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

“Attend to him! Quick, Saint-Quentin, cut his ropes. Goodness! He has fainted. Look here, Maître Delarue, you come to your senses. If not, I leave you.”

“Leave me!” cried the notary, suddenly waking up. “But you’ve no right! The enemy⁠—”

“The enemy has run away, Maître Delarue.”

“He may come back. These are terrible people. Look at the hole their chief made in my hat! The donkey finished by throwing me off, just at the entrance to the ruins. I took refuge in a tree and refused to come down. I didn’t stay there long. The ruffian knocked my hat off with a bullet.”

“Are you dead?”

“No. But I’m suffering from internal pains and bruises.”

“That will soon pass off, Maître Delarue. Tomorrow there won’t be anything left, I assure you. Saint-Quentin, I put Maître Delarue in your charge. And yours, too, Montfaucon. Rub him.”

She hurried off with the intention of joining her three friends, whose badly conducted expedition worried her. Starting out at random, without any plan of attack, they ran the risk once more of letting themselves be taken one by one.

Happily for them, the young men did not know the place where d’Estreicher’s boat was moored; and though the portion of the peninsula situated beyond the ruins was of no great extent, since they were at once hampered by masses of rock which formed veritable barriers, she found all three of them. Each of them had lost his way in the labyrinth of little paths, and each of them, without knowing it, was returning to the tower.

Dorothy, who had a finer sense of orientation, did not lose her way. She had a flair for the little paths which led nowhere, and instinctively chose those which led to her goal. Moreover she soon discovered footprints. It was the path followed regularly by the band in going to and fro between the ruins and the sea. It was no longer possible to go astray.

But at this point they heard cries which came from a point straight ahead of them. Then the path turned sharply and ran to the right. A pile of rocks had necessitated this change of direction, abrupt and rugged rocks. Nevertheless they scaled them to avoid making the apparently long detour.

Dario who was the most agile and leading, suddenly exclaimed:

“I see them! They’re all on the boat.⁠ ⁠… But what the devil are they doing?”

Webster joined him, revolver in hand:

“Yes, I see them too! Let’s run down.⁠ ⁠… We shall be nearer to them.”

Before them was the extremity of the plateau, on which the rocks stood, on a promontory, a hundred and twenty feet high, which commanded the beach. Two very high granite needles formed as it were the pillars of an open door, through which they saw the blue expanse of the ocean.

“Look out! Down with you!” commanded Dorothy, dropping full length on the ground.

The others flattened themselves against the rocky walls.

A hundred and fifty yards in front of them, on the deck of a large motor fishing-boat, there was a group of five men; and among them a woman was gesticulating. On seeing Dorothy and her friends, one of the men turned sharply, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. A splinter of granite flew from the wall near Errington.

“Halt there! Or I’ll shoot again!” cried the man who had fired.

Dorothy checked her companions.

“What are you going to do? The cliff is perpendicular. You don’t mean to jump into the empty air?”

“No, but we can get back to the road and go round,” Dario proposed.

“I forbid you to stir. It would be madness.”

Webster lost his temper:

“I’ve a revolver!”

“They have rifles, they have. Besides, you would get there too late. The drama would be over.”

“What drama?”

“Look.”

Dominated by her, they remained quiet, sheltered from the bullets. Below them developed, like a performance at which they were compelled to be present without taking part in it, what Dorothy had called the drama; and all at once they grasped its tragic horror.

The big boat was rocking beside a natural quay which formed the landing-place of a peaceful little creek. The woman and the five men were bending over an inert body which appeared to be bound with bands of red wool. The woman was apostrophizing this sixth individual, shaking her fists in his face, and heaping abuse on him, of which only a few words reached the ears of the young people.

“Thief!⁠ ⁠… Coward!⁠ ⁠… You refuse, do you?⁠ ⁠… You wait a minute!”

She gave some orders with regard to an operation, for which everything was ready, for the young people perceived, when the group of ruffians broke up, that the end of a long rope which ran over the mainyard, was round the prisoner’s neck. Two men caught hold of the other end of it.

The inert body was set on its feet. It stood upright for a few seconds, like a doll one is about to make dance. Then, gently, without a jerk, they drew it up a yard from the deck.

“D’Estreicher!” murmured one of the young men recognizing the Russian soldier’s cap.

Dorothy recalled with a shudder the prediction she had made to her enemy directly after their meeting at the Château de Roborey. She said in a low voice:

“Yes, d’Estreicher.”

“What do they want from him?”

“They want to get the diamonds from him.”

“But he hasn’t got them.”

“No. But they may believe he has them. I suspected that that was what they had in mind. I noticed the savage expression of their faces and the glances they exchanged as they left the ruins by d’Estreicher’s orders. They obeyed him in order to prepare the trap into which he has fallen.”

Below, the figure only remained suspended from the yard for an instant. They lowered the doll. Then they drew it up again twice; and the woman yelled:

“Will you speak?⁠ ⁠… The treasure you promised us?⁠ ⁠… What have you done with it?”

Beside Dorothy, Webster muttered:

“It isn’t possible! We can’t allow them to.⁠ ⁠…”

“What?” said Dorothy. “You wanted to kill him a little while ago.⁠ ⁠… Do you want to save him now?”

Webster