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

I laid for him. Let’s go to sleep. There will be nothing happening tonight.”

There was in fact no alarm.

Next morning, on examining the window, he observed that a stone ledge ran above the ground-floor all along the garden front of the house, wide enough for a man to walk upon by holding on to the balconies and rain-pipes. He inspected all the rooms to which the ledge gave access. None of them was old Siméon’s room.

“He hasn’t stirred out, I suppose?” he asked the two soldiers posted on guard.

“Don’t think so, sir. In any case, we haven’t unlocked the door.”

Patrice went in and, paying no attention to the old fellow, who was still sucking at his cold pipe, he searched the room, having it at the back of his mind that the enemy might take refuge there. He found nobody. But what he did discover, in a press in the wall, was a number of things which he had not seen on the occasion of his investigations in M. Masseron’s company. These consisted of a rope-ladder, a coil of lead pipes, apparently gas-pipes, and a small soldering-lamp.

“This all seems devilish odd,” he said to himself. “How did the things get in here? Did Siméon collect them without any definite object, mechanically? Or am I to assume that Siméon is merely an instrument of the enemy’s? He used to know the enemy before he lost his reason; and he may be under his influence at present.”

Siméon was sitting at the window, with his back to the room. Patrice went up to him and gave a start. In his hands the old man held a funeral-wreath made of black and white beads. It bore a date, “14 April, 1915,” and made the twentieth, the one which Siméon was preparing to lay on the grave of his dead friends.

“He will lay it there,” said Patrice, aloud. “His instinct as an avenging friend, which has guided his steps through life, continues in spite of his insanity. He will lay it on the grave. That’s so, Siméon, isn’t it: you will take it there tomorrow? For tomorrow is the fourteenth of April, the sacred anniversary.⁠ ⁠…”

He leant over the incomprehensible being who held the key to all the plots and counterplots, to all the treachery and benevolence that constituted the inextricable drama. Siméon thought that Patrice wanted to take the wreath from him and pressed it to his chest with a startled gesture.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Patrice. “You can keep it. Tomorrow, Siméon, tomorrow, Coralie and I will be faithful to the appointment which you gave us. And tomorrow perhaps the memory of the horrible past will unseal your brain.”

The day seemed long to Patrice, who was eager for something that would provide a glimmer in the surrounding darkness. And now this glimmer seemed about to be kindled by the arrival of this twentieth anniversary of the fourteenth of April.

At a late hour in the afternoon M. Masseron called at the Rue Raynouard.

“Look what I’ve just received,” he said to Patrice. “It’s rather curious: an anonymous letter in a disguised hand. Listen:

“ ‘Sir, be warned. They’re going away. Take care. Tomorrow evening the 1800 bags will be on their way out of the country.

A Friend of France.’ ”

“And tomorrow is the fourteenth of April,” said Patrice, at once connecting the two trains of thought in his mind.

“Yes. What makes you say that?”

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Something that just occurred to me.⁠ ⁠…”

He was nearly telling M. Masseron all the facts associated with the fourteenth of April and all those concerning the strange personality of old Siméon. If he did not speak, it was for obscure reasons, perhaps because he wished to work out this part of the case alone, perhaps also because of a sort of shyness which prevented him from admitting M. Masseron into all the secrets of the past. He said nothing about it, therefore, and asked:

“What do you think of the letter?”

“Upon my word, I don’t know what to think. It may be a warning with something to back it, or it may be a trick to make us adopt one course of conduct rather than another. I’ll talk about it to Bournef.”

“Nothing fresh on his side?”

“No; and I don’t expect anything in particular. The alibi which he has submitted is genuine. His friends and he are so many supers. Their parts are played.”

The coincidence of dates was all that stuck in Patrice’s mind. The two roads which M. Masseron and he were following suddenly met on this day so long since marked out by fate. The past and the present were about to unite. The catastrophe was at hand. The fourteenth of April was the day on which the gold was to disappear for good and also the day on which an unknown voice had summoned Patrice and Coralie to the same tryst which his father and her mother had kept twenty years ago.

And the next day was the fourteenth of April.

At nine o’clock in the morning Patrice asked after old Siméon.

“Gone out, sir. You had countermanded your orders.”

Patrice entered the room and looked for the wreath. It was not there. Moreover, the three things in the cupboard, the rope-ladder, the coil of lead and the glazier’s lamp, were not there either.

“Did Siméon take anything with him?”

“Yes, sir, a wreath.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, sir.”

The window was open. Patrice came to the conclusion that the things had gone by this way, thus confirming his theory that the old fellow was an unconscious confederate.

Shortly before ten o’clock Coralie joined him in the garden. Patrice had told her the latest events. She looked pale and anxious.

They went round the lawns and, without being seen, reached the clumps of dwarf shrubs which hid the door on the lane. Patrice opened the door. As he started to open the other his hand hesitated. He felt sorry that he had not told M. Masseron and that he and Coralie were performing by themselves a pilgrimage which certain signs warned him to be dangerous.