“Nothing doing,” he said confidently. “I know all your tricks. You have failed. It’s all over.”
She shook her head and said fiercely: “I have other means.”
“What are they?” he asked contemptuously.
“That incalculable fortune—those riches I have won.”
“Thanks to whom?” he said lightly. “If ever there was a spark of real intelligence in that strange adventure, didn’t I supply it?”
“Perhaps. But it was I who knew how to act and to take. And that’s everything. As far as words went, you were never at a loss for them. But what was wanted was deeds; and those deeds I did. Because Clarice is alive and you are free, you shout: ‘Victory!’ But Clarice’s life and your liberty are but little things beside the great thing which was the stake for which we fought. That is to say the thousands and thousands of precious stones. The real battle was there; and I won it, for the treasure is mine.”
“Can one ever be quite sure?” said Ralph in a mocking tone.
“Yes: the treasure is mine. With my own hands I heaped the countless stones into a portmanteau, which was fastened and sealed before my eyes, which I carried to Havre, which I hid in the bottom of the hold of the Glowworm, and took away before I blew the vessel up. It is now in London in the strongroom of a bank, tied up and sealed as it was at the beginning.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Ralph readily. “The rope is unbroken, still tight in its place. There are five seals, the sealing-wax is violet, with the initials J. B.—Josephine Balsamo—on them. As for the trunk it’s of plaited wickerwork, with leather straps and handles—one of those simple things which attract no one’s attention—”
Josephine stared at him with frightened eyes and said: “You know? … How do you know?”
“We spent a few hours together, I and that trunk,” he said, laughing.
“Lies!” she cried. “You’re talking at random. The portmanteau did not leave me for a second between the meadow of Mesnil-sous-Jumièges and the strongroom in London.”
“Yes it did, since you let it down into the hold of the Glowworm.”
“I sat on the iron hatch which closed the hold and one of my men kept watch over the port through which you might have entered it, all the time we were in the roadstead at Havre,” she declared.
“I know that.”
“How can you know it?”
“I was in the hold.”
It was an alarming sentence! He repeated it and then, thoroughly enjoying his narrative he said to the stupefied Josephine: “In the face of the shattered block this was my reasoning: ‘If I hunt for my good Josephine, I shall not find her. What I’ve got to do is to guess the place where she will be at the end of the day, to get there before her, to be there when she arrives, and to avail myself of the first opportunity of scooping up the precious stones. For, with the police on your trail, hunted by me, eager to get the treasure into a safe place, it was inevitable that you must take to flight, that is to say, get away abroad. How? Why, by means of your vessel, the Glowworm.
“At noon I was at Havre; at one o’clock the three members of the crew who were on board went off, to drink their coffee at a bar. I slipped across the gang way into the hold and hid myself behind a heap of cases, barrels, and sacks of provisions. At six o’clock you arrived and let the portmanteau down by a rope, so putting it under my protection.”
“You lie! You lie!” stuttered Josephine in a furious voice.
He went quietly on: “At ten o’clock Leonard joined you. He had read the evening papers and learned about Beaumagnan’s suicide. At eleven o’clock you weighed anchor. At midnight, out at sea, a yacht met you. Leonard, who became Prince Lavosneff, presided over the disembarkation. The crew and the packages containing everything of value were transferred from the deck of one vessel to the deck of the other, in especial the portmanteau which you hauled up from the bottom of the hold. And then to hell with the Glowworm!
“I must admit that I spent some devilishly unpleasant minutes. I was alone. There was no longer any crew or helmsmen. The Glowworm seemed to be steered by a drunken man, holding himself up by her wheel. One would have said that she was a child’s toy which has been wound up and which goes round and round. And then I guessed your plan—the bomb in one of the cabins, the mechanism exploded it, the explosion.
“I was perspiring freely, I can tell you. Was I to throw myself into the sea? I had just made up my mind to do so, when, as I was untying my shoelaces, I nearly fainted with joy at the sight of a dinghy in the wake of the Glowworm fastened to her by a rope. It was my salvation. Ten minutes later sitting quietly in it, I saw a flame leap up in the darkness about three hundred yards away, and heard a roar roll across the sea like a peal of thunder. The Glowworm had blown up.
“The next night, after having been tossed about a bit, I came in sight of shore not far from Cape Antifer. I slipped into the water and swam to it, and that very day I came here—to get everything ready for your visit, my dear Josephine.”
She had listened to him without interrupting with an air of serenity. She had the air of saying: “Words again—nothing but words.” The essential thing was the portmanteau. Supposing that he had hidden himself on the vessel and afterwards escaped shipwreck. It was of no importance.
She hesitated however to ask a definite question. She knew very well that Ralph was not the kind of man to risk everything to obtain no other result than to save
