“Very well. I’ll go to Mantes.” And, turning to the chauffeur, “Hurry off to the garage,” he said, “and come back in the six-cylinder. I want to be at Mantes in less than an hour. You, captain …”
“I shall come with you.”
“And who will look after … ?”
“Coralie? She’s in no danger! Who can attack her now? Siméon has failed in his attempt and is thinking only of saving his own skin … and his bags of gold.”
“You insist, do you?”
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t know that you’re wise. However, that’s your affair. Let’s go. By the way, though, one precaution.” He raised his voice. “Ya-Bon!”
The Senegalese came hastening up. While Ya-Bon felt for Patrice all the affection of a faithful dog, he seemed to profess towards Don Luis something more nearly approaching religious devotion. The adventurer’s slightest action roused him to ecstasy. He never stopped laughing in the great chief’s presence.
“Ya-Bon, are you all right now? Is your wound healed? You don’t feel tired? Good. In that case, come with me.”
He led him to the quay, a short distance away from Berthou’s Wharf:
“At nine o’clock this evening,” he said, “you’re to be on guard here, on this bench. Bring your food and drink with you; and keep a particular lookout for anything that happens over there, down stream. Perhaps nothing will happen at all; but never mind: you’re not to move until I come back … unless … unless something does happen, in which case you will act accordingly.”
He paused and then continued:
“Above all, Ya-Bon, beware of Siméon. It was he who gave you that wound. If you catch sight of him, leap at his throat and bring him here. But mind you don’t kill him! No nonsense now. I don’t want you to hand me over a corpse, but a live man. Do you understand, Ya-Bon?”
Patrice began to feel uneasy:
“Do you fear anything from that side?” he asked. “Look here, it’s out of the question, as Siméon has gone …”
“Captain,” said Don Luis, “when a good general goes in pursuit of the enemy, that does not prevent him from consolidating his hold on the conquered ground and leaving garrisons in the fortresses. Berthou’s Wharf is evidently one of our adversary’s rallying-points. I’m keeping it under observation.”
Don Luis also took serious precautions with regard to Coralie. She was very much overstrained and needed rest and attention. They put her into the car and, after making a dash at full speed towards the center of Paris, so as to throw any spies off the scent, took her to the home on the Boulevard Maillot, where Patrice handed her over to the matron and recommended her to the doctor’s care. The staff received strict orders to admit no strangers to see her. She was to answer no letter, unless the letter was signed “Captain Patrice.”
At nine o’clock, the car sped down the Saint-Germain and Mantes road. Sitting inside with Don Luis, Patrice felt all the enthusiasm of victory and indulged freely in theories, every one of which possessed for him the value of an unimpeachable certainty. A few doubts lingered in his mind, however, points which remained obscure and on which he would have been glad to have Don Luis’ opinion.
“There are two things,” he said, “which I simply cannot understand. In the first place, who was the man murdered by Essarès, at nineteen minutes past seven in the morning, on the fourth of April? I heard his dying cries. Who was killed? And what became of the body?”
Don Luis was silent; and Patrice went on:
“The second point is stranger still. I mean Siméon’s behavior. Here’s a man who devotes his whole life to a single object, that of revenging his friend Belval’s murder and at the same time ensuring my happiness and Coralie’s. This is his one aim in life; and nothing can make him swerve from his obsession. And then, on the day when his enemy, Essarès Bey, is put out of the way, suddenly he turns round completely and persecutes Coralie and me, going to the length of using against us the horrible contrivance which Essarès Bey had employed so successfully against our parents! You really must admit that it’s an amazing change! Can it be the thought of the gold that has hypnotized him? Are his crimes to be explained by the huge treasure placed at his disposal on the day when he discovered the secret? Has a decent man transformed himself into a bandit to satisfy a sudden instinct? What do you think?”
Don Luis persisted in his silence. Patrice, who expected to see every riddle solved by the famous adventurer in a twinkling, felt peevish and surprised. He made a last attempt:
“And the golden triangle? Another mystery! For, after all, there’s not a trace of a triangle in anything we’ve seen! Where is this golden triangle? Have you any idea what it means?”
Don Luis allowed a moment to pass and then said:
“Captain, I have the most thorough liking for you and I take the liveliest interest in all that concerns you, but I confess that there is one problem which excludes all others and one object towards which all my efforts are now directed. That is the pursuit of the gold of which we have been robbed; and I don’t want this gold to escape us. I have succeeded on your side, but not yet on the other. You are both of you safe and sound, but I haven’t the eighteen hundred bags; and I want them, I want them.”
“You’ll have them, since we know where they are.”
“I shall have them,” said Don Luis, “when they lie spread before my eyes. Until then, I can tell you nothing.”
At Mantes the enquiries did not take long. They almost immediately had the satisfaction of learning that a traveler, whose description corresponded with old Siméon’s, had gone to the Hôtel des Trois-Empereurs and was now asleep in a room on the third floor.
Don Luis took a ground-floor room, while
