CHAPTER XIII
THE NAILS IN THE COFFIN
"If not . . ."
Patrice repeated the words mechanically, several times over, while theirformidable significance became apparent to both him and Coralie. Thewords meant that, if Coralie did not obey and did not deliver herself tothe enemy, if she did not flee from prison to go with the man who heldthe keys of the prison, the alternative was death.
At that moment neither of them was thinking what end was in store forthem nor even of that death itself. They thought only of the command toseparate which the enemy had issued against them. One was to go and theother to die.
Coralie was promised her life if she would sacrifice Patrice. But whatwas the price of the promise? And what would be the form of thesacrifice demanded?
There was a long silence, full of uncertainty and anguish between thetwo lovers. They were coming to grips with something; and the drama wasno longer taking place absolutely outside them, without their playingany other part than that of helpless victims. It was being enactedwithin themselves; and they had the power to alter its ending. It was aterrible problem. It had already been set to the earlier Coralie; andshe had solved it as a lover would, for she was dead. And now it wasbeing set again.
Patrice read the inscription; and the rapidly scrawled words became lessdistinct:
"I have begged and entreated Coralie. . . . She flung herself on her knees before me. She wants to die with me. . . ."
Patrice looked at Coralie. He had read the words in a very low voice;and she had not heard them. Then, in a burst of passion, he drew hereagerly to him and exclaimed:
"You must go, Coralie! You can understand that my not saying so at oncewas not due to hesitation. No, only . . . I was thinking of that man'soffer . . . and I am frightened for your sake. . . . What he asks,Coralie, is terrible. His reason for promising to save your life is thathe loves you. And so you understand. . . . But still, Coralie, you mustobey . . . you must go on living. . . . Go! It is no use waiting for theten minutes to pass. He might change his mind and condemn you to deathas well. No, Coralie, you must go, you must go at once!"
"I shall stay," she replied, simply.
He gave a start:
"But this is madness! Why make a useless sacrifice? Are you afraid ofwhat might happen if you obeyed him?"
"No."
"Then go."
"I shall stay."
"But why? Why this obstinacy? It can do no good. Then why stay?"
"Because I love you, Patrice."
He stood dumfounded. He knew that she loved him and he had already toldher so. But that she loved him to the extent of preferring to die in hiscompany, this was an unexpected, exquisite and at the same time terribledelight.
"Ah," he said, "you love me, Coralie! You love me!"
"I love you, my own Patrice."
She put her arms around his neck; and he felt that hers was an embracetoo strong to be sundered. Nevertheless, he was resolved to save her;and he refused to yield:
"If you love me," he said, "you must obey me and save your life. Believeme, it is a hundred times more painful for me to die with you than todie alone. If I know that you are free and alive, death will be sweet tome."
She did not listen and continued her confession, happy in making it,happy in uttering words which she had kept to herself so long:
"I have loved you, Patrice, from the first day I saw you. I knew itwithout your telling me; and my only reason for not telling you earlierwas that I was waiting for a solemn occasion, for a time when it wouldbe a glory to tell you so, while I looked into the depths of your eyesand offered myself to you entirely. As I have had to speak on the brinkof the grave, listen to me and do not force upon me a separation whichwould be worse than death."
"No, no," he said, striving to release himself, "it is your duty togo."
He made another effort and caught hold of her hands:
"It is your duty to go," he whispered, "and, when you are free, to doall that you can to save me."
"What are you saying, Patrice?"
"Yes," he repeated, "to save me. There is no reason why you should notescape from that scoundrel's clutches, report him, seek assistance, warnour friends. You can call out, you can play some trick. . . ."
She looked at him with so sad a smile and such a doubting expressionthat he stopped speaking.
"You are trying to mislead me, my poor darling," she said, "but you areno more taken in by what you say than I am. No, Patrice, you well knowthat, if I surrender myself to that man, he will reduce me to silence orimprison me in some hiding-place, bound hand and foot, until you havedrawn your last breath."
"You really think that?"
"Just as you do, Patrice. Just as you are sure of what will happenafterwards."
"Well, what will happen?"
"Ah, Patrice, if that man saves my life, it will not be out ofgenerosity. Don't you see what his plan is, his abominable plan, once Iam his prisoner? And don't you also see what my only means of escapewill be? Therefore, Patrice, if I am to die in a few hours, why not dienow, in your arms . . . at the same time as yourself, with my lips toyours? Is that dying? Is it not rather living, in one instant, the mostwonderful of lives?"
He resisted her embrace. He knew that the first kiss of her profferedlips would deprive him of all his power of will.
"This is terrible," he muttered. "How can you expect me to accept yoursacrifice, you, so young, with years of happiness before you?"
"Years of mourning and despair, if you are gone."
"You must live, Coralie. I entreat you to, with all my soul."
"I cannot live without you, Patrice. You are my only happiness. I haveno reason for existence except to love you. You have taught me to love.I love you!"
Oh, those heavenly words! For the second time they rang between the fourwalls of that room. The same words, spoken by the daughter, which themother had spoken with the same passion and the same glad acceptance ofher fate! The same words made twice holy by the recollection of deathpast and the thought of death to come!
Coralie uttered them without alarm. All her fears seemed to disappear inher love; and it was love alone that shook her voice and dimmed thebrightness of her eyes.
Patrice contemplated her with a rapt look. He too was beginning to thinkthat minutes such as these were worth dying for. Nevertheless, he made alast effort:
"And if I ordered you to go, Coralie?"
"That is to say," she murmured, "if you ordered me to go to that man andsurrender myself to him? Is that what you wish, Patrice?"
The thought was too much for him.
"Oh, the horror of it! That man . . . that man . . . you, my Coralie,so stainless and undefiled! . . ."
Neither he nor she pictured the man in the exact image of Simeon. Toboth of them, notwithstanding the hideous vision perceived above, theenemy retained a mysterious character. It was perhaps Simeon. It wasperhaps another, of whom Simeon was but the instrument. Assuredly it wasthe enemy, the evil genius crouching above their heads, preparing theirdeath-throes while he pursued Coralie with his foul desire.
Patrice asked one more question:
"Did you ever notice that Simeon sought your company?"
"No, never. If anything, he rather avoided me."
"Then it's because he's mad. . . ."
"I don't think he is mad: he is revenging himself."
"Impossible. He was my father's friend. All his life long he worked tobring us together: surely he would not kill us deliberately?"
"I don't know, Patrice, I don't understand. . . ."
They discussed it no further. It was of no importance whether theirdeath was caused by this one or that one. It was death itself that theyhad to fight, without troubling who had set it loose against them. Andwhat could they do to ward it off?
"You agree, do you not?" asked Coralie, in a low voice.
He made no answer.
"I shall not go," she went on, "but I want you to be of one mind w
ithme. I entreat you. It tortures me to think that you are suffering morethan I do. You must let me bear my share. Tell me that you agree."
"Yes," he said, "I agree."
"My own Patrice! Now give me your two hands, look right into my eyes andsmile."
Mad with love and longing they plunged themselves for an instant into asort of ecstasy. Then she asked:
"What is it, Patrice? You seem distraught again."
He gave a hoarse cry:
"Look! . . . Look . . ."
This time he was certain of what he had seen. The ladder was going up.The ten minutes were over.
He rushed forward and caught hold of one of the rungs. The ladder nolonger moved.
He did not know exactly what he intended to do. The ladder affordedCoralie's only chance of safety. Could he abandon that hope and resignhimself to the inevitable?
One or two minutes passed. The ladder must have been hooked fast again,for Patrice felt a firm resistance up above.
Coralie was entreating him:
"Patrice," she asked, "Patrice, what are you hoping for?"
He looked around and above him, as though seeking an idea, and he seemedalso to look inside himself, as though he were seeking that idea amidall the memories which he had accumulated at the moment when his fatheralso held the ladder, in a last effort of will. And suddenly, throwingup his leg, he placed his left foot on the fifth rung of the ladder andbegan to raise himself by the uprights.
It was an absurd attempt to scale the ladder, to reach the skylight, tolay hold of the enemy and thus save himself and Coralie. If his fatherhad failed before him, how could he hope to succeed?
It was all over in less than three seconds. The ladder was at onceunfastened from the hook that kept it hanging from the skylight; andPatrice and the ladder came to the ground together. At the same time astrident laugh rang out above, followed the next moment by the sound ofthe skylight closing.
Patrice picked himself up in a fury, hurled insults at the enemy and, ashis rage increased, fired two revolver shots, which broke two of thepanes. He next attacked the doors and windows, banging at them with theiron dog which he had taken from the fender. He hit the walls, he hitthe floor, he shook his fist at the invisible enemy who was mocking him.But suddenly, after a few blows struck at space, he was compelled tostop. Something like a thick veil had glided overhead. They were in thedark.
He understood what had happened. The enemy had lowered a shutter uponthe skylight, covering it entirely.
"Patrice! Patrice!" cried Coralie, maddened by the blotting out of thelight and losing all her strength of mind. "Patrice! Where are you,Patrice? Oh, I'm frightened! Where are you?"
They began to grope for each other, like blind people, and nothing thathad gone before seemed to them more horrible than to be lost in thispitiless blackness.
"Patrice! Oh, Patrice! Where are you?"
Their hands touched, Coralie's poor little frozen fingers and Patrice'shands that burned with fever, and they pressed each other and twinedtogether and clutched each other as though to assure themselves thatthey were still living.
"Oh, don't leave me, Patrice!" Coralie implored.
"I am here," he replied. "Have no fear: they can't separate us."
"You are right," she panted, "they can't separate us. We are in ourgrave."
The word was so terrible and Coralie uttered it so mournfully that areaction overtook Patrice.
"No! What are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "We must not despair.There is hope of safety until the last moment."
Releasing one of his hands, he took aim with his revolver. A few faintrays trickled through the chinks around the skylight. He fired threetimes. They heard the crack of the wood-work and the chuckle of theenemy. But the shutter must have been lined with metal, for no splitappeared.
Besides, the chinks were forthwith stopped up; and they became awarethat the enemy was engaged in the same work that he had performed aroundthe doors and windows. It was obviously very thorough and took a longtime in the doing. Next came another work, completing the first. Theenemy was nailing the shutter to the frame of the skylight.
It was an awful sound! Swift and light as were the taps of the hammer,they seemed to drive deep into the brain of those who heard them. It wastheir coffin that was being nailed down, their great coffin with a lidhermetically sealed that now bore heavy upon them. There was no hopeleft, not a possible chance of escape. Each tap of the hammerstrengthened their dark prison, making yet more impregnable the wallsthat stood between them and the outer world and bade defiance to themost resolute assault:
"Patrice," stammered Coralie, "I'm frightened . . . That tapping hurtsme so!" . . .
She sank back in his arms. Patrice felt tears coursing down her cheeks.
Meanwhile the work overhead was being completed. They underwent theterrible experience which condemned men must feel on the morning oftheir last day, when from their cells they hear the preparations: theengine of death that is being set up, or the electric batteries that arebeing tested. They hear men striving to have everything ready, so thatnot one propitious chance may remain and so that destiny may befulfilled. Death had entered the enemy's service and was working hand inhand with him. He was death itself, acting, contriving and fightingagainst those whom he had resolved to destroy.
"Don't leave me," sobbed Coralie, "don't leave me! . . ."
"Only for a second or two," he said. "We must be avenged later."
"What is the use, Patrice? What can it matter to us?"
He had a box containing a few matches. Lighting them one after theother, he led Coralie to the panel with the inscription.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I will not have our death put down to suicide. I want to do what ourparents did before us and to prepare for the future. Some one will readwhat I am going to write and will avenge us."
He took a pencil from his pocket and bent down. There was a free space,right at the bottom of the panel. He wrote:
"Patrice Belval and Coralie, his betrothed, die the same death, murdered by Simeon Diodokis, 14 April, 1915."
But, as he finished writing, he noticed a few words of the formerinscription which he had not yet read, because they were placed outsideit, so to speak, and did not appear to form part of it.
"One more match," he said. "Did you see? There are some words there, thelast, no doubt, that my father wrote."
She struck a match. By the flickering light they made out a certainnumber of misshapen letters, obviously written in a hurry and formingtwo words:
"_Asphyxiated. . . . Oxide. . . ._"
The match went out. They rose in silence. Asphyxiated! They understood.That was how their parents had perished and how they themselves wouldperish. But they did not yet fully realize how the thing would happen.The lack of air would never be great enough to suffocate them in thislarge room, which contained enough to last them for many days.
"Unless," muttered Patrice, "unless the quality of the air can beimpaired and therefore . . ."
He stopped. Then he went on:
"Yes, that's it. I remember."
He told Coralie what he suspected, or rather what conformed so well withthe reality as to leave no room for doubt. He had seen in old Simeon'scupboard not only the rope-ladder which the madman had brought with him,but also a coil of lead pipes. And now Simeon's behavior from the momentwhen they were locked in, his movements to and fro around the lodge, thecare with which he had stopped up every crevice, his labors along thewall and on the roof: all this was explained in the most definitefashion. Old Simeon had simply fitted to a gas-meter, probably in thekitchen, the pipe which he had next laid along the wall and on the roof.This therefore was the way in which they were about to die, as theirparents had died before them, stifled by ordinary gas.
Panic-stricken, they began to run aimlessly about the room, holdinghands, while their disordered brains, bereft of thought or will, seemedlike tiny things shaken by the fiercest
gale. Coralie uttered incoherentwords. Patrice, while imploring her to keep calm, was himself carriedaway by the storm and powerless to resist the terrible agony of thedarkness wherein death lay waiting. At such times a man tries to flee,to escape the icy breath that is already chilling his marrow. He mustflee, but where? Which way? The walls are insurmountable and thedarkness is even harder than the walls.
They stopped, exhausted. A low hiss was heard somewhere in the room, thefaint hiss that issues from a badly-closed gas-jet. They listened andperceived that it came from above. The torture was beginning.
"It will last half an hour, or an hour at most," Patrice whispered.
Coralie had recovered her self-consciousness:
"We shall be brave," she said.
"Oh, if I were alone! But you, you, my poor Coralie!"
"It is painless," she murmured.
"You are bound to suffer, you, so weak!"
"One suffers less, the weaker one is. Besides, I know that we sha'n'tsuffer, Patrice."
She suddenly appeared so placid that he on his side was filled with agreat peace. Seated on a sofa, their fingers still entwined, theysilently steeped themselves in the mighty calm which comes when we thinkthat events have run their course. This calm is resignation, submissionto superior forces. Natures such as theirs cease to rebel when destinyhas manifested its orders and when nothing remains but acquiescence andprayer.
She put her arm round Patrice's neck:
"I am your bride in the eyes of God," she said. "May He receive us as Hewould receive a husband and wife."
Her gentle resignation brought tears to his eyes. She dried them withher kisses, and, of her own seeking, offered him her lips.
They sat wrapped in an infinite silence. They perceived the first smellof gas descending around them, but they felt no fear.
"Everything will happen as it did before, Coralie," whispered Patrice,"down to the very last second. Your mother and my father, who lovedeach other as we do, also died in each other's arms, with their lipsjoined together. They had decided to unite us and they have united us."
"Our grave will be near theirs," she murmured.
Little by little their ideas became confused and they began to thinkmuch as a man sees through a rising mist. They had had nothing to eat;and hunger now added its discomfort to the vertigo in which their mindswere imperceptibly sinking. As it increased, their uneasiness andanxiety left them, to be followed by a sense of ecstasy, then lassitude,extinction, repose. The dread of the coming annihilation faded out oftheir thoughts.
Coralie, the first to be affected, began to utter delirious words whichastonished Patrice at first:
"Dearest, there are flowers falling, roses all around us. Howdelightful!"
Presently he himself grew conscious of the same blissful exaltation,expressing itself in tenderness and joyful emotion. With no sort ofdismay he felt her gradually yielding in his arms and abandoningherself; and he had the impression that he was following her down ameasureless abyss, all bathed with light, where they floated, he andshe, descending slowly and without effort towards a happy valley.
Minutes or perhaps hours passed. They were still descending, hesupporting her by the waist, she with her head thrown back a little way,her eyes closed and a smile upon her lips. He remembered picturesshowing gods thus gliding through the blue of heaven; and, drunk withpure, radiant light and air, he continued to circle above the happyvalley.
But, as he approached it, he felt himself grow weary. Coralie weighedheavily on his bent arm. The descent increased in speed. The waves oflight turned to darkness. A thick cloud came, followed by others thatformed a whirl of gloom.
And suddenly, worn out, his forehead bathed in sweat and his bodyshaking with fever, he pitched forward into a great black pit. . . .
The Golden Triangle: The Return of Arsène Lupin Page 13