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

“But does it comply with the official regulations?” asked the inspector whose respect for red tape enabled him to control the sympathy he was feeling for her. “For after all this document is only valuable from the point of view of references. What I should like to see is your own certificate of identity.”

“I have that certificate, inspector.”

“Made out by whom?”

“By the Prefecture of Châlons, which is the chief city of the department in which I was born.”

“Show it to me.”

The young girl plainly hesitated. She looked at Count Octave then at the Countess. She had begged them to come just in order that they might be witnesses of her examination and hear the answers she proposed to give, and now, at the last moment, she was rather sorry that she had done so.

“Would you prefer us to withdraw?” said the Countess.

“No, no,” she replied quickly. “On the contrary I insist on your knowing.”

“And us too?” said Raoul Davernoie.

“Yes,” she said smiling. “There is a fact which it is my duty to divulge to you. Oh, nothing of great importance. But⁠ ⁠… all the same.”

She took from her case a dirty card with broken corners.

“Here it is,” she said.

The inspector examined the card carefully and said in the tone of one who is not to be humbugged:

“But that isn’t your name. It’s a nom de guerre of course⁠—like those of your young comrades?”

“Not at all, inspector.”

“Come, come, you’re not going to get me to believe.⁠ ⁠…”

“Here is my birth certificate in support of it, inspector, stamped with the stamp of the commune of Argonne.”

“What? You belong to the village of Argonne!” cried the Count de Chagny.

“I did, Monsieur le Comte. But this unknown village, which gave its name to the whole district of the Argonne, no longer exists. The war has suppressed it.”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… I know,” said the Count. “We had a friend there⁠—a relation. Didn’t we, d’Estreicher?”

“Doubtless it was Jean d’Argonne?” she asked.

“It was. Jean d’Argonne died at the hospital at Clermont from the effects of a wound⁠ ⁠… Lieutenant the Prince of Argonne. You knew him.”

“I knew him.”

“Where? When? Under what conditions?”

“Goodness! Under the ordinary conditions in which one knows a person with whom one is closely connected.”

“What? There were ties between you and Jean d’Argonne⁠ ⁠… the ties of relationship?”

“The closest ties. He was my father.”

“Your father! Jean d’Argonne! What are you talking about? It’s impossible! See why⁠ ⁠… Jean’s daughter was called Yolande.”

“Yolande, Isabel, Dorothy.”

The Count snatched the card which the inspector was turning over and over again, and read aloud in a tone of amazement:

“Yolande Isabel Dorothy, Princess of Argonne!”

She finished the sentence for him, laughing:

“Countess Marescot, Baroness de la Hêtraie, de Beaugreval, and other places.”

The Count seized the birth certificate with no less eagerness, and more and more astounded, read it slowly syllable by syllable:

“Yolande Isabel Dorothy, Princess of Argonne, born at Argonne, on the 14th of October, 1900, legitimate daughter of Jean de Marescot, Prince of Argonne, and of Jessie Varenne.”

Further doubt was impossible. The civil status to which the young girl laid claim was established by proofs, which they were the less inclined to challenge since the unexpected fact explained exactly everything which appeared inexplicable in the manners and even in the appearance of Dorothy.

The Countess gave her feelings full play:

“Yolande? You are the little Yolande about whom Jean d’Argonne used to talk to us with such fondness.”

“He was very fond of me,” said the young girl. “Circumstances did not allow us to live always together as I should have liked. But I was as fond of him as if I had seen him every day.”

“Yes,” said the Countess. “One could not help being fond of him. I only saw him twice in my life, in Paris, at the beginning of the war. But what delightful recollections of him I retain! A man teeming with gayety and lightheartedness! Just like you, Dorothy. Besides, I find him again in you⁠ ⁠… the eyes⁠ ⁠… and above all the smile.”

Dorothy displayed two photographs which she took from among her papers.

“His portrait, madame. Do you recognize it?”

“I should think so! And the other, this lady?”

“My mother who died many years ago. He adored her.”

“Yes, yes, I know. She was formerly on the stage, wasn’t she? I remember. We will talk it all over, if you will, and about your own life, the misfortunes which have driven you to live like this. But first of all, how came you here? And why?”

Dorothy told them how she had chanced to see the word Roborey, which her father had repeated when he was dying. Then the Count interrupted her narration.

He was a perfectly commonplace man who always did his best to invest matters with the greatest possible solemnity, in order that he might play the chief part in them, which his rank and fortune assigned to him. As a matter of form he consulted his two comrades, then, without waiting to hear their answers, he dismissed the inspector with the lack of ceremony of a grand seignior. In the same fashion he turned out Saint-Quentin and the three boys, carefully closed the two doors, bade the two women sit down, and walked up and down in front of them with his hands behind his back and an air of profound thoughtfulness.

Dorothy was quite content. She had won a victory, compelled her hosts to speak the words she wanted. The Countess held her tightly to her. Raoul appeared to be a friend. All was going well. There was, indeed, standing a little apart from them, hostile and formidable, the bearded nobleman, whose hard eyes never left her. But sure of herself, accepting the combat, full of careless daring, she refused to bend before the menace of the terrible danger which, however, might at any moment crush her.

“Mademoiselle,” said the Count de Chagny with an air of great importance. “It has seemed to us, to my cousins and me, since you are the daughter of Jean d’Argonne, whose loss we so