November 30, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
19 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
[Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos 1 
Synopsis : Captain Patrice Belval, a wounded French 
•offico, overhears in a restaurant in Paris the details of a 
plot between two men for the abduction of a nurse who is 
known to her patients as " Little Mother Coralie." Belval 
gathers together seven wounded soldiers in the Rue Pierre 
Charron, and defeats the plan of the abductors, who try 
to get Little Mother Coralie away in a taxicab. Belval 
lakes Coralie to his house, whither one of his seven men 
brings one of the abductors, who, before he can be questioned, 
IS strangled by his confederates in 'the room in which he 
has been confined. Belval, feeling that the fact of having 
been maimed in the service of his country is an honour 
rather than a disability, declares his love to Coralie, only 
to be told by her that she is already married, and that he 
must make no further effort even to retain her friendship 
— she suggests that there might b?- danger for him in a friend- 
ship with herself. That night, after Coralie has left him. 
Belval has sent to him anonymously a box containing 
a large rusty key, and later he sees in the sky a rain of 
sparks, which had b:cn mentioned by Coralie's would b: 
■abductors as a signal possessing mysterious significance. 
CHAPTER III 
The Rusty Key 
WHEN Patrice Belval was eight years old, he was 
sent from Paris, where he had lived till tjien, 
to a French boarding-school in London. Here he 
remained for ten years. At first he nsed to hear 
irom his father weekly. Then, one day, the head-master 
told him that he was an orphan, that provision had been 
made "for tlie cost of his education and that on his majority 
he would receive through an English solicitor his paternal 
inheritance, amounting to some eight thousand pounds. 
Two hundred thousand francs could never be enough for 
•a young man who soon proved himself to possess expensive 
tastes and who, when sent to Algeria to perform his military 
service, found means to run up twenty thousand francs' of 
debts before coming into his money. He therefore started 
by squandering his patrimony and, having done so, settled 
down to work. Endowed with an active temperament and 
an ingenious brain, possessing no special vocation, but capable 
of anything that calls for initiative and resolution, full of 
ideas, with both the will and the knowledge to carry out an 
enterprise, he inspired confidence in others, found capital 
as he needed it and started one venture after another, in- 
cluding electrical schemes, the purchase of rivers and water- 
falls,"'" the organisation of motor services in the colonies, 
of steamship lines and of mining companies. In a few years, 
he had floated a dozen of such enterprises, all of which suc- 
ceeded. ' 
The war came to him as a wonderful adventure. He flung 
himself into it with heart and soul. As a sergeant in a 
colonial regiment, he won his Ueutenant's stripes on the 
Mame. He was wounded in the calf on the 15th of Septem- 
ber, and had it amputated the same day. Two months 
after, by some mysterious wire pulling, cripple though he 
was, he began to go up as observer in the aeroplane of one 
of our best pilots. A shrapnel-shell put an end to the ex- 
ploits of both heroes on the loth of January. This time. 
Captain Belval, suffering from a serious wound in the head, 
was discharged and sent to the hospital in the Avenue des 
Champs-Elysees. About the same period, the lady whom 
he was to call Little Mother Coralie also entered the hospital, 
as a nurse. 
There he was trepanned. The operation was successful, 
but complications remained. He suffered a good deal of 
pain, though he never uttered a complaint and, in fact, with 
his own good humour kept up the spirits of his companions 
in misfortune, all of whom were devoted to him. He made 
them laugh, consoled them and stimulated them with his 
cheeriness and his constant happy manner of facing the worst 
positions. 
Not one of them is ever likely to forget the way in which 
he received a manufacturer who called to sell him a mechanical 
leg : 
" Aha, a mechanical leg ! And what for, sir ? To take in 
people, I suppose, so that they may not notice that I've 
lost a bit of mine ? Then you consider, sir, that it's a blemish 
to have your leg amputated, and that I, a French officer 
ought to hide it as a disgrace ? " 
" Not at all, captain. Still ..." 
" And what's the price of that apparatus of yours ? " 
" Five hundred francs." 
" Five hundred francs ! And you think me capable of 
spending five hundred francs on a mechanical leg, when there 
are a hundred thousand poor devils who have been wounded 
as I have and who will have to go on showing their wooden 
stumps ? 
The men sitting within hearing revelled with delight. 
Little Mother Coralie herself listened with a smile. And 
what would Patrice Belval not have given for a smile from 
Little Mother Coralie ? 
As he told her, he had fallen in love with her from the 
first, touched by her appealing beauty, her artless grace, 
her soft eyes, her gentle soul which seemed to bend over the 
patienfs and to fondle them like a soothing caress. From the 
very first, the charm of her stole into his being and at the 
same time compassed it about. Her voice gave him new 
life. She bewitched him with the glance of her eyes and with 
her fragrant presence. And yet, while yielding to the empire 
of his love, he had an immense craving to devote himself 
and to place his strength at the service of this delicate little 
creature, whom he felt to be surrounded with danger. 
And now events were proving that he was right, the danger 
was taking definite shape and he had had the happiness to 
snatch Coralie from the grasp of her enemies. He rejoiced 
at the result of the first battle, but could not look upon it 
as over. The attacks were bound to be repeated. And 
even now was he not entitled to ask himself if there was not 
some close connection between the plot prepared against 
Coralie that morning and the sort of signal given by the shower 
of sparks ? Did the two facts announced by the speakers 
at the restaurant not form part of the same suspicious 
machination ? 
The sparks continued to glitter in the distance. So far as 
Patrice Belval could judge, they came from the riverside, 
at some spot between two extreme points which might be 
the Trocadero on the left and the Gare de Passy on tlie 
right. 
" A mile or two at most, as the crow flies," he said to him- 
self. " Why not go there ? We'll soon see." 
A faint light filtered through the key-hole of a door on the 
second floor. It was Ya-Bon's room ; and the matron had 
told him that Ya-Bon .was playing cards with his sweetheait. 
He walked in. 
Ya-Bon was no longer playing. He had fallen asleep in an 
armchair, in front of the outspread cards, and on the pinned- 
back sleeVe hanging from his left shoulder lay the head of a 
woman, an appallingly common head, with lips as thick 
as Ya-Bon's, revealing a set of black teeth, and with a yellow, 
greasy skin that seemed soaked in oil. It was Angele, the 
kitchen-maid, Ya-Bon's sweetheart. She snored aloud. 
Patrice looked at them contentedly. The sight confirmed 
the truth of liis theories. If Ya-Bon could find some one to 
care for him, might not the most sadly mutilated heroe^; 
aspire likewise to all the joys of love ? 
He touched the Senegalese on the shoulder. Ya-Bon woke 
up and smiled, or rather, divining the presence of his captain 
smiled even before he woke. 
" I want you, Ya-Bon." 
Ya-Bon uttered a grunt -of pleasure and gave a push to 
Angele, who fell over on the table and went on snoring. 
Coming out of the house. Patrice saw no more sparks. 
They were hidden behind the trees. He walked along the 
boulevard and, to save time, went by the Ceinture railway 
to the Avenue Henri-Martin. Here he turned down the 
Rue de la Tour, which runs to Passy. 
On the way, he kept talking to Ya-Bon about what he 
had in his mind, though he well knew that the negro did 
not understand much of what he said. But this was a habit 
with him. Ya-Bon, first his comrade-in-arms and then 
his orderly, was as devoted to him as a dog. He had lost a 
limb on the same day as his officer and was wounded in the 
head on the same day ; he believed himself destined to under- 
go the same experiences throughout ; and he rejoiced at 
