The Golden Triangle by Maurice Leblanc (top rated books of all time TXT) 📕

Eton jacket; the other, on the left, representing a very little girl. There was an inscription under each. On the right: “Patrice, at ten.” On the left: “Coralie, at three.”

Moved beyond expression, Patrice turned the leaf. On the second page they appeared again, he at the age of fifteen, she at the age of eight. And he saw himself at nineteen and at twenty-three and at twenty-eight, always accompanied by Coralie, first as a little girl, then as a young girl, next as a woman.

“This is incredible!” he cried. “How is it possible? Here are portraits of myself which I had never seen, amateur photographs obviously, which trace my whole life. Here’s one when I was doing my military training.⁠ ⁠… Here I am on horseback⁠ ⁠… Who can have ordered these photographs? And who can have collected them together with yours, madame?”

He fixed his eyes on Coralie, who evaded their questioning gaze and lowered her head as though the close connection between their two lives, to which those pages bore witness, had shaken her to the very depths of her being.

“Who can have brought them together?” he repeated. “Do you know? And where does the album come from?”

M. Masseron supplied the answer:

“It was the surgeon who found it. M. Essarès wore a vest under his shirt; and the album was in an inner pocket, a pocket sewn inside the vest. The surgeon felt the boards through it when he was undressing M. Essarès’ body.”

This time, Patrice’s and Coralie’s eyes met. The thought that M. Essarès had been collecting both their photographs during the past twenty years and that he wore them next to his breast and that he had lived and died with them upon him, this thought amazed them so much that they did not even try to fathom its strange significance.

“Are you sure of what you are saying, sir?” asked Patrice.

“I was there,” said M. Masseron. “I was present at the discovery. Besides, I myself made another which confirms this one and completes it in a really surprising fashion. I found a pendant, cut out of a solid block of amethyst and held in a setting of filigree-work.”

“What’s that?” cried Captain Belval. “What’s that? A pendant? An amethyst pendant?”

“Look for yourself, sir,” suggested the magistrate, after once more consulting Mme. Essarès with a glance.

And he handed Captain Belval an amethyst pendant, larger than the ball formed by joining the two halves which Coralie and Patrice possessed, she on her rosary and he on his bunch of seals; and this new ball was encircled with a specimen of gold filigree-work exactly like that on the rosary and on the seal.

The setting served as a clasp.

“Am I to open it?” he asked.

Coralie nodded. He opened the pendant. The inside was divided by a movable glass disk, which separated two miniature photographs, one of Coralie as a nurse, the other of himself, wounded, in an officer’s uniform.

Patrice reflected, with pale cheeks. Presently he asked:

“And where does this pendant come from? Did you find it, sir?”

“Yes, Captain Belval.”

“Where?”

The magistrate seemed to hesitate. Coralie’s attitude gave Patrice the impression that she was unaware of this detail. M. Masseron at last said:

“I found it in the dead man’s hand.”

“In the dead man’s hand? In M. Essarès’ hand?”

Patrice had given a start, as though under an unexpected blow, and was now leaning over the magistrate, greedily awaiting a reply which he wanted to hear for the second time before accepting it as certain.

“Yes, in his hand. I had to force back the clasped fingers in order to release it.”

Belval stood up and, striking the table with his fist, exclaimed:

“Well, sir, I will tell you one thing which I was keeping back as a last argument to prove to you that my collaboration is of use; and this thing becomes of great importance after what we have just learnt. Sir, this morning someone asked to speak to me on the telephone; and I had hardly answered the call when this person, who seemed greatly excited, was the victim of a murderous assault, committed in my hearing. And, amid the sound of the scuffle and the cries of agony, I caught the following words, which the unhappy man insisted on trying to get to me as so many last instructions: ‘Patrice!⁠ ⁠… Coralie!⁠ ⁠… The amethyst pendant.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I have it on me.⁠ ⁠… The pendant.⁠ ⁠… Ah, it’s too late!⁠ ⁠… I should so much have liked.⁠ ⁠… Patrice.⁠ ⁠… Coralie.⁠ ⁠…’ There’s what I heard, sir, and here are the two facts which we cannot escape. This morning, at nineteen minutes past seven, a man was murdered having upon him an amethyst pendant. This is the first undeniable fact. A few hours later, at twenty-three minutes past twelve, this same amethyst pendant is discovered clutched in the hand of another man. This is the second undeniable fact. Place these facts side by side and you are bound to come to the conclusion that the first murder, the one of which I caught the distant echo, was committed here, in this house, in the same library which, since yesterday evening, witnessed the end of every scene in the tragedy which we are contemplating.”

This revelation, which in reality amounted to a fresh accusation against Essarès, seemed to affect the magistrate profoundly. Patrice had flung himself into the discussion with a passionate vehemence and a logical reasoning which it was impossible to disregard without evident insincerity.

Coralie had turned aside slightly and Patrice could not see her face; but he suspected her dismay in the presence of all this infamy and shame.

M. Masseron raised an objection:

“Two undeniable facts, you say, Captain Belval? As to the first point, let me remark that we have not found the body of the man who is supposed to have been murdered at nineteen minutes past seven this morning.”

“It will be found in due course.”

“Very well. Second point: as regards the amethyst pendant discovered in Essarès’ hand, how can we tell that Essarès Bey found it in the murdered man’s hand and not somewhere