The Golden Triangle Part 48

He took a few steps round the little room and, stopping in front of Don Luis, jerked out:

"Let's go. Else I shall go mad too. It's a nightmare, there's no other word for it, a nightmare in which things turn upside down until the brain itself capsizes. Let's go. Coralie is in danger. That's the only thing that matters."

The old man shook his head:

"I'm very much afraid . . ."

"What are _you_ afraid of?" bellowed the officer.

"I'm afraid that my poor friend has been caught up by the person who was following him . . . and then how can he have saved Mme. Essares? The poor thing was hardly able to breathe, he told me."

Hanging on to Don Luis' arm, Patrice staggered out of the porter's lodge like a drunken man:

"She's done for, she must be!" he cried.

"Not at all," said Don Luis. "Simeon is as feverishly active as yourself. He is nearing the catastrophe. He is quaking with fear and not in a condition to weigh his words. Believe me, your Coralie is in no immediate danger. We have some hours before us."

"But Ya-Bon? Suppose Ya-Bon has laid hands upon him?"

"I gave Ya-Bon orders not to kill him. Therefore, whatever happens, Simeon is alive. That's the great thing. So long as Simeon is alive, there is nothing to fear. He won't let your Coralie die."

"Why not, seeing that he hates her? Why not? What is there in that man's heart? He devotes all his existence to a work of love on our behalf; and, from one minute to the next, that love turns to execration."

He pressed Don Luis' arm and, in a hollow voice, asked:

"Do you believe that he is my father?"

"Simeon Diodokis is your father, captain," replied Don Luis.

"Ah, don't, don't! It's too horrible! G.o.d, but we are in the valley of the shadow!"

"On the contrary," said Don Luis, "the shadow is lifting slightly; and I confess that our talk with M. Vacherot has given me a little light."

"Do you mean it?"

But, in Patrice Belval's fevered brain, one idea jostled another. He suddenly stopped:

"Simeon may have gone back to the porter's lodge! . . . And we sha'n't be there! . . . Perhaps he will bring Coralie back!"

"No," Don Luis declared, "he would have done that before now, if it could be done. No, it's for us to go to him."

"But where?"

"Well, of course, where all the fighting has been . . . where the gold lies. All the enemy's operations are centered in that gold; and you may be sure that, even in retreat, he can't get away from it. Besides, we know that he is not far from Berthou's Wharf."

Patrice allowed himself to be led along without a word. But suddenly Don Luis cried:

"Did you hear?"

"Yes, a shot."

At that moment they were on the point of turning into the Rue Raynouard.

The height of the houses prevented them from perceiving the exact spot from which the shot had been fired, but it came approximately from the Essares house or the immediate precincts. Patrice was filled with alarm:

"Can it be Ya-Bon?"

"I'm afraid so," said Don Luis, "and, as Ya-Bon wouldn't fire, some one must have fired a shot at him. . . . Oh, by Jove, if my poor Ya-Bon were to be killed . . . !"

"And suppose it was at her, at Coralie?" whispered Patrice.

Don Luis began to laugh:

"Oh, my dear captain, I'm almost sorry that I ever mixed myself up in this business! You were much cleverer before I came and a good deal clearer-sighted. Why the devil should Simeon attack your Coralie, considering that she's already in his power?"

They hurried their steps. As they pa.s.sed the Essares house they saw that everything was quiet and they went on until they came to the lane, down which they turned.

Patrice had the key, but the little door which opened on to the garden of the lodge was bolted inside.

"Aha!" said Don Luis. "That shows that we're warm. Meet me on the quay, captain. I shall run down to Berthou's Wharf to have a look round."

During the past few minutes a pale dawn had begun to mingle with the shades of night. The embankment was still deserted, however.

Don Luis observed nothing in particular at Berthou's Wharf; but, when he returned to the quay above, Patrice showed him a ladder lying right at the end of the pavement which skirted the garden of the lodge; and Don Luis recognized the ladder as the one whose absence he had noticed from the recess in the yard. With that quick vision which was one of his greatest a.s.sets, he at once furnished the explanation:

"As Simeon had the key of the garden, it was obviously Ya-Bon who used the ladder to make his way in. Therefore he saw Simeon take refuge there on returning from his visit to old Vacherot and after coming to fetch Coralie. Now the question is, did Simeon succeed in fetching Little Mother Coralie, or did he run away before fetching her? That I can't say. But, in any case . . ."

Bending low down, he examined the pavement and continued:

"In any case, what is certain is that Ya-Bon knows the hiding-place where the bags of gold are stacked and that it is there most likely that your Coralie was and perhaps still is, worse luck, if the enemy, giving his first thought to his personal safety, has not had time to remove her."

"Are you sure?"

"Look here, captain, Ya-Bon always carries a piece of chalk in his pocket. As he doesn't know how to write, except just the letters forming my name, he has drawn these two straight lines which, with the line of the wall, make a triangle . . . the golden triangle."

Don Luis drew himself up:

"The clue is rather meager. But Ya-Bon looks upon me as a wizard. He never doubted that I should manage to find this spot and that those three lines would be enough for me. Poor Ya-Bon!"

"But," objected Patrice, "all this, according to you, took place before our return to Paris, between twelve and one o'clock, therefore."

"Yes."

"Then what about the shot which we have just heard, four or five hours later?"

"As to that I'm not so positive. We may a.s.sume that Simeon squatted somewhere in the dark. Possibly at the first break of day, feeling easier and hearing nothing of Ya-Bon, he risked taking a step or two.

Then Ya-Bon, keeping watch in silence, would have leaped upon him."

"So you think . . ."