20 
LAND & WATER 
December 28, iq'Jy 
(Continued from page i8) 
ii.a.'jstrate. " It will be enough, I think, to show the captain 
this photugraph-album wliich I have found. Here you are 
Captain Belval." . , . 
And he handed Patrice a very slender album, covered in 
grey canvas and fastened with an india-rubber band. 
Patrice took it with a certain anxiety. But wliat he saw 
on opening it was so utterly unexpected that he gave an 
exclamation : 
" It's incredible ! " 
On the first page, held in place by their four corners, were 
two pliotographs : one, on the right, representing a smaU 
boy in an Eton jacket ; the other, on the left, representing 
a very little girl. There was an inscription under each. On 
the right : " Patrice, at ten." On the left : " Coralie, at 
tliree. " , , t rt 
Move 1 beyond expression. Patrice turned the leal. On 
Uie second page they appeared again, he at the age ot htteen, 
she at the age of eight. And he saw himself at nineteen and at 
twenty-three and at twenty-eiglit, always accompanied by 
Coralie, first as a little girt, then as a young giri, next as a 
woman. -1.1 t 
" This is incredible ! '■ he cried. " How is it possible :■ 
Here are portraits of myself which I have never seen, aiiiateur 
photograplis obviously, whicii trace my wide life, ^efes 
one when I was doing my military training ... Here 1 
am on iiorseback . . . Who can have ordered thee 
photographs ? And who can have collected them together 
witli yours, madame ? " . . 
>He fixed his eyes on Coralie, who evaded their questioning 
gaze and lowered her head as though the close connection 
between their two li\es, to which these pages bore witness, 
had shaken her to the very depths of her being. 
•• Who can have brought them together ? " he repeated. 
■ Do you know ? And wliere does tlie album come from ? 
M. Masseron supplied the answer : 
• It was the surgeon who found it. M. Essares wore a vest 
under his shirt, and the album was in an inner pocket, a 
pocket sewn inside the vest. The surgeon felt the boards 
tlirough it, when he was undressing M. Essares' body. 
»This time, Patrice and Coralie's eyes met. The thought 
that M. Essares had been collecting both their photographs 
during the past twenty years and that he wore them next 
to his breast, and that 'he had lived and died with them upon 
him. this thought amazed them so much that they did not 
even try to fathom its strange significance. 
" Are you sure of what you are saying, sir ? " asked Patrice. 
" I was there," said M. Masseron. " I was present at the 
discovery. Besides, I myself made another whch confirms 
this one and completes it in a really surprising fashion. I 
found a pendant, cut out of a solid block of amethyst and held 
in a setting of filigree- work." 
•' What's that ? " cried Captain Belval. " What's that ? 
.\ pendant ? An amethyst pendartt ? " 
" Look for yourself, su-," suggested the magistrate, alter 
once more consulting Mme. Essares with a glance. 
And he handed Captain Belval an amethyst pendant, 
larger than the ball formed by joining the two halves which 
Coralie and Patrice possessed, she on her rosiry and he on his 
bunch of seals ; and this new ball was encircled with a specimen 
of gold filigree work exactly like that on the rosary and on 
the seal. 
The setting served as a clasp. 
•■ Am I to open it ? " he asked. 
Coralie nodded. He opened the pendant. The inside 
was divided by a movable glass disk, which separated two 
miniature photographs, one of Coralie as a nurse, the other 
of himself, wounded, in an officer's uniform. 
Patrice reflected, with pale cheeks. Presently he asked : 
' And where does this pendant come from .' Did you find 
it, sir ? " . 
" Yes, Captain Belval." 
"Where?" . , 
The magistrate seemed to hesitate. Coralie's attitude 
gave Patrice the impression that she was unaware of this 
detail. M. Masseron at last said : 
' I found it in the dead man's hand." 
■• In the dead man's hand ? In M. Essares' hand ? " 
i'atrice had given a start as though under an unexpected 
blow, and was now leaning over the magistrate, greedily 
awaiting a reply which he wanted to hear for the second 
time before accepting it as certain. 
• Yes, in his hand. I had to force back the claspeJ fingers 
in order to release it." 
Belval stood up and, striking the table with his fist, ex- 
cl. im3d : " . 
\Vh11, sir, I will tell you one thing wlncli I was keep:ng 
back as a last argument to prove to you that my collaboration 
r, of use ; and this thing becomes of great importance after 
what we have just learnt. Sir. this morning som-^ one asko I 
to speak to me on the telephone ; and I haa hardly answered 
the call when this person, who seemed greatly exciteJ, was 
the victim of a murderous assault, committed in my hearing. 
And amid the sound of the s.u le and the cries of agony. 
I caught the following words, which the unhappy man insisted 
on trying to get to me as so many last instructions : " Pat- 
rice !. . . Coralie! . . . The amethyst pendant- 
Yes, I have it on me . . • The pendant . 
Ah, it's too late ! . . . I should so much have liked 
Patrice . . . Coralie . . •" There's what I 
heard, sir, and here are the two facts which we cannot escape. 
This morning, at nineteen minutes past .seven, a man was 
murdered having upon him an amethyst pendant. This is 
the first undeniable fact. A few hours later, at twenty-three 
minutes past twelve, this same amethyst pendant is dis- 
covered clutched in the hand of another man. This is the 
second undeniable fact. Place these facts side by side and 
you are bound to come to the conclusion that the first murder, 
the one of which I caught the distant echo, was committed 
here, in this house, in the same library which, since yesterday 
evening, witnessed the end of every scene in the tragi>dy 
which we are contemplating. " 
This revelation which, in reality amounted to a fresh accusa- 
tion against Essares, seemed to affect the magistrate pro- 
foundly. Patrice had flung himself into the discussion with 
passionate vehemence and a logical reasoning which it was 
impossible to disregard without evident insincerity. 
Coralie had turned aside slightly and Patrice could not 
see her face ; but he suspjcted her dismay in the presence of 
all this infamy and shame. 
J^. Masseron raised an objection : 
'• Two undeniable facts, you say, Captain Belval ? As to the 
first point, let me remark that we have not found the body 
of the man who is supposed to have been murdered at nineteen 
minutes past seven this morning."^ 
" It will be found in due course." 
" Very well. Second paint : as regards the amethyst 
pendant discovered in Essares Bey's hand, how can we tell 
that Essares Bey found it in the murdered man's hand and 
not somewhere else .' For, after all, we do not know if he 
was at home at that time and still less if he was in his library." 
" But I do know." 
" How ? " ^ 
" I telephoned to him a few minutes later and he answered. 
More than that, to sweep away any trace of doubt, hetold me 
that he had rung me up but that he had been cut off." 
M. Masseron thought for a moment and then said : 
" Did he go out this morning ? " 
" Ask Mme. Essares." 
Without turning round, manifestly wishing to avoid Belval s 
eyes, Coralie answered : 
" I don't think that he went out. The suit he was we ring 
at the time of his death was an indoor suit." 
" Did vou see him after last night ? " 
" He came and knocked at my room three times this 
morning, between seven and nine o'clock. I did not open the 
door. At about eleven o'clock, I started off alone ; I heard 
him call old Sim^'on and tell li m to go with me. Sinu'on 
caught me up in the street. That is all I know." 
A prolonged silence ensued. Each of the three was 
meditating upon this strange series of adventures. In' the 
end, M. Masseron, who had realized that a man of Captain 
Belval's stamp was not the sort to be easily thrust aside, spoke 
in the note of one who, before coming to terms, wishes to know 
exactlv what his adversary's last word is likely to be : 
" Let us come to the point, captain. You are building up 
a theory which strikes me tts very vague. What is it pre- 
cisely ? And what are you proposing to do if I decline to 
accept it ? I have asked you two very plain questions. 
Do you mind answering them ? " 
"I will answer them, sir, as plainly as you put them." 
He went up to the magistrate and said : 
" Here, sir, is the fiekl of battle and of attack— yes, of 
attack, if need be— which I select. A man who used to know 
me, who knew Mme. Essares as a child and who was interested 
in both of us, a man who used to collect our portraits at 
different ages, who had reasons for loving us unknown to me, 
who sent me the key of that garden and who was making 
arrangements to bring us together for a purpose whi h he 
would have told us, this man was murdered at the moment 
when he was about to execute his plan. Now everything 
tells me that he was murdered by M. Essares. I am therefore 
resolved to lodge an information, whatever the results of my 
action may be. And believe me, sir, my charge will not be 
hushed up. There are always means of making one's self 
heard. . . . even if I am reduced to shouting the truth 
from the house-top.s." 
.M. Masseron burst out laughing : 
" By Jove, captain, but you're letting yourself go '. " 
.{Continued on pa%e 22) 
