“The dolmen of the queen, or something of that kind, they told me it was called,” said Ralph. “You ought to know that object of interest, Monsieur le curé?”
“Of course I do, monsieur,” said the priest. “I’m pretty sure that it must be what we call Agnes Sorel’s stone.”
“It’s at Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, isn’t it?” asked Ralph.
“That’s where it is, about two and a half miles away. But it’s hardly an object of interest—just a group of small rocks emerging from a mound, the tallest of which is three or four feet above the Seine.”
“It’s on common land, isn’t it?” said Ralph.
“It was a few years ago, but the Commune sold it to one of my parishioners, a M. Simon Thuilard who wished to extend his meadow-land.”
Immensely pleased, Ralph took his leave of the priest, provided with minute directions for finding the stone. They enabled him to avoid the big village of Jumièges, plunge into the network of winding roads which lead to Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, with the result that he got ahead of his adversaries.
“If they haven’t taken the precaution to provide themselves with a guide, they’re certain to miss their way,” he said to himself. “It is impossible to take a carriage straight, such a dark night as this. And then how are they to pick the right road? Where are they to look for the stone? Beaumagnan is exhausted and Godfrey d’Etigues is hardly intelligent enough to find it by himself. I fancy I win this hand.”
At a few minutes to three, he crossed the fence which ran round the property of Simon Thuilard.
A couple of matches showed him the path across the meadow. At the end of it he came to an embankment, which seemed to him of recent construction, along the side of the river. He arrived at the right end of it and moved down it to the left. Then, not wishing to use up all his matches, he waited for the dawn.
Already there was a strip of gray sky along the edge of the Eastern horizon.
He waited, full of a pleasant emotion which wreathed his lips with a smile. The block of granite was near him, not many feet away. For centuries, at this very hour of the night perhaps, the monks had come furtively to this very spot on the broad earth to bury their treasure. One by one, priors and treasurers had come by the subterranean passage which led from the abbey to the Manor. Others doubtless had come in boats along the old river of Normandy which ran through Paris and ran through Rouen, the waves of which broke against the estates of three of the seven sacred abbeys.
And now he, Ralph d’Andresy, was a sharer of the great secret. He was the heir of the thousands and thousands of monks who had worked in those distant ages, sown throughout the length and breadth of France and gathered in their harvest without a pause. What a miracle! To have at his age such a dream come true! To be an equal of the most powerful and to rule among the lords of the world!
In the paling heaven the Great Bear was fading. You divined, rather than saw, the luminous point of Alcor, the cabalistic star which, in the vast expanse of the Heavens, corresponded to the little block of granite on which Ralph was about to lay the hand of the conqueror. The stream babbled against the bank in quiet little waves. The surface of the river rose out of the darkness in shining patches of light.
He walked along the embankment. He began to discern the contours and colors of things. A solemn instant! His heart was beating quickly. Then of a sudden thirty yards away he saw a mound of ground which scarcely rose above the level of the meadow, and in which, among the grass which covered it rose some points of gray rock.
“It’s there!” he murmured, moved to the very depths of his being. “It’s there! I have reached the goal!”
His hands were fumbling with the dynamite cartridges in his pocket and his eyes were seeking wildly the higher stone of which that priest of Jumièges had spoken. Was it this one, or that? A few seconds would be enough for him to introduce the cartridge into the cracks which earth and plants choked. Three minutes later he would be heaping the diamonds and rubies into the bag which he took from his knapsack. If there remained a few crumbs among the débris all the better for his enemies.
He walked forward and the nearer he came to it the more the mound took on an appearance which did not at all conform to what he expected. There was no higher stone. … There was no block which, in days gone by, would have afforded to her whom they called the Lady of Beauty, a seat from which to look for the arrival of the royal barque round the corner of the reach of the river. Nothing rose above the mound—on the contrary its top was level. What had happened? Had some sudden rush of the river, or some storm lately changed a spot which the storms of ages had respected? or had—
In two bounds Ralph crossed the ten paces which separated him from the mound.
An oath burst from his lips. The horrible truth was clear to his eyes. The center of the mound had been disembowled. The block of granite, the legendary block was indeed there, but smashed asunder into fragments, its débris
