At last Bournef appeared to have made up his mind how to act. He went to his hat, the gray-felt hat lying near the door, turned back the lining and took from it a tiny coil the sight of which made Patrice start. It was a slender red cord, exactly like that which he had found round the neck of Mustapha Rovalaïof, the first accomplice captured by Ya-Bon.
Bournef unrolled the cord, took it by the two buckles, tested its strength across his knee and then, going back to Essarès, slipped it over his neck after first removing his gag.
“Essarès,” he said, with a calmness which was more impressive than the colonel’s violence and sneers, “Essarès, I shall not put you to any pain. Torture is a revolting process; and I shall not have recourse to it. You know what to do; I know what to do. A word on your side, an action on my side; and the thing is done. The word is the yes or no which you will now speak. The action which I shall accomplish in reply to your yes or no will mean either your release or else …”
He stopped for a second or two. Then he declared:
“Or else your death.”
The brief phrase was uttered very simply but with a firmness that gave it the full significance of an irrevocable sentence. It was clear that Essarès was faced with a catastrophe which he could no longer avoid save by submitting absolutely. In less than a minute, he would have spoken or he would be dead.
Once again Patrice fixed his eyes on Coralie, ready to interfere should he perceive in her any other feeling than one of passive terror. But her attitude did not change. She was therefore accepting the worst, it appeared, even though this meant her husband’s death; and Patrice held his hand accordingly.
“Are we all agreed?” Bournef asked, turning to his accomplices.
“Quite,” said one of them.
“Do you take your share of the responsibility?”
“We do.”
Bournef brought his hands together and crossed them, which had the result of knotting the cord round Essarès’ neck. Then he pulled slightly, so as to make the pressure felt, and asked, unemotionally:
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
There was a murmur of satisfaction. The accomplices heaved a breath; and Bournef nodded his head with an air of approval:
“Ah, so you accept! It was high time: I doubt if anyone was ever nearer death than you were, Essarès.” Retaining his hold of the cord, he continued, “Very well. You will speak. But I know you; and your answer surprises me, for I told the colonel that not even the certainty of death would make you confess your secret. Am I wrong?”
“No,” replied Essarès. “Neither death nor torture.”
“Then you have something different to propose?”
“Yes.”
“Something worth our while?”
“Yes. I suggested it to the colonel just now, when you were out of the room. But, though he was willing to betray you and go halves with me in the secret, he refused the other thing.”
“Why should I accept it?”
“Because you must take it or leave it and because you will understand what he did not.”
“It’s a compromise, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Money?”
“Yes.”
Bournef shrugged his shoulders:
“A few thousand-franc notes, I expect. And you imagine that Bournef and his friends will be such fools? … Come, Essarès, why do you want us to compromise? We know your secret almost entirely. …”
“You know what it is, but not how to use it. You don’t know how to get at it; and that’s just the point.”
“We shall discover it.”
“Never.”
“Yes, your death will make it easier for us.”
“My death? Thanks to the information lodged by the colonel, in a few hours you will be tracked down and most likely caught: in any case, you will be unable to pursue your search. Therefore you have hardly any choice. It’s the money which I’m offering you, or else … prison.”
“And, if we accept,” asked Bournef, to whom the argument seemed to appeal, “when shall we be paid?”
“At once.”
“Then the money is here?”
“Yes.”
“A contemptible sum, as I said before?”
“No, a much larger sum than you hope for; infinitely larger.”
“How much?”
“Four millions.”
V
Husband and Wife
The accomplices started, as though they had received an electric shock. Bournef darted forward:
“What did you say?”
“I said four millions, which means a million for each of you.”
“Look here! … Do you mean it? … Four millions? …”
“Four millions is what I said.”
The figure was so gigantic and the proposal so utterly unexpected that the accomplices had the same feeling which Patrice Belval on his side underwent. They suspected a trap; and Bournef could not help saying:
“The offer is more than we expected. … And I am wondering what induced you to make it.”
“Would you have been satisfied with less?”
“Yes,” said Bournef, candidly.
“Unfortunately, I can’t make it less. I have only one means of escaping death; and that is to open my safe for you. And my safe contains four bundles of a thousand banknotes each.”
Bournef could not get over his astonishment and became more and more suspicious.
“How do you know that, after taking the four millions, we shall not insist on more?”
“Insist on what? The secret of the site?”
“Yes.”
“Because you know that I would as soon die as tell it you. The four millions are the maximum. Do you want them or don’t you? I ask for no promise in return, no oath of any kind, for I am convinced that, when you have filled your pockets, you will have but one thought, to clear off, without handicapping yourselves with a murder which might prove your undoing.”
The argument was so unanswerable that Bournef ceased discussing and asked:
“Is the safe in this room?”
“Yes, between the first and second windows, behind my portrait.”
Bournef took down the picture and said:
“I see nothing.”
“It’s all right. The lines of the safe are marked by the moldings of the central panel. In the middle you will see what looks like a rose, not of wood but of iron; and there are four others at the
