Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  Raoul had crossed the bridge which spans the end of the pool and he was already on a kind of platform among the hillocks, at which the wire ended. She was struck by his paleness and touched by his anxiety on her account.

  “Goodness,” she said, gripping his hand. “Were you as frightened as that on my account?... If I’d only known I... And yet, no” she went on. “Even if I had known, I should have made the experiment, so certain was I of the result.”

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, I read the device distinctly, and the date under it, which we couldn’t make out — the 12th of July, 1921. We know now that the 12th of July of this year is the great day foretold so many yean ago. But there’s something better, I fancy.”

  She called Saint-Quentin to her and said some words to him in a low voice. Saint-Quentin ran to the caravan and a few minutes came out of it in his acrobat’s tights. He stepped into the boat with Dorothy, who rowed it to the middle of the pool. He slipped quickly into the water and dived. Twice he came up to receive more exact instructions from Dorothy. At last, the third time he came up, he cried:

  “Here it is, mummy!”

  He tossed into the boat a somewhat heavy object. Dorothy snatched it up, examined it, and when they reached the bank, handed it to Raoul. It was a metal disc, of rusted iron or copper, of the size of a saucer, and convex — like an enormous watch. It must have been formed of two dates joined together, but the edges of these plates had been soldered together so that one could not open it.

  Dorothy rubbed one of its faces and pointed out to Raoul with her finger the deeply engraved word: “Fortuna.”

  “I was not mistaken,” she said, “and poor old Juliet Assire was speaking the truth, in speaking first of the river. During one of their last meetings the Baron must have thrown in here the gold medal in its metal case.”

  “But why?”

  “Didn’t you write to him from Roborey, after I left, to be on his guard?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “In that case what better hiding-place could he find for the medal till the day came for him to use it than the bottom of the pool? The first boy who came along could fish it out for him.”

  Joyously she tossed the disc in the air and juggled with it and three pebbles. Then she caught hold of the shivering Saint-Quentin, very scraggy in his wet tights, and with the other three boys danced round the platform, singing the lay of “The Recovered Medal.”

  At the end of his breath the captain made the observation that there was a fête at Clisson and that they might very well go there to celebrate their success.

  “Let’s harness One-eye’ Magpie.”

  Dorothy approved of it.

  “Excellent! But One-eyed Magpie’s too slow. What about your car, Raoul?”

  They hurried back to the Manor. Saint-Quentin went to change his costume. Raoul set his engine going and brought the car out of the garage. While the three boys were getting into it, he went to Dorothy, who had sat down at a little table on the terrace which ran the length of the building.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She said:

  “But I never had any intention of going with you. To-day you’re going to be nursemaid.”

  He was not greatly surprised. Since early morning he had had an odd feeling that everything that happened was not quite natural. The incidents followed one another in such perfect sequence and with a logic and exactness foreign to actuality. One might have said that they were scenes in a too-well-made play, of which it would have been easy, with a little experience of the playwright’s art, to analyze the construction and the tricks. Certainly, without knowing Dorothy’s game, he guessed the denouement she proposed to bring about — the capture of d’Estreicher. But by means of what stratagem?

  “Don’t question me,” she said. “We are watched. So no heroics, no remonstrances. Listen”:

  She was amusing herself by spinning the disk on the table and quite calmly she outlined her plan and her maneuvers:

  “It’s like this. A day or two ago I wrote, in your name, to the Public Prosecutor, advising him that our friend d’Estreicher, for whom the police are hunting, guilty of attempts to murder Baron Davernoie and Madame Juliet Assire, would be at Hillocks Manor to-day. I asked him to send two detectives who would find you at Masson Inn at four o’clock. It’s now a quarter to four. Your three servants will be there too. So off you go.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “Come back quickly with the two detectives and your three servants, not by the main road, but by the paths Saint-Quentin and the three boys will point out to you. At the end of them you will find ladders ready. You will set them up against the wall. D’Estreicher and his confederate will be there. You will cover them with your guns while the detectives arrest them.”

  “Are you sure that d’Estreicher will come out of the hillocks — if it’s the fact that the hillocks are his hiding-place?”

  “Quite sure. Here is the medal. He knows that it is in my hands. How can he help seizing the opportunity of taking it now that we are on the eve of the great event.”

  She expressed herself with a disconcerting calmness. For all that she was exposing herself alone be all the menace of a combat which promised to be formidable, she had not the faintest air of being in danger. Indeed, such was her indifference to the risk she was running that, when the old Baron went past them and into the Manor, followed by his faithful Goliath, she imparted to Raoul some results of her observations.

  “Have you noticed that for the last day or two that your grandfather has been ill at ease? He too is instinctively aware that the great event is at hand, and he wants to act He is pulling himself together and struggling against the disease which paralyzes him in the very hour of action.”

  In spite of everything, Raoul hesitated. The idea of leaving her to face d’Estreicher alone was infinitely painful to him.

  “One question,” he said.

  “Only one then, for you’ve no time to lose.”

  “You made all your preparations for to-day. The police are informed, the servants warned, the rendezvous fixed. Good. But nevertheless you couldn’t know that the discovery of this disc would take place just an hour before that rendezvous.”

  “Excellent, Raoul; I congratulate you. You’ve put your finger on the weak point in my explanation. But I can’t tell you anything more at the moment.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Do as I suit you, Raoul. You know that I don’t act at random.”

  Dorothy’s confidence, her boldness, the simplicity of her plan, her quiet smile, all inspired him with such trust in her judgment that he raised no more objections.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “That’s right,” she said, laughing. “You have faith. In that case make haste and come back quickly, for d’Estreicher will come here not only to get hold of the medal but also for something on which perhaps he is equally keen.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Me.”

  This was a suggestion which hastened the young man’s decision. The car started and crossed the orchard. Saint-Quentin opened the big gate and shut it again as soon as the car had gone through it.

  Dorothy was alone; and she was to remain alone and defenceless for as long she reckoned, if her calculations were correct, as twelve to fifteen minutes.

  Keeping her back turned to the hillocks, she did not stir from her chair. She appeared to be very busy with the disc, testing the soldering, like one who seeks to discover the secret or the weak point of a piece of mechanism. But with her ears, all her nerves on edge, she tried to catch every sound or rustle that the breeze might bring her.

  By turns she was sustained by an unshakable certainty, or attacked by discouraging doubts. Yes: d’Estreicher was bound to come. She could not admit to herself that he might not come. The medal would draw him to her with an irresistible enticement.

  “And yet, no,” she said to herself. “He will be on his guard
. My little maneuver is really too puerile. This case, this medal which we find at the fateful moment, this departure of Raoul and the children, and then my staying alone in the empty farm, when my one care on the contrary would be to protect my find against the enemy — all this is really too far-fetched. An old fox like d’Estreicher will shun the trap.”

  And then the other side of the problem presented itself:

  “He will come. Perhaps he has already left his lair. Manifestly the danger will be clear to him, but afterwards, when it is too late. At the actual moment he is not free to act or not to act. He obeys.”

  So once more Dorothy was guided by her keen insight into the trend of events, in spite of what her reason might tell her. The facts grouped themselves before her intelligence in a logical sequence and with strict method, she saw their accomplishment while they were yet in process of becoming. The motives which actuated other people were always perfectly clear to her. Her intuition revealed them; her quick intelligence instantly fitted them to the circumstances.

  Besides, as she had said, d’Estreicher was drawn by a double temptation. If he succeeded in resisting the temptation to try to seize the medal, how could he help succumbing to the temptation to seize that marvelous prize, right within his reach, Dorothy herself?

  She sat upright with a smile. The sound of footsteps had fallen on her ears. It must come from the wooden bridge which spanned the end of the pool. The enemy was coming!

  But almost at the same moment she heard another sound on her right and then another on her left. D’Estreicher had two confederates. She was hemmed in!

  The hands of her watch pointed to five minutes to four.

  CHAPTER IX

  FACE TO FACE

  “IF THEY SEIZE me,” she thought. “If it’s d’Estreicher’s intention to kidnap me without more ado, there’s nothing to he done. Before I could be rescued, they would carry me off to their underground lair, and from there I don’t know where!”

  And why should it be otherwise? Master of the medal and of Dorothy, the ruffian had only to fly.

  On the instant she saw all the faults of her plan. In order to compel d’Estreicher to risk a sortie that she might capture him during that sortie, she had invented a too subtle ruse, which actual developments of Fortune’s spite might turn to her undoing. A conflict which turns on the number of seconds gained or lost is extremely doubtful.

  She went quickly into the house and pushed the disc under a heap of discarded things in a small lumber-room. The necessary hunt for it would delay for a while the enemy’s flight. But when she came back to go out of the house, d’Estreicher, grimacing ironically behind his spectacles and under his thick beard, stood on the threshold of the front door.

  Dorothy never carried a revolver. All her life she never cared to trust to anything but her courage and intelligence. She regretted it at this horrible moment when she found herself face to face with the man who had murdered her father. Her first act would have been to blow out his brains.

  Divining her vengeful thought, he seized her arm quickly and twisted it, as he had twisted the arm of old Juliet Assire. Then bending over her, he snapped:

  “Where have you put it?... Be quick!”

  She did not even dream of resisting, so acute was the pain, and took him to the little room, and pointed to the heap. He found the disc at once, weighed it in his hand, examining it with an air of immense satisfaction and said:

  “That’s all right. Victory at last! Twenty years of struggle come to an end. And over and above what I bargained for, you, Dorothy — the most magnificent and desirable of rewards.”

  He ran his hand over her frock to make sure that she was not armed, then seized her round the body, and with a strength which no one would have believed him to possess, swung her over his shoulder an to his back.

  “You make me fed uneasy, Dorothy,” he chuckled. “What? No resistance? What pretty behavior, my dear! There must be something in the way of a trap under it all. So I’ll be off.”

  Outside she caught sight of the two men, who were on guard at the big gate. One of them was the confederate she knew, from having seen him at Juliet Assire’s cottage. The other, his face flattened against the bars of a small wicket, was watching the road.

  D’Estreicher called to them:

  “Keep your eyes skinned, boys. You musn’t be caught in the sheep fold. And when I whistle, bucket off back to the hillocks.”

  He himself made for them with long strides without weakening under his burden. She could smell the odor of a damp cellar with which his subterranean lair had impregnated his garments. He held her by the neck with a hard hand that bruised it.

  They came to the wooden bridge and were just about to cross it. No more than a hundred yards from it, perhaps, among the bushes and rocks, was one of the entrances to his underground lair. Already the man was raising his whistle to his lips.

  With a deft movement, Dorothy snatched the disc, which was sticking up above the top of the pocket into which he had stuffed it, and threw it towards the pool. It ran along the ground, rolled down the bank, and disappeared under the water.

  “You little devil!” growled the ruffian throwing her roughly to the ground. “Stir, and I’ll break your head!”

  He went down the bank and floundered about in the viscid mud of the river, keeping an eye on Dorothy and cursing her.

  She did not dream of flying. She kept looking from one to another of the points at the top of the wall above which she expected the heads of the farm-servants or the detectives to rise. It was certainly five or six minutes past the hour, yet none of them appeared. Nevertheless she did not lose hope. She expected d’Estreicher, who had evidently lost his head, to make some mistake of which she could take advantage.

  “Yes, yes,” he snarled: “You wish to gain time, my dear. And suppose you do? Do you think I’ll let go of you? I’ve got you both, you and the medal; and your bumpkin of a Raoul isn’t the man to loosen my grip. Besides, if he does come, it’ll be all the worse for him. My men have their orders: a good crack on the head—”

  He was still searching; he stopped short, uttered a cry of triumph and stood upright, the disc in his hand.

  “Here it is, ducky. Certainly the luck is with me; and you’ve lost. On we go, cousin Dorothy!”

  Dorothy cast a last look along the walls. No one. Instinctively, at the approach of the man she hated, she made as if to thrust him off. It made him laugh — so absurd did any resistance seem. Violently he beat down her outstretched arms, and again swung her on to his shoulder with a movement in which there was as much hate as desire.

  “Say good-bye to your sweetheart, Dorothy, for the good Raoul is in love with you. Say good-bye to him. If ever you see him again, it will be too late.”

  He crossed the bridge and strode in among the hillocks.

  It was all over. In another thirty seconds, even if he were attacked, no longer being in sight of the points on the wall at which the men armed with guns were to rise up, he would have time to reach the mouth of the entrance to his lair. Dorothy had lost the battle; Raoul and the detectives would arrive too late.

  “You don’t know how nice it is to have you there, all quivering, and to carry you away with me, against me, without your being able to escape the inevitable,” whispered d’Estreicher. “But what’s the matter with you? Are you crying? You mustn’t, my dear. After all why should you? You would certainly let yourself be lulled one of these days on the bosom of the handsome Raoul. Then there’s no reason why I should be more distasteful to you than he, is there? But — hang it!” he cried angrily, “haven’t you done sobbing yet?”

  He turned her on his shoulder and caught hold of her head.

  He was dumfounded.

  Dorothy was laughing.

  “What — what’s this? What are you laughing at? Is it p-p-possible that you dare to laugh? What on earth do you mean by it?”

  This laughter frightened him as a threat of danger? The slut! What was she laughin
g at? A sudden fury rose in him, and setting her down clumsily against a tree, he struck her with his clenched fist, out of which a ring stuck, on the forehead, among her hair, with such force that the blood spurted out.

  She was still laughing, as she stammered:

  “You b-b-brute! What a brute you are!”

  “If you laugh, I’ll bite your mouth, you hussy,” he snarled, bending over her red lips.

  He did not dare to carry out the threat, respecting her in spite of himself, and even a little intimidated. She was frightened, however, and laughed no more.

  “What is this? What is it?” be repeated. “You should be crying, and you’re laughing. Why?”

  “I was laughing because of the plates,” she said. “What plates?”

  “Those which form the case of the medal.”

  “These?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’re the plates of Dorothy’s Circus. I used to juggle with them.”

  He looked utterly flabbergasted.

  “What’s this rot you’re talking?”

  “It is rot, isn’t it? Saint-Quentin and I soldered them together; I engraved the motto on them with a knife; and last night we threw them into the pool.”

  “But you’re mad. I don’t understand. With, what object did you do it?”

  “Since poor old Juliet Assire babbled some admissions about the river when you tortured her, I was pretty sure you’d fall into the trap.”

  “What do you mean? What trap?”

  “I wanted to get you to come out of here.”

  “You knew that I was here then?”

  “Rather! I knew that you were watching us fish up the case; and I knew for certain what would happen after that. Believing that this case, found at the bottom of the pool under your very eyes, contained the medal, and seeing moreover that Raoul had gone and I was alone at the Manor, you wouldn’t be able to come. But you have come.”

  He stuttered:

  “The g-g-gold medal..... It isn’t in this case then?”