“When all is said, you only saw Otto that once.”
“Two hours later, after Elfride’s death and after the fireworks in the hollow oak, we had a second interview, under the Fairies’ Dolmen. Vorski was asleep, stupefied with drink, and Otto was mounting guard. You can imagine that I seized the opportunity to obtain particulars of the business and to complete my information about Vorski with the details which Otto for two years had been secretly collecting about a chief whom he detested. Then he unloaded Vorski’s and Conrad’s revolvers, or rather he removed the bullets, while leaving the cartridges. Then he handed me Vorski’s watch and notebook, as well as an empty locket and a photograph of Vorski’s mother which Otto had stolen from him some months before, things which helped me next day to play the wizard with the aforesaid Vorski in the crypt where he found me. That is how Otto and I collaborated.”
“Very well,” said Patrice, “but still you didn’t ask him to kill Vorski?”
“Certainly not.”
“In that case, how are we to know that …”
“Do you think that Vorski did not end by discovering our collaboration, which is one of the obvious causes of his defeat? And do you imagine that Master Otto did not foresee this contingency? You may be sure that there was no doubt of this: Vorski, once unfastened from his tree, would have made away with his accomplice, both from motives of revenge and in order to recover the sisters Archignat’s fifty thousand francs. Otto got the start of him. Vorski was there, helpless, lifeless, an easy prey. He struck him a blow. I will go farther and say that Otto, who is a coward, did not even strike him a blow. He will simply have left Vorski on his tree. And so the punishment is complete. Are you appeased now, my friends? Is your craving for justice satisfied?”
Patrice and Stéphane were silent, impressed by the terrible vision which Don Luis was conjuring up before their eyes.
“There,” he said, laughing, “I was right not to make you pronounce sentence over there, when we were standing at the foot of the oak, with the live man in front of us! I can see that my two judges might have flinched a little at that moment. And so would my third judge, eh, All’s Well, you sensitive, tearful fellow? And I am like you, my friends. We are not people who condemn and execute. But, all the same, think of what Vorski was, think of his thirty murders and his refinements of cruelty and congratulate me on having, in the last resort, chosen blind destiny as his judge and the loathsome Otto as his responsible executioner. The will of the gods be done!”
The Sarek coast was making a thinner line on the horizon. It disappeared in the mist in which sea and sky were merged.
The three men were silent. All three were thinking of the isle of the dead, laid waste by one man’s madness, the isle of the dead where soon some visitor would find the inexplicable traces of the tragedy, the entrances to the tunnels, the cells with their “death-chambers,” the hall of the God-Stone, the mortuary crypts, Elfride’s body, Conrad’s body, the skeletons of the sisters Archignat and, right at the end of the island, near the Fairies’ Dolmen, where the prophecy of the thirty coffins and the four crosses was written for all to read, Vorski’s great body, lonely and pitiable, mangled by the ravens and owls.
A villa near Arcachon, in the pretty village of Les Moulleaux, whose pine-trees run down to the shores of the gulf.
Véronique is sitting in the garden. A week’s rest and happiness have restored the colour to her comely face and assuaged all evil memories. She is looking with a smile at her son, who, standing a little way off, is listening to and questioning Don Luis Perenna. She also looks at Stéphane; and their eyes meet gently.
It is easy to see that the affection in which they both hold the boy is a link which unites them closely and which is strengthened by their secret thoughts and their unuttered feelings. Not once has Stéphane recalled the avowals which he made in the cell, under the Black Heath; but Véronique has not forgotten them; and the profound gratitude which she feels for the man who brought up her son is mingled with a special emotion and an agitation of which she unconsciously savours the charm.
That day, Don Luis, who, on the evening when the Crystal Stopper brought them all to the Villa des Moulleaux, had taken the train for Paris, arrived unexpectedly at lunchtime, accompanied by Patrice Belval; and during the hour that they have been sitting in their rocking-chairs in the garden, the boy, his face all pink with excitement, has never ceased to question his rescuer:
“And what did you do next? … But how did you know? … And what put you on the track of that?”
“My darling,” says Véronique, “aren’t you afraid of boring Don Luis?”
“No, madame,” replies Don Luis, rising, going up to Véronique and speaking in such a way that the boy cannot hear, “no, François is not boring me; and in fact I like answering his questions. But I confess that he perplexes me a little and that I am afraid of saying something awkward. Tell me, how much exactly does he know of the whole story?”
“As much as I know myself, except Vorski’s name, of course.”
“But does he know the part which Vorski played?”
“Yes, but with certain differences. He thinks that Vorski is an escaped prisoner who picked up the legend of Sarek and, in order to get hold of the God-Stone, proceeded to carry out the prophecy touching it. I have kept some of the lines of the prophecy from François.”
“And the part played by Elfride? Her hatred for you? The threats she made you?”
“Madwoman’s talk, I told François, of which I myself
