The Secret Tomb by Maurice Leblanc (i like reading .txt) 📕

defiance and challenge as if she had had the audacity to say to him:

“If you speak, you’re lost.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turning to the inspector who had seen nothing of this byplay, he said:

“We may congratulate ourselves on having got it over, and entirely to mademoiselle’s advantage. Goodness, what a disagreeable job!”

“You had no business to set about it at all,” said the Countess, coming up with the Count and Raoul Davernoie.

“Oh yes, I had, dear cousin. Your husband and I had our doubts. It was just as well to clear them up.”

“And you’ve found nothing?” said the Count.

“Nothing⁠ ⁠… less than nothing⁠—at the most an odd trifle with which Mr. Montfaucon was playing, and which Mademoiselle Dorothy had been kind enough to give me. You do, don’t you, Mademoiselle?”

“Yes,” said Dorothy simply.

He displayed the cardboard box, round which he had again drawn the rubber ring, and handing it to the Countess:

“Take care of that till tomorrow morning, will you, dear lady?”

“Why should I take care of it and not you?”

“It wouldn’t be the same thing,” said he. “To place it in your hands is as it were to affix a seal to it. Tomorrow, at lunch, we’ll open it together.”

“Do you make a point of it?”

“Yes. It’s an idea⁠ ⁠… of sorts.”

“Very good,” said the Countess. “I accept the charge if mademoiselle authorizes me to do so.”

“I ask it, madame,” replied Dorothy, grasping the fact that the danger was postponed till the morrow. “The box contains nothing of importance, only white pebbles and shells. But since it amuses monsieur, and he wants a check on it, give him this small satisfaction.”

There remained, however, a formality which the inspector considered essential in inquiries of this kind. The examination of identification papers, delivery of documents, compliance with the regulations, were matters which he took very seriously indeed. On the other hand, if Dorothy surmised the existence of a secret between the Count and Countess and their cousins, it is certain that her hosts were not less puzzled by the strange personality which for an hour or two had dominated and disturbed them. Who was she? Where did she come from? What was her real name? What was the explanation of the fact that this distinguished and intelligent creature, with her supple cleverness and distinguished manners, was wandering about the country with four street-boys?

She took from a locker in the caravan a passport-case which she carried under her arm; and when they all went into the orangery which was now empty, she took from this case a sheet of paper black with signatures and stamps and handed it to the inspector.

“Is this all you’ve got?” he said almost immediately.

“Isn’t it sufficient? The secretary at the mayor’s office this morning was satisfied with it.”

“They’re satisfied with anything in mayors’ offices,” he said scornfully. “And what about these names?⁠ ⁠… Nobody’s named Castor and Pollux?⁠ ⁠… And this one⁠ ⁠… Baron de Saint-Quentin, acrobat!”

Dorothy smiled:

“Nevertheless it is his name and his profession.”

“Baron de Saint-Quentin?”

“Certainly he was the son of a plumber who lived at Saint-Quentin and was called Baron.”

“But then he must have the paternal authorization.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because his father died during the occupation.”

“And his mother?”

“She’s dead too. No relations. The English adopted the boy. Towards the end of the war he was assistant-cook in a hospital at Bar-le-Duc, where I was a nurse. I adopted him.”

The inspector uttered a grunt of approval and continued his examination.

“And Castor and Pollux.”

“I don’t know where they come from. In 1918, during the German push towards Châlons, they were caught in the storm and picked up on a road by some French soldiers who gave them their nicknames. The shock was so great that they’ve lost all memory of the years before those days. Are they brothers? Were they acquaintances? Where are their families? Nobody knows. I adopted them.”

“Oh!” said the inspector, somewhat taken aback. Then he went on: “There remains now Sire Montfaucon, captain in the American army, decorated with the Croix de guerre.”

“Present,” said a voice.

Montfaucon drew himself stiffly upright in a soldierly attitude, his heels touching, and his little finger on the seam of his enormous trousers.

Dorothy caught him on to her knee and gave him a smacking kiss.

“A brat, about whom also nobody knows anything. When he was four he was living with a dozen American soldiers who had made for him, by way of cradle, a fur bag. The day of the great American attack, one of the twelve carried him on his back; and it happened that of all those who advanced, it was this soldier who went furthest, and that they found his body next day near Montfaucon hill. Beside him, in the fur bag, the child was asleep, slightly wounded. On the battlefield, the colonel decorated him with the Croix de guerre, and gave him the name and rank of Captain Montfaucon of the American army. Later it fell to me to nurse him at the hospital to which he was brought in. Three months after that the colonel wished to carry him off to America. Montfaucon refused. He did not wish to leave me. I adopted him.”

Dorothy told the child’s story in a low voice full of tenderness. The eyes of the Countess shone with tears and she murmured:

“You acted admirably⁠—admirably, mademoiselle. Only that gave you four orphans to provide for. With what resources?”

Dorothy laughed and said:

“We were rich.”

“Rich?”

“Yes, thanks to Montfaucon. Before he went his colonel left two thousand francs for him. We bought a caravan and an old horse. Dorothy’s Circus was formed.”

“A difficult profession to which you have to serve an apprenticeship.”

“We served our apprenticeship under an old English soldier, formerly a clown, who taught us all the tricks of the trade and all the wheezes. And then I had it all in my blood. The tightrope, dancing, I was broken in to them years ago. Then we set out across France. It’s rather a hard life, but it keeps one in the best of health, one is never dull, and taken