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

by Maurice Leblanc

  So the moment had come. They gathered more closely round the notary. A certain gravity mingled with the gayety on the young faces; and it grew deeper when Maître Delarue displayed before the eyes of all one of those large square envelopes which formerly one made oneself out of a thick sheet of paper. It was discolored with that peculiar shine which only the lapse of time can give to paper. It was sealed with five seals, once upon a time red perhaps, but now of a grayish violet seamed by a thousand little cracks like a network of wrinkles. In the left-hand corner at the top, the formula of transmission must have been renewed several times, traced afresh with ink by the successors of the scrivener Barbier.

  “The seals are quite intact,” said Monsieur Delarue. “You can even manage to make out the three Latin words of the motto.”

  “In robore fortuna,” said Dorothy.

  “Ah, you know?” said the notary, surprised.

  “Yes, Monsieur Delarue, yes, they are the same as those engraved on the gold medals, and those I discovered just now, half rubbed out, under the face of the clock.”

  “We have here an indisputable connection,” said the notary, “which draws together the different parts of the affair and confers on it an authenticity—”

  “Open the letter — open it, Monsieur Delarue,” said Dorothy impatiently.

  Three of the seals were broken; the envelope was unfolded. It contained a large sheet of parchment, broken into four pieces which separated and had to be put together again.

  From top to bottom and on both sides the sheet of parchment was covered with large hand-writing with bold down-strokes, which had evidently been written in indelible ink. The lines almost touched and the letters were so close together that the whole had the appearance of an old printed page in a very large type.

  “I’m going to read it,” murmured Monsieur Delarue.

  “Don’t lose a second — for the love of God!” cried Dorothy.

  He took a second pair of glasses from his pocket and put them on over the first, and read:

  “‘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.’”

  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’..

  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 your fourth 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 drawbridge 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?”

  CHAPTER XII

  THE ELIXIR OF RESURRECTION

  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 Farrington, 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 chateau; 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.