The Golden Triangle Part 39

"Opening on the terrace?"

"Yes."

"Then that's clear. The bags used to come in by the first and go out by the second."

"But . . ."

"There's no but about it, captain: how else would you have it happen?

You see, the mistake people always make is to go looking for difficulties where there are none."

They returned to the terrace. Don Luis took up his position near the ventilator and inspected the ground immediately around. It did not take long. Four yards away, outside the windows of the library, was the basin with the statue of a child spouting a jet of water through a sh.e.l.l.

Don Luis went up, examined the basin and, leaning forwards, reached the little statue, which he turned upon its axis from right to left. At the same time the pedestal described a quarter of a circle.

"That's it," he said, drawing himself up again.

"What?"

"The basin will empty itself."

He was right. The water sank very quickly and the bottom of the fountain appeared.

Don Luis stepped into it and squatted on his haunches. The inner wall was lined with a marble mosaic composing a wide red-and-white fretwork pattern. In the middle of one of the frets was a ring, which Don Luis lifted and pulled. All that portion of the wall which formed the pattern yielded to his effort and came down, leaving an opening of about twelve inches by ten.

"That's where the bags of gold went," said Don Luis. "It was the second stage. They were despatched in the same manner, on a hook sliding along a wire. Look, here is the wire, in this groove at the top."

"By Jove!" cried Captain Belval. "But you've unraveled this in a masterly fas.h.i.+on! What about the wire? Can't we follow it?"

"No, but it will serve our purpose if we know where it finishes. I say, captain, go to the end of the garden, by the wall, taking a line at right angles to the house. When you get there, cut off a branch of a tree, rather high up. Oh, I was forgetting! I shall have to go out by the lane. Have you the key of the door? Give it me, please."

Patrice handed him the key and then went down to the wall beside the quay.

"A little farther to the right," Don Luis instructed him. "A little more still. That's better. Now wait."

He left the garden by the lane, reached the quay and called out from the other side of the wall:

"Are you there, captain?"

"Yes."

"Fix your branch so that I can see it from here. Capital."

Patrice now joined Don Luis, who was crossing the road. All the way down the Seine are wharves, built on the bank of the river and used for loading and unloading vessels. Barges put in alongside, discharge their cargoes, take in fresh ones and often lie moored one next to the other.

At the spot where Don Luis and Patrice descended by a flight of steps there was a series of yards, one of which, the one which they reached first, appeared to be abandoned, no doubt since the war. It contained, amid a quant.i.ty of useless materials, several heaps of bricks and building-stones, a hut with broken windows and the lower part of a steam-crane. A placard swinging from a post bore the inscription:

BERTHOU WHARFINGER & BUILDER.

Don Luis walked along the foot of the embankment, ten or twelve feet high, above which the quay was suspended like a terrace. Half of it was occupied by a heap of sand; and they saw in the wall the bars of an iron grating, the lower half of which was hidden by the sand-heap sh.o.r.ed up with planks.

Don Luis cleared the grating and said, jestingly:

"Have you noticed that the doors are never locked in this adventure?

Let's hope that it's the same with this one."

His theory was confirmed, somewhat to his own surprise, and they entered one of those recesses where workmen put away their tools.

"So far, nothing out of the common," said Don Luis, switching on an electric torch. "Buckets, pick-axes, wheelbarrows, a ladder. . . . Ah!

Ah! Just as I expected: rails, a complete set of light rails! . . . Lend me a hand, captain. Let's clear out the back. Good, that's done it."

Level with the ground and opposite the grating was a rectangular opening exactly similar to the one in the basin. The wire was visible above, with a number of hooks hanging from it.

"So this is where the bags arrived," Don Luis explained. "They dropped, so to speak, into one of the two little trollies which you see over there, in the corner. The rails were laid across the bank, of course at night; and the trollies were pushed to a barge into which they tipped their contents."

"So that . . . ?"

"So that the French gold went this way . . . anywhere you like . . .

somewhere abroad."

"And you think that the last eighteen hundred bags have also been despatched?"

"I fear so."

"Then we are too late?"

Don Luis reflected for a while without answering. Patrice, though disappointed by a development which he had not foreseen, remained amazed at the extraordinary skill with which his companion, in so short a time, had succeeded in unraveling a portion of the tangled skein.

"It's an absolute miracle," he said, at last. "How on earth did you do it?"

Without a word, Don Luis took from his pocket the book which Patrice had seen lying on his knees, _The Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin_, and motioned to him to read some lines which he indicated with his finger.

They were written towards the end of the reign of Louis XVI and ran:

"We go daily to the village of Pa.s.sy adjoining my home, where you take the waters in a beautiful garden.

Streams and waterfalls pour down on all sides, this way and that, in artfully leveled beds. I am known to like skilful mechanism, so I have been shown the basin where the waters of all the rivulets meet and mingle.

There stands a little marble figure in the midst; and the weight of water is strong enough to turn it a quarter circle to the left and then pour down straight to the Seine by a conduit, which opens in the ground of the basin."

Patrice closed the book; and Don Luis went on to explain:

"Things have changed since, no doubt, thanks to the energies of Essares Bey. The water escapes some other way now; and the aqueduct was used to drain off the gold. Besides, the bed of the river has narrowed. Quays have been built, with a system of ca.n.a.ls underneath them. You see, captain, all this was easy enough to discover, once I had the book to tell me. _Doctus c.u.m libro._"

"Yes, but, even so, you had to read the book."

"A pure accident. I unearthed it in Simeon's room and put it in my pocket, because I was curious to know why he was reading it."

"Why, that's just how he must have discovered Essares Bey's secret!"

cried Patrice. "He didn't know the secret. He found the book among his employer's papers and got up his facts that way. What do you think?

Don't you agree? You seem not to share my opinion. Have you some other view?"

Don Luis did not reply. He stood looking at the river. Beside the wharves, at a slight distance from the yard, a barge lay moored, with apparently no one on her. But a slender thread of smoke now began to rise from a pipe that stood out above the deck.