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

“An accident, then?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of accident?”

She pointed with her finger:

“Look here⁠—at the base of the forefinger.”

“What is there?”

“The gallows.”

There was an outburst of laughter. D’Estreicher was enchanted. Count Octave clapped his hands.

“Bravo, mademoiselle, the gallows for this old libertine; it must be that you have the gift of second sight. So I shall not hesitate.⁠ ⁠…”

He consulted his wife with a look of inquiry and continued:

“So I shall not hesitate to tell you.⁠ ⁠…”

“To tell me,” finished Dorothy mischievously, “the reasons for which you invited me to tea.”

The Count protested:

“Not at all, mademoiselle. We invited you to tea solely for the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you.”

“And perhaps a little from the desire to appeal to my skill as a sorceress.”

The Countess Octave interposed:

“Ah, well, yes, mademoiselle. Your final announcement excited our curiosity. Moreover, I will confess that we haven’t much belief in things of this kind and that it is rather out of curiosity that we should like to ask you certain questions.”

“If you have no faith in my poor skill, madame, we’ll let that pass, and all the same I’ll manage to gratify your curiosity.”

“By what means?”

“Merely by reflecting on your words.”

“What?” said the Countess. “No magnetic passes? No hypnotic sleep?”

“No, madame⁠—at least not for the present. Later on we’ll see.”

Only keeping Saint-Quentin with her, she told the children to go and play in the garden. Then she sat down and said:

“I’m listening, madame.”

“Just like that? Perfectly simply?”

“Perfectly simply.”

“Well, then, mademoiselle⁠—”

The Countess spoke in a tone the carelessness of which was not perhaps absolutely sincere.

“Well, then, mademoiselle, you spoke of forgotten dungeons and ancient stones and hidden treasures. Now, the Château de Roborey is several centuries old. It has undoubtedly been the scene of adventures and dramas; and it would amuse us to know whether any of its inhabitants have by any chance left in some out-of-way corner one of these fabulous treasures of which you spoke.”

Dorothy kept silent for some little time. Then she said:

“I always answer with all the greater precision if full confidence is placed in me. If there are any reservations, if the question is not put as it ought to be.⁠ ⁠…”

“What reservations? I assure you, mademoiselle⁠—”

The young girl broke in firmly:

“You asked me the question, madame, as if you were giving way to a sudden curiosity, which did not rest, so to speak, on any real base. Now you know as well as I do that excavations have been made in the château.”

“That’s very possible,” said Count Octave. “But if they were, it must have been dozens of years ago, in the time of my father or grandfather.”

“There are recent excavations,” Dorothy asserted.

“But we have only been living in the château a month!”

“It isn’t a matter of a month, but of some days⁠ ⁠… of some hours.⁠ ⁠…”

The Countess declared with animation:

“I assure you, mademoiselle, that we have not made researches of any kind.”

“Then the researches must have been made by someone else.”

“By whom? And under what conditions? And in what spot?”

There was another silence. Then Dorothy went on:

“You will excuse me, madame, if I have been going into matters which do not seem to be any business of mine. It’s one of my faults. Saint-Quentin often says to me: ‘Your craze for trespassing and ferreting about everywhere will lead people to say unpleasant things about you.’ But it happened that, on arriving here, since we had to wait for the hour of the performance, I took a walk. I wandered right and left, looking at things, and in the end I made a certain number of observations which, as it seemed to me, are of some importance. Thus.⁠ ⁠…”

The Count and Countess drew nearer in their eagerness to hear her. She went on:

“Thus, while I was admiring the beautiful old fountain in the court of honor, I was able to make sure that, all round it, holes have been dug under the marble basin which catches the water. Was the exploration profitable? I do not know. In any case, the earth has been put back into its place carefully, but not so well that one cannot see that the surface of the soil is raised.”

The Count and his guests looked at one another in astonishment.

One of them objected:

“Perhaps they’ve been repairing the basin⁠ ⁠… or been putting in a waste pipe?”

“No,” said the Countess in a tone of decision. “No one has touched that fountain. And, doubtless, mademoiselle, you discovered other traces of the same kind of work.”

“Yes,” said Dorothy. “Someone has been doing the same thing a little distance away⁠—under the rockery, the pedestal on which the sundial stands. They have been boring across that rockery. An iron rod has been broken. It’s there still.”

“But why?” cried the excited Countess. “Why these two spots rather than others? What are they searching for? What do they want? Have you any indication?”

They had not long to wait for her answer; and Dorothy delivered it slowly, as if to make it quite clear that here was the essential point of her inquiry:

“The motive of these investigations is engraved on the marble of the fountain. You can see it from here? Sirens surround a column surmounted by a capital. Isn’t it so? Well, on one of the faces of the capital are some letters⁠—almost effaced letters.”

“But we’ve never noticed them!” cried the Countess.

“They are there,” declared the young girl. “They are worn and hard to distinguish from the cracks in the marble. However, there is one word⁠—a whole word⁠—that one can reconstruct and read easily when once it has appeared to you.”

“What word?”

“The word fortuna.”

The three syllables came long-drawn-out in a silence of stupefaction. The Count repeated them in a hushed voice, staring at Dorothy, who went on:

“Yes; the word fortuna. And this word you find again also on the column of the sundial. Even yet more obliterated, to such a degree that one rather divines that it is there rather than actually reads it. But it certainly is there. Each letter is in its place. You cannot doubt it.”

The Count