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

whither chance could only bring ignorant wayfarers or shepherds in quest of pasturage for their flocks. Indeed, there were only fragments of ruins, rather than actual ruins, covered with ivy and briers⁠—here a porch, there a vault, further on a chimneypiece, further still the skeleton of a summerhouse⁠—alone, venerable witnesses to a time at which there had been a house, with a courtyard in front, wings on both sides, surrounded by a park. Further off there stood, in groups or in fragments of avenues, fine old trees, chiefly oaks, wide-spreading, venerable, and majestic.

At one side of the courtyard, the shape of which she could make out by the position of the buildings which had crumbled to ruins, part of the front, still intact, and backed by a small hill of ruins, held, at the top of a very low first story, this clock which had escaped by a miracle man’s ravages. Across its face stretched its two big hands, the color of rust. Most of the hours, engraved contrary to the usual custom in Roman figures, were effaced. Moss and wall-pellitory were growing between the gaping stones of the face. Right at the bottom of it, under cover in a small niche, a bell awaited the stroke of the hammer.

A dead clock, whose heart had ceased to beat. Dorothy had the impression that time had stopped there for centuries, suspended from these motionless hands, from that hammer which no longer struck, from that silent bell in its sheltering niche. Then she espied underneath it, on a marble tablet, some scarcely legible letters, and mounting a pile of stones, she could decipher the words: In robore fortuna!

In robore fortuna! The beautiful and noble motto that one found everywhere, at Roborey, at the Manor, at the Château de la Roche-Périac, and on the medal! Was Dorothy right then? Were the instructions given by the medal still valid? And was it truly a meeting-place to which one was summoned, across time and space, in front of this dead clock?

She gained control of herself and said, laughing:

“A meeting-place to which I alone shall come.”

So keen was this conviction of hers that she could hardly believe that those who, like herself, had been summoned would come. The formidable series of chances, thanks to which, little by little, she had come to the very heart of this enigmatic adventure, could not logically be repeated in the case of some other privileged being. The chain of tradition must have been broken in the other families, or have ended in fragments of the truth, as the instances of the tramp and the factory hand proved.

“No one will come,” she repeated. “It is five and twenty to twelve. Consequently⁠—”

She did not finish the sentence. A sound came from the land side, a sound near at hand, distinct from those produced by the movements of the sea or the wind. She listened. It came with an even beat which grew more and more distinct.

“Some peasant⁠ ⁠… some woodcutter,” she thought.

No. It was something else. She made it out more clearly the nearer it came: it was the slow and measured step of a horse whose hoofs were striking the harder soil of the path. Dorothy followed its progress through one after the other of the inclosures of the old estate, then along the brick pavement. A clicking of the tongue of a rider, urging on his mount, at intervals came to her ears.

Her eyes fixed on the yawning arch Dorothy waited almost shivering with curiosity.

And suddenly a horseman appeared. An odd-looking horseman, who looked so large on his little horse, that one was rather inclined to believe that he was advancing by means of those long legs which hung down so far, and pulling the horse along like a child’s toy. His check suit, his knickerbockers, his thick woolen stockings, his clean-shaven face, the pipe between his teeth, his phlegmatic air, all proclaimed his English nationality.

On seeing Dorothy he said to himself and without the slightest air of astonishment:

“Oh.”

And he would have continued his journey if he had not caught sight of the clock. He pulled in his horse.

To dismount he had only to stand on tiptoe and his horse slipped from under him. He knotted the bridle round a root, looked at his watch, and took up his position not far from the clock.

“Here is a gentleman who doesn’t waste words,” thought Dorothy. “An Englishman for certain.”

She presently discovered that he kept looking at her, but as one looks at a woman one finds pretty and not at all as one looks at a person with whom circumstances demand that one should converse. His pipe having gone out, he lit it again; and so they remained three or four minutes, close to one another, serious, without stirring. The breeze blew the smoke from his pipe towards her.

“It’s too silly,” said Dorothy to herself. “For after all it’s very likely that this taciturn gentleman and I have an appointment. Upon my word, I’m going to introduce myself. Under which name?”

This question threw her into a state of considerable embarrassment. Ought she to introduce herself to him as Princess of Argonne or as Dorothy the ropedancer? The solemnity of the occasion called for a ceremonious presentation and the revelation of her rank. But on the other hand her variegated costume with its short skirt called for less pomp. Decidedly “Ropedancer” sufficed.

These considerations, to the humor of which she was quite alive, had brought a smile to her face. The young man observed it. He smiled too. Both of them opened their mouths, and they were about to speak at the same time when an incident stopped them on the verge of utterance. A man came out of the path into the courtyard, a pedestrian with a clean shaven face, very pale, one arm in a sling under a jacket much too large for him, and a Russian soldier’s cap.

The sight of the clock brought him also to a