, no: your contention falls to the ground. What? You represent this fellow as ready to cut off his finger! This fellow with his dull face, his air of stupidity! But he is incapable of it! He's weak and a coward...."
The argument struck Dorothy. It threw light on the most obscure part of the business; and she drew from it exactly the conclusions it warranted.
"You're right," she said. "A man like him is incapable of mutilating himself."
"In that case?"
"In that case, some one else has charged himself with this sinister task."
"Some one else has cut off the finger? An accomplice?"
"More than an accomplice, his chief? The brain which has devised these combinations is not his. He is not the man who has staged the adventure. He is only an instrument, some common rogue chosen for his fleshless aspect. The man who holds the threads remains invisible; and he is formidable."
The notary shivered.
"One would say you knew him."
After a pause she answered slowly:
"It is possible that I do know him. If my instinct does not deceive me, the master criminal is the man who I handed over to justice, this d'Estreicher of whom I spoke just now. While he is in prison his accomplices—for there are several of them—have taken up the work he began and are trying to carry it through.... Yes, yes," she added, "one can well believe that it is d'Estreicher who has arranged the whole business. He has been engaged in the affair for years; and such a machination is entirely in accord with his cunning and wily spirit. We must be on our guard against him. Even in prison he is a dangerous adversary."
"Dangerous ... dangerous ..." said the notary, trying to reassure himself. "I don't see what threatens us. Besides, the affair draws to its end. As regards the precious stones, open the codicil. And as far as I am concerned, my task is performed."
"It isn't a matter of knowing whether your task is performed, Maître Delarue," Dorothy answered in the same thoughtful tone. "It's a matter of escaping a danger which is not quite clear to me but which permits me to expect anything, which I foresee more and more clearly. Where will it come from? I don't know. But it exists."
"It's terrible," groaned Maître Delarue. "How are we to defend ourselves? What are we to do?"
"What are we to do?"
She turned towards the little room which served as alcove. The man no longer stirred, his head and face buried in the shadow.
"Question him. You quite understand that this super did not come here alone. They have intrusted him with this post, but the others are on the watch, the agents of d'Estreicher. They are waiting in the wings for the result of the comedy. They are spying on us. Perhaps they hear us. Question him. He is going to tell us the measures to be taken against us in case of a check."
"He will not speak."
"But he will—he will. He is in our hands; and it is entirely to his interest to win our forgiveness for the part he has played. He is one of those people who are always on the side of the stronger.... Look at him."
The man remained motionless. Not a gesture. However his attitude did not look natural. Sitting as he was, half bent over, he should have lost his balance.
"Errington ... Webster ... light him up," Dorothy ordered.
Simultaneously the rays from the two electric lamps fell on him.
Some seconds passed.
"Ah!" sighed Dorothy, who was the first to grasp the terrible fact; and she started back.
All six of them were shocked by the same sight, at first inexplicable. The bust and the head which they believed to be motionless, were bending a little forward, with a movement which was hardly perceptible, but which did not cease. At the bottom of the orbits rose the eyes, quite round, eyes full of terror, which gleamed, like carbuncles, in the concentric fires of the two lamps. His mouth moved convulsively as if to utter a cry which did not issue from it. Then the head settled down on to the chest, dragging the bust with it. They saw for some seconds the ebony hilt of a dagger, the blade of which half buried in the right shoulder, at the junction with the neck, was streaming with blood. And finally the whole body huddled on to itself. Slowly, like a wounded beast, the man sank to his knees on the stone floor, and suddenly fell in a heap.
Violent though this sensational turn was, it provoked from those who witnessed it neither outcries nor disorder. Something mastered their terror, smothered their words, and restrained their gestures: the impossibility of conceiving how this murder had been committed. The impossible resurrection of the Marquis was transformed into a miracle of death quite as impossible; but they could not deny this miracle since it had taken place before their eyes. In truth, they had the impression, since no living being had entered, that death itself had stepped over the threshold, crossed the room to the man, struck him in their presence with its invisible hand, and then gone away, leaving the murderous weapon in the corpse. None but a phantom could have passed. None but a phantom could have killed.
"Errington," said Dorothy, who had recovered her coolness more quickly than her companions, "there's no one on the staircase, is there? Dario, surely the window is too small for any one to slip through? Webster and Kourobelef look to the walls of the alcove."
She stooped and took the dagger from the wound. No convulsion stirred the victim's body. It was indeed a corpse. An examination of the dagger and the clothes gave no clue.
Errington and Dario rendered an account of their mission. The staircase? Empty. The window? Too narrow.
They joined the Russian and the American, as did Dorothy also; and all five of them examined and sounded the walls of the alcove with such minuteness that Dorothy expressed the absolute conviction of all of them when she declared in a tone of finality:
"No entrance. It is impossible to admit that any one passed that way."
"Then?" stuttered the notary, who was sitting on the stool and had not moved for the excellent reason that his legs refused to be of the slightest use to him. "Then?"
He asked the question with a kind of 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 was on the point of saying:
"From the moment it was missing from this purse it had been stolen from me."
She did not finish that sentence. Her heart was wrung by a sudden anguish, as she suddenly grasped the full meaning of such an accusation; and the problem presented itself to her in all its simplicity and with its only possible and exact solution: "The four pieces of gold are there. One of them has been stolen from me. Then one of these four men is a thief."
And this undeniable fact brought her abruptly to such a vision of the facts, to a certainty so unforeseen and so formidable that she needed almost super-human energy to restrain herself. It was needful that no one should be on their guard against her, before she had considered the matter and fully taken in the tragic aspect of the situation. She accepted therefore the notary's hypothesis and murmured:
"After all ... yes ... that's it. You must be right, Maître Delarue, I've lost that medal.... But how? I can't think in what way I could have lost it ... at what moment."