“Solved? How?”
“Hang it all. Because the constellation of the Great Bear is formed of exactly seven principal stars! Seven! Always the number seven! Do you begin to see the connection? Or am I to point out to you once more that if the Arabs chose and if the astronomers since accepted that designation of ALCOR, it is because this quite small star which is scarcely visible serves as a test, do you understand, as a test? To demonstrate that a certain person has good eyesight because they can see it with the naked eye. ALCOR is what you must see, what you must look for, the hidden thing, the concealed treasure, the invisible block of stone into which one slips the precious stones. It is the strong box.”
Josephine, in a fever of excitement at the nearness of the great revelation, murmured: “I don’t understand.”
Ralph pulled forward a chair into a position between Leonard and the window which he had opened with the very distinct intention of escaping the moment it be came necessary, and sat down on it. As he spoke he was keeping a close watch on Leonard, who persistently kept his hand on the revolver in his pocket.
“Well, you’re going to understand,” he said. “It’s as clear as the day, as spring water! Look.”
He showed them the visiting card which he still held in his hand.
“Look. I’ve had this on me for weeks. From the beginning of our search I looked up in an atlas the exact position of the seven abbeys, of which I have written the names on this card. Here they are, all seven of them, in the different positions in which they stand in regard to one another. Therefore all I had to do just now, as soon as I knew the word, was to join the seven points by lines to reach this unexpected conclusion, Josephine, this marvellous, colossal, and yet very natural conclusion that the figure so formed exactly represents the Great Bear. Do you grasp this really astonishing truth? The seven abbeys of the Caux country, the seven primordial abbeys into which flowed the riches of Christian France, were placed in the same positions as the seven principal stars in the Great Bear. There is no mistake about this. You have only to take an atlas and join them by lines. It is the cabalistic design of the Great Bear.
“After that the truth at once became clear. At the very spot at which ALCOR is found in the Heavenly figure the block of stone will inevitably be found a little to the right below the abbey which corresponds to that star, that is to say a little to the right below the abbey of Jumièges, formerly the most powerful and richest of the abbeys of Normandy. It’s a mathematical certainty. The block of stone is there and nowhere else. Thereupon two facts stand out uncommonly clear, in fact they stare you in the face: firstly that a little to the southeast of Jumièges, scarcely a league away from it, there is, at the hamlet of Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, quite close to the Seine, the ruins of the Manor of Agnes Sorel, the mistress of King Charles VII; secondly that the abbey communicated with that manor by a subterranean passage of which you can still see the entrance. The conclusion is that the legendary block of stone is near the Manor of Agnes Sorel, on the bank of the Seine, and the inscription doubtless means that the mistress of the King, his Queen of Love, ran towards this block of stone, of the precious contents of which she was ignorant, and sat down on it to watch the royal barque glide down the old river of Normandy.
“Ad lapidem currebat olim regina.”
A common, deep silence united Ralph and Josephine. The veil was raised. The light of day swept away the darkness. Between them it appeared that all hatred had ceased. There was a truce to the implacable conflicts which divided them and nothing remained but an immense astonishment at having so penetrated the forbidden regions of the mysterious past that time and space defended against human curiosity.
Sitting near Josephine, his eyes fixed on the picture which he had drawn, Ralph continued in a low voice with a restrained exaltation:
“Yes, those monks were very imprudent to trust such a secret to the guard of so transparent a word. But what ingenious and charming poets they were! What a delightful thought to associate Heaven itself with their earthly belongings! Masters of contemplation, great astronomers like their Chaldean ancestors they drew their inspiration from on high; the courses of the stars guided their existence; and they called on the constellations themselves to watch over their treasures. Who knows if the situation of their seven abbeys was not chosen at the beginning of things to reproduce on the soil of Normandy the gigantic figure of the Great Bear? Who knows—”
The lyric effusion of Ralph was truly justified; but he could not bring it to its proper end. If he was distrusting Leonard, he had forgotten Josephine. Suddenly she struck him on the head with her life preserver.
It was indeed the last thing he was looking for, although he knew that these treacherous attacks were a habit of hers. Stunned, he doubled up on his chair, then fell on his knees, then rolled over and lay prone.
He murmured in a shaky voice: “It’s true, begad! I was no longer taboo.” Then with the guttersnipe’s chuckle which he doubtless inherited from his father, Theophrastus Lupin, he said again: “The damned jade! Not even respect for genius! You savage little beast, have you indeed a stone where your heart should be? … All the worse for you, Josephine. We would have shared the treasure. Now I’ll keep the lot of it.”
He lost consciousness.
XIII
The Strongbox of the Monks
It was but a passing paralysis such as
