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

declared itself; and my cousin de Chagny⁠—you must have noticed that he is of a timid disposition⁠—at once said to us:

“ ‘That gives us time.’ ”

“ ‘Time for what?’ I asked him.

“ ‘Time to think things over. You understand clearly enough that all this is going to give rise to an unheard-of scandal, and one which, for the honor of our families, we might perhaps be able to avoid.’ ”

“I opposed any delay. I wanted them to telephone at once to the police. But de Chagny was in his own house, you know. And the days passed waiting for him to come to a decision which he could not bring himself to make. They had told the servants that d’Estreicher was ill. Only the majordomo was in our confidence, brought him his food, and kept guard over him. Besides, the prisoner seemed so feeble. You would have declared that he had no strength left. How was one to distrust so sick a man?”

Dorothy asked:

“But what explanation of his conduct did he give?”

“None, because we didn’t question him.”

“Didn’t he speak of me? Didn’t he make any accusations against me?”

“No. He went on playing the part of a sick man, prostrated by pain and fever. During this time de Chagny wrote to Paris for information about him, for after all, his relations with his cousin only went back as far as 1915.

“Three days ago we received a telegram which said:

“ ‘A very dangerous man. Wanted by the police. Letters follows.’

“At once de Chagny came to a decision and the day before yesterday, in the morning, he telephoned to the police. When the inspector arrived, he was too late. D’Estreicher had fled.”

“Doubtless through the window of a pantry which looks down on the ravine?” said Dorothy.

“Yes, and down a fissure in the face of the cliff. How did you know?”

“It was the way Saint-Quentin and I took to get at d’Estreicher.”

And forthwith, cutting short any questions, she added:

“Well, what was the information you got about him?”

“Extremely serious. Antoine d’Estreicher, formerly a naval officer, was dismissed the service for theft. Later, prosecuted for being an accomplice in a case of murder, he was released for lack of evidence. At the beginning of the war he deserted. Evidence of it has come to hand and a fortnight ago an inquiry into the matter was begun. During the war he borrowed the personality of one of his relations, who had been dead some years; and it is actually under his new name of Maxime d’Estreicher that the police are hunting for him.”

“What a pity! A scoundrel like that! To have him in one’s hands and let him go!”

“We will find him again.”

“Yes: always providing that it isn’t too late.”

Raoul quickened their pace. They were going at a fair rate, running through the villages without slackening their pace and bumping over the cobbles of the towns. The night was beginning to fall when they reached Nantes, where they had to stop to buy petrol.

“Still an hour’s journey,” said Raoul.

On the way she made him explain to her the exact topography of Hillocks Manor, the direction of the road which ran through the orchard to the house, the position of the hall and staircase. Moreover, he had to give her full information about his grandfather’s habits, about the old man’s age (he was seventy-five), and his dog Goliath⁠—a huge beast, terrible to look at, with a terrific bark, but quite harmless and incapable of defending his master.

At the big market-town of Clisson, they entered La Vendée. When they had nearly reached the Manor Raoul would have liked to make a detour through the village where they would find the servants. They could take with them a couple of farm-laborers. Dorothy would not hear of it.

“But, after all,” he exclaimed, “what are you afraid of?”

“Everything,” she replied. “From that man⁠—everything. We have no right to lose a minute.”

They left the main road and turned down a lane which was more like a deep-rutted cart-track.

“There it is, over yonder,” he said. “There is a light in the window of his room.”

Almost at once he stopped the car and jumped out of it. A turreted gateway, relic of a far-removed epoch, rose in the high wall which encircled the estate. The gate was shut. While Raoul was engaged in opening it, they heard, dominating the dull noise of the engine, the barking of a dog.

From the clearness of the sound and the direction from which it came Raoul declared that Goliath was not inside the Manor, but outside it, at the foot of the steps, also that he was barking in front of a shut-up house.

“Well, are you never going to open that gate?” cried Dorothy.

He came back hurriedly to her.

“It’s very disquieting. Someone has shot the bolt and turned the key in the lock.”

“Don’t they always?”

“Never. Some stranger has done it.⁠ ⁠… And then you hear that barking.”

“Well?”

“There’s another gate two hundred yards further on.”

“And suppose that’s locked too. No: we must act at once.”

She moved to the steering-wheel and drove the car close under the wall a little higher up, to the right of the gateway. Then she piled the four cushions on the seat and stood on the top of them.

“Montfaucon!” she called.

The Captain understood. In half-a-dozen movements he climbed up Dorothy’s back and stood upright on her shoulders. With that advantage his hands touched the top of the wall. Clinging to it, with Dorothy’s help, he pulled himself up. When he was astride it, Raoul threw a rope to him. He tied one end round his waist, Dorothy held the other. In a few seconds the child touched the ground on the other side of the wall, and Raoul had barely got back to the gate before the key grated in the lock and the bolts were drawn.

Raoul did not get back to the car. He dashed across the orchard, followed by Dorothy and the Captain. As she ran she said to the child:

“Go round the house and if you see a ladder