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

and his friends did not quite know what they wanted. But they refused to remain inactive any longer in presence of this heartrending spectacle. The cliff was perpendicular, but there were fissures and runlets of sand in it. Webster, seeing that the man with the rifle was no longer paying any attention to them, risked the descent. Dario and Errington followed him.

The attempt was vain. The gang had no intention of fighting. The woman started the motor. When the three young men set foot on the sand of the beach, the boat was moving out to sea, with the engine going full speed. The American vainly fired the seven shots in his revolver.

He was furious; and he said to Dorothy who got down to him:

“All the same⁠ ⁠… all the same we should have acted differently.⁠ ⁠… There goes a band of rogues, clearing off under our very eyes.”

“What can we do?” said Dorothy. “Isn’t the chief culprit punished? When they’re out to sea, they’ll search him again, and once certain that his pockets are really empty, that he knows the secret and will not reveal it, they’ll throw their chief into the sea, along with the false Marquis, whose corpse is actually at the bottom of the hold.”

“And that’s enough for you? The punishment of d’Estreicher?”

“Yes.”

“You hate him intensely then?”

“He murdered my father,” she said.

The young men bowed gravely. Then Dario resumed:

“But the others?⁠ ⁠…”

“Let them go and get hanged somewhere else! It’s much better for us. The band arrested and handed over to justice would have meant an inquiry, a trial, the whole adventure spread broadcast. Was that to our interest? The Marquis de Beaugreval advised us to settle our affairs among ourselves.”

Errington sighed:

“Our affairs are all settled. The secret of the diamonds is lost.”

Far away, northwards, towards Brittany, the boat was moving away.

That same evening, towards nine o’clock, after having entrusted Maître Delarue to the care of the widow Amoureux⁠—all he thought of was getting a good night’s rest and returning to his office as quickly as possible⁠—and after having enjoined on the widow absolute silence about the assault of which she had been the victim, Errington and Dario harnessed their horses to the caravan. Saint-Quentin led One-eyed Magpie behind it. They returned by the stony path up the gorge to the ruins of Roche-Périac. Dorothy and the children resumed possession of their lodging. The three young men installed themselves in the cells of the tower.

Next morning, early, Archibald Webster mounted his motorcycle. He did not return till noon.

“I’ve come from Sarzeau,” he said. “I have seen the monks of the abbey. I have bought from them the ruins of Roche-Périac.”

“Heavens!” cried Dorothy. “Do you mean to end your days here?”

“No; but Errington, Dario, and I wish to search in peace; and for peace there is no place like home.”

“Archibald Webster, you seem to be very rich; are you as firmly bent on finding the diamonds as all that?”

“I’m bent on this business of our ancestor Beaugreval ending as it ought to end, and that chance shouldn’t, some day or other, give those diamonds to someone, without any right to them, who happens to come along. Will you help us, Dorothy?”

“Goodness, no.”

“Hang it! Why not?”

“Because as far as I am concerned, the adventure came to an end with the punishment of the culprit.”

They looked downcast.

“Nevertheless you’re staying on?”

“Yes, I need rest and my four boys need it too. Twelve days here, leading the family life with you, will do us a world of good. On the twenty-fourth of July, in the morning, I’m off.”

“The date is fixed?”

“Yes.”

“For us, too?”

“Yes. I’m taking you with me.”

“And to where do we travel?”

“An old Manor in Vendée where, at the end of July, other descendants of the lord of Beaugreval will find themselves gathered together. I’m eager to introduce you to our cousins Davernoie and Chagny-Roborey. After that you will be at liberty to return here⁠ ⁠… to bury yourselves with the diamonds of Golconda.”

“Along with you, Dorothy?”

“Without me.”

“In that case,” said Webster, “I sell my ruins.”

For the three young men those few days were a continuous enchantment. During the morning they searched, without any kind of method be it said, and with an ardor that lessened all the more quickly because Dorothy did not take part in their investigations. Really they were only waiting for the moment when they would be with her again. They lunched together, near the caravan, which Dorothy had established under the shade of the big oak which commanded the avenue of trees.

A delightful meal, followed by an afternoon no less delightful, and by an evening which they would have willingly prolonged till the coming of dawn. Not a cloud in the sky spoilt the beautiful weather. Not a traveler tried to make his way into their domain or pass beyond the notice they had nailed to a branch: “Private property. Mantraps.”

They lived by themselves, with the four boys with whom they had become the warmest friends, and in whose games they took part, all seven of them in an ecstasy before her whom they called the wonderful Dorothy.

She charmed and dazzled them. Her presence of mind during the painful day of the 12th of July, her coolness in the chamber in the tower, her journey to the inn, her unyielding struggle against d’Estreicher, her courage, her gayety, were so many things that awoke in them an astounded admiration. She seemed to them the most natural and the most mysterious of creatures. For all that she lavished explanations on them and told them all about her childhood, her life as nurse, her life as showman, the events at the Château de Roborey and Hillocks Manor, they could not bring themselves to grasp the fact that she was at once the Princess of Argonne and circus-manager, that she was just that, manifestly as reserved as she was fanciful, manifestly the daughter of a grand seignior every whit as much as mountebank and ropedancer. But her delicate tenderness towards the four children