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

foremost is the utter incapacity displayed by the police. A pack of addle-pates, you say? When you speak like that, Master Ya-Bon, you are talking impertinent nonsense, which, coming from you, does not astonish me and which might easily make me give you the punishment you deserve. But we will overlook it this time. Whatever you may say, the police do what they can, not to mention that, in wartime, they have other things to do than to occupy themselves with the mysterious relations between Captain Belval and Mme. Essarès. It is I therefore who will have to act; and I have hardly anyone to reckon on but myself. Well, I wonder if I am a match for such adversaries. To think that here’s one who has the cheek to come back to the house while it is being watched by the police, to put up a ladder, to listen no doubt to my conversation with M. Masseron and afterwards to what I said to Little Mother Coralie and, lastly, to send a couple of bullets whizzing past our ears! What do you say? Am I the man for the job? And could all the French police, overworked as they are, give me the indispensable assistance? No, the man I need for clearing up a thing like this is an exceptional sort of chap, one who unites every quality in himself, in short the type of man one never sees.”

Patrice leant more heavily on his companion’s arm:

“You, who know so many good people, haven’t you the fellow I want concealed about your person? A genius of sorts? A demigod?”

Ya-Bon grunted again, merrily this time, and withdrew his arm. He always carried a little electric lamp. Switching on the light, he put the handle between his teeth. Then he took a bit of chalk out of his jacket-pocket.

A grimy, weather-beaten plaster wall ran along the street. Ya-Bon took his stand in front of the wall and, turning the light upon it, began to write with an unskilful hand, as though each letter cost him a measureless effort and as though the sum total of those letters were the only one that he had ever succeeded in composing and remembering. In this way he wrote two words which Patrice read out:

Arsène Lupin.

“Arsène Lupin,” said Patrice, under his breath. And, looking at Ya-Bon in amazement, “Are you in your right mind? What do you mean by Arsène Lupin? Are you suggesting Arsène Lupin to me?”

Ya-Bon nodded his head.

“Arsène Lupin? Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Ya-Bon signified.

Patrice then remembered that the Senegalese used to spend his days at the hospital getting his good-natured comrades to read all the adventures of Arsène Lupin aloud to him; and he grinned:

“Yes, you know him as one knows somebody whose history one has read.”

“No,” protested Ya-Bon.

“Do you know him personally?”

“Yes.”

“Get out, you silly fool! Arsène Lupin is dead. He threw himself into the sea from a rock;2 and you pretend that you know him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean to say that you have met him since he died?”

“Yes.”

“By Jove! And Master Ya-Bon’s influence with Arsène Lupin is enough to make him come to life again and put himself out at a sign from Master Ya-Bon?”

“Yes.”

“I say! I had a high opinion of you as it was, but now there is nothing for me but to make you my bow. A friend of the late Arsène Lupin! We’re going it!⁠ ⁠… And how long will it take you to place his ghost at our disposal? Six months? Three months? One month? A fortnight?”

Ya-Bon made a gesture.

“About a fortnight,” Captain Belval translated. “Very well, evoke your friend’s spirit; I shall be delighted to make his acquaintance. Only, upon my word, you must have a very poor idea of me to imagine that I need a collaborator! What next! Do you take me for a helpless dunderhead?”

IX Patrice and Coralie

Everything happened as M. Masseron had foretold. The press did not speak. The public did not become excited. The various deaths were casually paragraphed. The funeral of Essarès Bey, the wealthy banker, passed unnoticed.

But, on the day following the funeral, after Captain Belval, with the support of the police, had made an application to the military authorities, a new order of things was established in the house in the Rue Raynouard. It was recognized as Home No. 2 attached to the hospital in the Champs-Élysées; Mme. Essarès was appointed matron; and it became the residence of Captain Belval and his seven wounded men exclusively.

Coralie, therefore, was the only woman remaining. The cook and housemaid were sent away. The seven cripples did all the work of the house. One acted as hall-porter, another as cook, a third as butler. Ya-Bon, promoted to parlormaid, made it his business to wait on Little Mother Coralie. At night he slept in the passage outside her door. By day he mounted guard outside her window.

“Let no one near that door or that window!” Patrice said to him. “Let no one in! You’ll catch it if so much as a mosquito succeeds in entering her room.”

Nevertheless, Patrice was not easy in his mind. The enemy had given him too many proofs of reckless daring to let him imagine that he could take any steps to ensure her perfect protection. Danger always creeps in where it is least expected; and it was all the more difficult to ward off in that no one knew whence it threatened. Now that Essarès Bey was dead, who was continuing his work? Who had inherited the task of revenge upon Coralie announced in his last letter?

M. Masseron had at once begun his work of investigation, but the dramatic side of the case seemed to leave him indifferent. Since he had not found the body of the man whose dying cries reached Patrice Belval’s ears, since he had discovered no clue to the mysterious assailant who had fired at Patrice and Coralie later in the day, since he was not able to