He helped her through it.
But when he had climbed through it himself, he no longer saw anyone.
“Clarice!” he cried. “Where are you?”
The wood lay in the darkness of a starless night. He heard a rustling among the undergrowth on his right. He plunged into it in pursuit and ran into tree-trunks and brushes that barred his way. He was compelled to return to the path.
“She flies from me,” he said to himself sadly. “When I was a prisoner, she risked everything to free me. Now that I am free, she does not want to set eyes on me again. My treachery, that monster Josephine, and the whole disgusting business have filled her with horror.”
As he regained the path, someone came tumbling over the wall. It was Beaumagnan, escaping in his turn. Then of a sudden reports of a revolver banged out from some quarter. Leonard had rushed to the gap and was firing at random into the wood. Ralph made haste to get out of range.
So, at about eleven o’clock at night, the three adversaries started from the same point to get to the Queen’s stone, more than thirty miles away. What were their different mean of getting there? Everything depended on that.
On the one side were Beaumagnan and Leonard, both of them well provided with confederates, and at the head of powerful organizations. Beaumagnan’s friends must be waiting for him; Leonard had but to get to Josephine; the spoil belonged to whichever was quickest. But Ralph was the youngest and most active. If he had not made the mistake of leaving his bicycle at Lillebonne, every chance would have been in his favor.
It must be admitted that he instantly abandoned his search for Clarice and that the pursuit of the treasure became his only care. Walking and running he covered the seven miles to Lillebonne in less than an hour. It was a little before midnight that he awoke the porter of his hotel, made a hasty meal. Then, having wrapped up two small dynamite cartridges in brown paper and thrust them into his pocket, he mounted his machine. Neatly rolled up and fastened below the handlebar was a canvas bag in which to bring away the spoil.
He made the following calculations: “From Lillebonne to Mesnil-sous-Jumièges is about twenty-five miles. I ought to be there before daybreak. The moment it is light I shall find the block of granite and blow it up with the dynamite. It is possible that Josephine or Beaumagnan may surprise me in the middle of the operation. In that case I go halves. All the worse for the third party.”
Having passed Caudebec-en-Caux, he followed along the rising ground the road which runs through the woods and meadows to the Seine. Just as on the day on which he had first made love to Josephine, the Nonchalante was there, looming large through the dim light. He saw that the window of the cabin which she occupied was lit up.
“She must be dressing,” he said to himself. “Her carriage will be coming for her. Perhaps Leonard has got to her and made her start sooner than she intended. Too late, my lady!”
He drove on the machine as hard as he could. But half an hour later, as he was riding down a steep hill, he felt his wheel meet some obstacle; and he flew over the handles, over a heap of stones by the road side, and came to a stop scratched and bruised, but with no bones broken, in a thick and thorny bush twenty feet down the hill.
Two men—he saw them dimly—came out of the bushes and hurried to his bicycle.
“It was him! It must have been him! The rope got the machine! I told you it would,” cried Oscar de Bennetot in a tone of great excitement.
“Yes. But where’s he got to?” growled Godfrey d’Etigues.
Ralph made haste to scramble up through the bushes to the top of the high embankment.
They heard him; but they could not see him. They rushed after him, cursing furiously. But they had little chance of finding him in that darkness.
Then Beaumagnan’s voice came faintly from below: “Don’t bother about him! We’ve no time to waste! Smash his machine! That puts him out of action.”
They made haste to obey. Ralph heard them go bustling down to the road. Then he heard them stamping on the wheels of his bicycle.
Then Beaumagnan said: “Come on! The horse has rested long enough. We’ve got to get there quickly. Confound this wound of mine. The bandage has shifted; I’m bleeding like a pig.”
Apparently they did as he bade them, for half a minute later there came a crunching of wheels and a carriage started and went down the hill at a good pace. Indomitable, Ralph took the canvas bag from the wreck of his bicycle, and set off after it at a steady trot.
He was furious. Nothing in the world would have induced him to abandon the struggle. It was no longer merely a matter of millions and millions which would make the rest of his life magnificent, his vanity was up in arms. Having solved the insoluble enigma, he must be the first to arrive at the goal. Not to be there, not to seize the treasure, to let someone else take it, would have been an intolerable humiliation to the day of his death.
So, indefatigable, he toiled on behind the carriage, and not so far behind it either, buoyed up by the thought that the enigma was not yet solved in its entirety, that his adversaries, like himself, had yet to find the actual place in which the block of granite stood; and in that darkness it was going to take time. While they were doing it, he might once more get the better of them.
Then Fortune relented and helped him. As he entered Jumièges he saw in front of him the wavering light of a lantern, heard the tinkle of a bell, and, where as his adversaries had gone
