CHAPTER IX
PATRICE AND CORALIE
Everything happened as M. Masseron had foretold. The press did notspeak. The public did not become excited. The various deaths werecasually paragraphed. The funeral of Essares Bey, the wealthy banker,passed unnoticed.
But, on the day following the funeral, after Captain Belval, with thesupport of the police, had made an application to the militaryauthorities, a new order of things was established in the house in theRue Raynouard. It was recognized as Home No. 2 attached to the hospitalin the Champs-Elysees; Mme. Essares was appointed matron; and it becamethe residence of Captain Belval and his seven wounded men exclusively.
Coralie, therefore, was the only woman remaining. The cook and housemaidwere sent away. The seven cripples did all the work of the house. Oneacted as hall-porter, another as cook, a third as butler. Ya-Bon,promoted to parlor-maid, made it his business to wait on Little MotherCoralie. At night he slept in the passage outside her door. By day hemounted guard outside her window.
"Let no one near that door or that window!" Patrice said to him. "Let noone in! You'll catch it if so much as a mosquito succeeds in enteringher room."
Nevertheless, Patrice was not easy in his mind. The enemy had given himtoo many proofs of reckless daring to let him imagine that he could takeany steps to ensure her perfect protection. Danger always creeps inwhere it is least expected; and it was all the more difficult to wardoff in that no one knew whence it threatened. Now that Essares Bey wasdead, who was continuing his work? Who had inherited the task of revengeupon Coralie announced in his last letter?
M. Masseron had at once begun his work of investigation, but thedramatic side of the case seemed to leave him indifferent. Since he hadnot found the body of the man whose dying cries reached Patrice Belval'sears, since he had discovered no clue to the mysterious assailant whohad fired at Patrice and Coralie later in the day, since he was not ableto trace where the assailant had obtained his ladder, he dropped thesequestions and confined his efforts entirely to the search of theeighteen hundred bags of gold. These were all that concerned him.
"We have every reason to believe that they are here," he said, "betweenthe four sides of the quadrilateral formed by the garden and the house.Obviously, a bag of gold weighing a hundredweight does not take up asmuch room, by a long way, as a sack of coal of the same weight. But, forall that, eighteen hundred bags represent a cubic content; and a contentlike that is not easily concealed."
In two days he had assured himself that the treasure was hidden neitherin the house nor under the house. On the evenings when Essares Bey's carbrought the gold out of the coffers of the Franco-Oriental Bank to theRue Raynouard, Essares, the chauffeur and the man known as Gregoireused to pass a thick wire through the grating of which the accomplicesspoke. This wire was found. Along the wire ran hooks, which were alsofound; and on these the bags were slung and afterwards stacked in alarge cellar situated exactly under the library. It is needless to saythat M. Masseron and his detectives devoted all their ingenuity and allthe painstaking patience of which they were capable to the task ofsearching every corner of this cellar. Their efforts only establishedbeyond doubt that it contained no secret, save that of a staircase whichran down from the library and which was closed at the top by a trap-doorconcealed by the carpet.
In addition to the grating on the Rue Raynouard, there was another whichoverlooked the garden, on the level of the first terrace. These twoopenings were barricaded on the inside by very heavy shutters, so thatit was an easy matter to stack thousands and thousands of rouleaus ofgold in the cellar before sending them away.
"But how were they sent away?" M. Masseron wondered. "That's themystery. And why this intermediate stage in the basement, in the RueRaynouard? Another mystery. And now we have Fakhi, Bournef and Co.declaring that, this time, it was not sent away, that the gold is hereand that it can be found for the searching. We have searched the house.There is still the garden. Let us look there."
It was a beautiful old garden and had once formed part of thewide-stretching estate where people were in the habit, at the end of theeighteenth century, of going to drink the Passy waters. With atwo-hundred-yard frontage, it ran from the Rue Raynouard to the quay ofthe river-side and led, by four successive terraces, to an expanse oflawn as old as the rest of the garden, fringed with thickets ofevergreens and shaded by groups of tall trees.
But the beauty of the garden lay chiefly in its four terraces and in theview which they afforded of the river, the low ground on the left bankand the distant hills. They were united by twenty sets of steps; andtwenty paths climbed from the one to the other, paths cut between thebuttressing walls and sometimes hidden in the floods of ivy that dashedfrom top to bottom.
Here and there a statue stood out, a broken column, or the fragments ofa capital. The stone balcony that edged the upper terrace was stilladorned with all its old terra-cotta vases. On this terrace also werethe ruins of two little round temples where, in the old days, thesprings bubbled to the surface. In front of the library windows was acircular basin, with in the center the figure of a child shooting aslender thread of water through the funnel of a shell. It was theoverflow from this basin, forming a little stream, that trickled overthe rocks against which Patrice had stumbled on the first evening.
"Ten acres to explore before we've done," said M. Masseron to himself.
He employed upon this work, in addition to Belval's cripples, a dozen ofhis own detectives. It was not a difficult business and was bound tolead to some definite result. As M. Masseron never ceased saying,eighteen hundred bags cannot remain invisible. An excavation leavestraces. You want a hole to go in and out by. But neither the grass ofthe lawns nor the sand of the paths showed any signs of earth recentlydisturbed. The ivy? The buttressing-walls? The terraces? Everything wasinspected, but in vain. Here and there, in cutting up the ground, oldconduit pipes were found, running towards the Seine, and remains ofaqueducts that had once served to carry off the Passy waters. But therewas no such thing as a cave, an underground chamber, a brick arch oranything that looked like a hiding-place.
Patrice and Coralie watched the progress of the search. And yet, thoughthey fully realized its importance and though, on the other hand, theywere still feeling the strain of the recent dramatic hours, in realitythey were engrossed only in the inexplicable problem of their fate; andtheir conversation nearly always turned upon the mystery of the past.
Coralie's mother was the daughter of a French consul at Salonica, whereshe married a very rich man of a certain age, called Count Odolavitch,the head of an ancient Servian family. He died a year after Coralie wasborn. The widow and child were at that time in France, at this samehouse in the Rue Raynouard, which Count Odolavitch had purchased througha young Egyptian called Essares, his secretary and factotum.
Coralie here spent three years of her childhood. Then she suddenly losther mother and was left alone in the world. Essares took her toSalonica, to a surviving sister of her grandfather the consul, a womanmany years younger than her brother. This lady took charge of Coralie.Unfortunately, she fell under Essares' influence, signed papers andmade her little grand-niece sign papers, until the child's wholefortune, administered by the Egyptian, gradually disappeared.
At last, when she was about seventeen, Coralie became the victim of anadventure which left the most hideous memory in her mind and which had afatal effect on her life. She was kidnaped one morning by a band ofTurks on the plains of Salonica and spent a fortnight in the palace ofthe governor of the province, exposed to his desires. Essares releasedher. But the release was brought about in so fantastic a fashion thatCoralie must have often wondered afterwards whether the Turk and theEgyptian were not in collusion.
At any rate, sick in body and depressed in spirits, fearing a freshassault upon her liberty and yielding to her aunt's wishes, a monthlater she married this Essares, who had already been paying her hisaddresses and who now definitely assumed in her eyes the figure of adeliverer. It was a hopeless uni
on, the horror of which became manifestto her on the very day on which it was cemented. Coralie was the wife ofa man whom she hated and whose love only grew with the hatred andcontempt which she showed for it.
Before the end of the year they came and took up their residence at thehouse in the Rue Raynouard. Essares, who had long ago established andwas at that time managing the Salonica branch of the Franco-OrientalBank, bought up almost all the shares of the bank itself, acquired thebuilding in the Rue Lafayette for the head office, became one of thefinancial magnates of Paris and received the title of bey in Egypt.
This was the story which Coralie told Patrice one day in the beautifulgarden at Passy; and, in this unhappy past which they explored togetherand compared with Patrice Belval's own, neither he nor Coralie was ableto discover a single point that was common to both. The two of them hadlived in different parts of the world. Not one name evoked the samerecollection in their minds. There was not a detail that enabled them tounderstand why each should possess a piece of the same amethyst bead norwhy their joint images should be contained in the same medallion-pendantor stuck in the pages of the same album.
"Failing everything else," said Patrice, "we can explain that thependant found in the hand of Essares Bey was snatched by him from theunknown friend who was watching over us and whom he murdered. But whatabout the album, which he wore in a pocket sewn inside his vest?"
Neither attempted to answer the question. Then Patrice asked:
"Tell me about Simeon."
"Simeon has always lived here."
"Even in your mother's time?"
"No, it was one or two years after my mother's death and after I went toSalonica that Essares put him to look after this property and keep it ingood condition."
"Was he Essares' secretary?"
"I never knew what his exact functions were. But he was not Essares'secretary, nor his confidant either. They never talked togetherintimately. He came to see us two or three times at Salonica. I rememberone of his visits. I was quite a child and I heard him speaking toEssares in a very angry tone, apparently threatening him."
"With what?"
"I don't know. I know nothing at all about Simeon. He kept himself verymuch to himself and was nearly always in the garden, smoking his pipe,dreaming, tending the trees and flowers, sometimes with the assistanceof two or three gardeners whom he would send for."
"How did he behave to you?"
"Here again I can't give any definite impression. We never talked; andhis occupations very seldom brought him into contact with me.Nevertheless I sometimes thought that his eyes used to seek me, throughtheir yellow spectacles, with a certain persistency and perhaps even acertain interest. Moreover, lately, he liked going with me to thehospital; and he would then, either there or on the way, show himselfmore attentive, more eager to please . . . so much so that I have beenwondering this last day or two . . ."
She hesitated for a moment, undecided whether to speak, and thencontinued:
"Yes, it's a very vague notion . . . but, all the same . . . Look here,there's one thing I forgot to tell you. Do you know why I joined thehospital in the Champs-Elysees, the hospital where you were lyingwounded and ill? It was because Simeon took me there. He knew that Iwanted to become a nurse and he suggested this hospital. . . . And then,if you think, later on, the photograph in the pendant, the one showingyou in uniform and me as a nurse, can only have been taken at thehospital. Well, of the people here, in this house, no one except Simeonever went there. . . . You will also remember that he used to come toSalonica, where he saw me as a child and afterwards as a girl, and thatthere also he may have taken the snapshots in the album. So that, if weallow that he had some correspondent who on his side followed yourfootsteps in life, it would not be impossible to believe that theunknown friend whom you assume to have intervened between us, the onewho sent you the key of the garden . . ."
"Was old Simeon?" Patrice interrupted. "The theory won't hold water."
"Why not?"
"Because this friend is dead. The man who, as you say, sought tointervene between us, who sent me the key of the garden, who called meto the telephone to tell me the truth, that man was murdered. There isnot the least doubt about it. I heard the cries of a man who is beingkilled, dying cries, the cries which a man utters when at the moment ofdeath."
"You can never be sure."
"I am, absolutely. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind. The man whomI call our unknown friend died before finishing his work; he diedmurdered, whereas Simeon is alive. Besides," continued Patrice, "thisman had a different voice from Simeon, a voice which I had never heardbefore and which I shall never hear again."
Coralie was convinced and did not insist.
They were seated on one of the benches in the garden, enjoying thebright April sunshine. The buds of the chestnut-trees shone at the tipsof the branches. The heavy scent of the wall-flowers rose from theborders; and their brown and yellow blossoms, like a cluster of bees andwasps pressed close together, swayed to the light breeze.
Suddenly Patrice felt a thrill. Coralie had placed her hand on his, withengaging friendliness; and, when he turned to look at her, he saw thatshe was in tears.
"What's the matter, Little Mother Coralie?"
Coralie's head bent down and her cheek touched the officer's shoulder.He dared not move. She was treating him as a protecting elder brother;and he shrank from showing any warmth of affection that might annoy her.
"What is it, dear?" he repeated. "What's the matter?"
"Oh, it is so strange!" she murmured. "Look, Patrice, look at thoseflowers."
They were on the third terrace, commanding a view of the fourth; andthis, the lowest of the terraces, was adorned not with borders ofwall-flowers but with beds in which were mingled all manner of springflowers; tulips, silvery alyssums, hyacinths, with a great round plot ofpansies in the middle.
"Look over there," she said, pointing to this plot with her outstretchedarm. "Do you see? . . . Letters. . . ."
Patrice looked and gradually perceived that the clumps of pansies wereso arranged as to form on the ground some letters that stood out amongthe other flowers. It did not appear at the first glance. It took acertain time to see; but, once seen, the letters grouped themselves oftheir own accord, forming three words set down in a single line:
_Patrice and Coralie_
"Ah," he said, in a low voice, "I understand what you mean!"
It gave them a thrill of inexpressible excitement to read their twonames, which a friendly hand had, so to speak, sown; their two namesunited in pansy-flowers. It was inexpressibly exciting too that he andshe should always find themselves thus linked together, linked togetherby events, linked together by their portraits, linked together by anunseen force of will, linked together now by the struggling effort oflittle flowers that spring up, waken into life and blossom inpredetermined order.
Coralie, sitting up, said:
"It's Simeon who attends to the garden."
"Yes," he said, wavering slightly. "But surely that does not affect myopinion. Our unknown friend is dead, but Simeon may have known him.Simeon perhaps was acting with him in certain matters and must know agood deal. Oh, if he could only put us on the right road!"
An hour later, as the sun was sinking on the horizon, they climbed theterraces. On reaching the top they saw M. Masseron beckoning to them.
"I have something curious to show you," he said, "something I have foundwhich will interest both you, madame, and you, captain, particularly."
He led them to the very end of the terrace, outside the occupied part ofthe house next to the library. Two detectives were standing mattock inhand. In the course of their searching, M. Masseron explained, they hadbegun by removing the ivy from the low wall adorned with terra-cottavases. Thereupon M. Masseron's attention was attracted by the fact thatthis wall was covered, for a length of some yards, by a layer of plasterwhich appeared to be more recent in date than the stone.
"What did it mean?" said M.
Masseron. "I had to presuppose some motive.I therefore had this layer of plaster demolished; and underneath it Ifound a second layer, not so thick as the first and mingled with therough stone. Come closer . . . or, rather, no, stand back a little way:you can see better like that."
The second layer really served only to keep in place some small whitepebbles, which constituted a sort of mosaic set in black pebbles andformed a series of large, written letters, spelling three words. Andthese three words once again were:
_Patrice and Coralie_
"What do you say to that?" asked M. Masseron. "Observe that theinscription goes several years back, at least ten years, when weconsider the condition of the ivy clinging to this part of the wall."
"At least ten years," Patrice repeated, when he was once more alone withCoralie. "Ten years ago was when you were not married, when you werestill at Salonica and when nobody used to come to this garden . . .nobody except Simeon and such people as he chose to admit. And amongthese," he concluded, "was our unknown friend who is now dead. AndSimeon knows the truth, Coralie."
They saw old Simeon, late that afternoon, as they had seen himconstantly since the tragedy, wandering in the garden or along thepassages of the house, restless and distraught, with his comforteralways wound round his head and his spectacles on his nose, stammeringwords which no one could understand. At night, his neighbor, one of themaimed soldiers, would often hear him humming to himself.
Patrice twice tried to make him speak. He shook his head and did notanswer, or else laughed like an idiot.
The problem was becoming complicated; and nothing pointed to a possiblesolution. Who was it that, since their childhood, had promised them toeach other as a pair betrothed long beforehand by an inflexibleordinance? Who was it that arranged the pansy-bed last autumn, when theydid not know each other? And who was it that had written their twonames, ten years ago, in white pebbles, within the thickness of a wall?
These were haunting questions for two young people in whom love hadawakened quite spontaneously and who suddenly saw stretching behind thema long past common to them both. Each step that they took in the gardenseemed to them a pilgrimage amid forgotten memories; and, at every turnin a path, they were prepared to discover some new proof of the bondthat linked them together unknown to themselves.
As a matter of fact, during those few days, they saw their initialsinterlaced twice on the trunk of a tree, once on the back of a bench.And twice again their names appeared inscribed on old walls andconcealed behind a layer of plaster overhung with ivy.
On these two occasions their names were accompanied by two separatedates:
_Patrice and Coralie, 1904_ _Patrice and Coralie, 1907_
"Eleven years ago and eight years ago," said the officer. "And alwaysour two names: Patrice and Coralie."
Their hands met and clasped each other. The great mystery of their pastbrought them as closely together as did the great love which filled themand of which they refrained from speaking.
In spite of themselves, however, they sought out solitude; and it was inthis way that, a fortnight after the murder of Essares Bey, as theypassed the little door opening on the lane, they decided to go out by itand to stroll down to the river bank. No one saw them, for both theapproach to the door and the path leading to it were hidden by a screenof tall bushes; and M. Masseron and his men were exploring the oldgreen-houses, which stood at the other side of the garden, and the oldfurnace and chimney which had been used for signaling.
But, when he was outside, Patrice stopped. Almost in front of him, inthe opposite wall, was an exactly similar door. He called Coralie'sattention to it, but she said:
"There is nothing astonishing about that. This wall is the boundary ofanother garden which at one time belonged to the one we have just left."
"But who lives there?"
"Nobody. The little house which overlooks it and which comes beforemine, in the Rue Raynouard, is always shut up."
"Same door, same key, perhaps," Patrice murmured, half to himself.
He inserted in the lock the rusty key, which had reached him bymessenger. The lock responded.
"Well," he said, "the series of miracles is continuing. Will this one bein our favor?"
The vegetation had been allowed to run riot in the narrow strip ofground that faced them. However, in the middle of the exuberant grass, awell-trodden path, which looked as if it were often used, started fromthe door in the wall and rose obliquely to the single terrace, on whichstood a dilapidated lodge with closed shutters. It was built on onefloor, but was surmounted by a small lantern-shaped belvedere. It hadits own entrance in the Rue Raynouard, from which it was separated by ayard and a very high wall. This entrance seemed to be barricaded withboards and posts nailed together.
They walked round the house and were surprised by the sight that awaitedthem on the right-hand side. The foliage had been trained intorectangular cloisters, carefully kept, with regular arcades cut in yew-and box-hedges. A miniature garden was laid out in this space, the veryhome of silence and tranquillity. Here also were wall-flowers andpansies and hyacinths. And four paths, coming from four corners of thecloisters, met round a central space, where stood the five columns of asmall, open temple, rudely constructed of pebbles and unmortaredbuilding-stones.
Under the dome of this little temple was a tombstone and, in front ofit, an old wooden praying-chair, from the bars of which hung, on theleft, an ivory crucifix and, on the right, a rosary composed of amethystbeads in a gold filigree setting.
"Coralie, Coralie," whispered Patrice, in a voice trembling withemotion, "who can be buried here?"
They went nearer. There were bead wreaths laid in rows on the tombstone.They counted nineteen, each bearing the date of one of the last nineteenyears. Pushing them aside, they read the following inscription in giltletters worn and soiled by the rain:
HERE LIE PATRICE AND CORALIE, BOTH OF WHOM WERE MURDERED ON THE 14th OF APRIL, 1895. REVENGE TO ME: I WILL REPAY.