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

“ ‘Not a word,’ said they. ‘If you speak, we’ll squeeze your throttle. Where are the other nippers?’

“It occurred to me to say that they were down on the beach fishing among the rocks.

“ ‘It’s true, that, is it, old ’un?’ said they. ‘If you’re lying, you’re taking a great risk. Swear it.’

“ ‘I swear it.’

“ ‘And you too, nipper, answer. Where are your brothers and sisters?’

“I was terribly afraid, madam. The little boy was crying. But all the same he said, and well he knew it wasn’t true:

“ ‘They’re playing down below⁠—among the rocks.’

“Then they tied me up and said:

“ ‘You stay there. We’re coming back. And if we don’t find you here, look out, mother.’

“And off they went, taking the little boy with them. One of them had rolled him up in his jacket.”

Dorothy, very pale, was considering. She asked:

“And Saint-Quentin?”

“He came in about half an hour afterwards to look for Montfaucon. He ended by finding me. I told him the story: ‘Ah,’ said he, the tears in his eyes. ‘Whatever will mummy say?’ He wanted to cut my ropes. I refused. I was afraid the men would come back. Then he took down an old broken gun from above the chimneypiece, a chassepot which dates from the time of my dead father, without any cartridges, and went off with the two others.”

“But where was he going?” said Dorothy.

“Goodness, I don’t know. I gathered they were going along the seashore.”

“And how long ago is that?”

“A good hour at least.”

“A good hour,” murmured Dorothy.

This time the landlady did not refuse to have her bonds untied. As soon as she was free she said to Dorothy who wished to dispatch her to Périac in search of help:

“To Périac? Six miles! But, my poor lady, I haven’t the strength. The best thing you can do is to get there yourself as fast as your legs will carry you.”

Dorothy did not even consider this counsel. She was in a hurry to return to the ruins and there join battle with the enemy. She set off again at a run.

So the attack she had foreseen had indeed developed; but an hour earlier⁠—that is to say before the signal was given⁠—and the two men were forthwith posted on the path to the causeway with the mission to establish a barrage, then at the whistle to fall back on the scene of operations.

Only too well did Dorothy understand the motive of this kidnapping. In the battle they were fighting it was not only a matter of stealing the diamonds; there was another victory for which d’Estreicher was striving with quite as much intensity and ruthlessness. Now Montfaucon, in his hands, was the pledge of victory. Cost what it might, whatever happened, admitting even that the luck turned against him, Dorothy must surrender at discretion and bend the knee. To save Montfaucon from certain death it was beyond doubt that she would not recoil from any act, from any trial.

“Oh, the monster!” she murmured. “He is not mistaken. He holds me by what I hold dearest!”

Several times she noticed, across the path, groups of small pebbles arranged in circles, or cutoff twigs, which were to her so much information furnished by Saint-Quentin. From them she learnt that the children instead of keeping straight along the path to the gorge, had turned off to the left and gone round the marsh to the seashore so betaking themselves to the shelter of the rocks. But she paid no attention to this maneuver, for she could only think of the danger which threatened Montfaucon and had no other aim than to get to his kidnapers.

She took her way to the peninsula, mounted the gorge, where she met no one, and reached the plateau. As she did so she heard the sound of a second report. Someone had fired in the ruins. At whom? At Maître Delarue? At one of the three young men?

“Ah,” she said to herself anxiously. “Perhaps I ought never to have left them, those three friends of mine. All four of us together, we could have defended ourselves. Instead of that, we are far from one another, helpless.”

What astonished her when she had crossed the outer wall, was the infinite silence into which she seemed to herself to enter. The field of battle was not large⁠—a couple of miles long, at the most, and a few hundred yards across; and yet in this restricted space, in which perhaps nine or ten men were pitted against her, not a sound. Not a mutter of human speech. Nothing but the twittering of birds or the rustling of leaves, which fell gently, cautiously, as if things themselves were conspiring not to break the silence.

“It’s terrible,” murmured Dorothy. “What is the meaning of it? Am I to believe that all is over? Or rather that nothing has begun, that the adversaries are watching one another before coming to blows⁠—on the one side Errington, Webster, and Dario, on the other d’Estreicher and his confederates?”

She advanced quickly into the court of the clock. There she saw still, near the two tied-up horses, the donkey, eating the leaves of a shrub, his bridle dragging on the ground, his saddle quite straight on his back, his coat shining with sweat.

What has become of Maître Delarue? Had he been able to rejoin the group of the foreigners? Had his mount thrown him and delivered him into the power of the enemy?

Thus at every moment questions presented themselves which it was impossible to answer. The shadow was thickening.

Dorothy was not timid. During the war, in the ambulances in the first line, she had grown used more quickly than many men to the bursting of shells; and the hour of bombardment did not shake her nerves. But mistress of her nerves as she was, on the other hand, she was more susceptible than a man of less courage to the influence of everything unknown, of everything that is unseen and unheard. Her extreme sensitiveness gave her a keen sense of danger; and