“The clock in my boudoir,” murmured the Countess.
“The hands point to a quarter of six. … The light of the lamp is directed to the other side of the room, on to a walnut cupboard with two doors. The man opens the two doors and reveals a safe.”
They were listening to Dorothy in a troubled silence, their faces twitching with emotion. How could anyone have failed to believe the whole of the vision the young girl was describing, seeing that she had never been over the château, never crossed the threshold of this boudoir, and that nevertheless she was describing things which must have been unknown to her.
Dumbfounded, the Countess exclaimed:
“The safe was unlocked! … I’m certain of it … I shut it after putting my jewels away … I can still hear the sound of the door banging!”
“Shut—yes. But the key there.”
“What does that matter? I have muddled up the letters of the combination.”
“Not so. The key turns.”
“Impossible!”
“The key turns. I see the three letters.”
“The three letters! You see them!”
“Clearly—an R, an O, and a B, that is to say the first three letters of the word Roborey. The safe is open. There’s a jewel-case inside it. The man’s hand gropes in it … and takes. …”
“What? What? What has he taken?”
“Two earrings.”
“Two sapphires, aren’t they? Two sapphires?”
“Yes, madame, two sapphires.”
Thoroughly upset and moving jerkily, the Countess went quickly out of the room, followed by her husband, and Raoul Davernoie. And Dorothy heard the Count say:
“If this is true, you’ll admit, Davernoie, that this instance of divination would be uncommonly strange.”
“Uncommonly strange indeed,” replied d’Estreicher who had gone as far as the door with them.
He shut the door on them and came back to the middle of the drawing-room with the manifest intention of speaking to the young girl.
Dorothy had removed the handkerchief from her eyes and was rubbing them like a person who has come out of the dark. The bearded nobleman and she looked at one another for a few moments. Then, after some hesitation, he took a couple of steps back towards the door. But once more he changed his mind and turning towards Dorothy, stroked his beard at length, and at last broke into a quiet, delighted chuckle.
Dorothy, who was never behindhand when it came to laughing, did as the bearded nobleman had done.
“You laugh?” said he.
“I laugh because you laugh. But I am ignorant of the reason of your gayety. May I learn it?”
“Certainly, mademoiselle. I laugh because I find all that very amusing.”
“What is very amusing?”
D’Estreicher came a few steps further into the room and replied:
“What is very amusing is to mix up into one and the same person the individual who was making an excavation under the slab of stone and this other individual who broke into the château last night and stole the jewels.”
“That is to say?” asked the young girl.
“That is to say, to be yet more precise, the idea of throwing beforehand the burden of robbery committed by M. Saint-Quentin—”
“Onto the back of M. d’Estreicher,” said Dorothy, ending his sentence for him.
The bearded nobleman made a wry face, but did not protest. He bowed and said:
“That’s it, exactly. We may just as well play with our cards on the table, mayn’t we? We’re neither of us people who have eyes for the purpose of not seeing. And if I saw a black silhouette slip out of a window last night. You, for your part, have seen—”
“A gentleman who received a stone slab on his head.”
“Exactly. And I repeat, it’s very ingenious of you to try to make them out to be one and the same person. Very ingenious … and very dangerous.”
“In what way is it dangerous?”
“In the sense that every attack provokes a counterattack.”
“I haven’t made any attack. But I wished to make it quite clear that I was ready to go to any lengths.”
“Even to the length of attributing the theft of this pair of earrings to me?”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh! Then I’d better lose no time proving that they’re in your hands.”
“Be quick about it.”
Once more he stopped short on the threshold of the door and said:
“Then we’re enemies?”
“We’re enemies.”
“Why? You’re quite unacquainted with me.”
“I don’t need to be acquainted with you to know who you are.”
“What? Who I am? I’m the Chevalier Maxime d’Estreicher.”
“Possibly. But you’re also the gentleman who, secretly and without his cousins’ knowledge, seeks … that which he has no right to seek. With what object if not to steal it?”
“And that’s your business?”
“Yes.”
“On what grounds?”
“It won’t be long before you learn.”
He made a movement—of anger or contempt? He controlled himself and mumbled:
“All the worse for you and all the worse for Saint-Quentin. Goodbye for the present.”
Without another word he bowed and went out.
It was an odd fact, but in this kind of brutal and violent duel, Dorothy had kept so cool that hardly had the door closed before, following her instincts of a street Arab, she indulged in a high kick and pirouetted half across the room. Then, satisfied with herself and the way things were going, she opened a glass-case, took from it a bottle of smelling-salts, and went to Saint-Quentin who was lying back in his easy chair.
“Smell it, old chap.”
He sniffed it, began to sneeze, and stuttered:
“We’re lost!”
“You’re a fine fellow, Saint-Quentin! Why do you think we’re lost?”
“He’s off to denounce us.”
“Undoubtedly he’s off to buck up the inquiries about us. But as for denouncing us, for telling what he saw this morning, he daren’t do it. If he does, I tell in my turn what I saw.”
“All the same, Dorothy, there was no point in telling them of the disappearance of the jewels.”
“They were bound to discover it sooner or later. The fact of having been the first to speak of it diverts suspicion.”
“Or turns it on to us, Dorothy.”
“In that case I accuse the bearded nobleman.”
“You need proofs.”
“I shall find them.”
“How you
