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LAND & WATER 
January 4, 1917 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
[Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos) 
Symopsi? : Captain Patrice Belval, a wounded French 
officer, prevents in a Paris street the abduction of a nurse 
who is known to her patients as " Little Mother Coralie." 
Belval declares his love to Coralie only to be told by her 
that she is already married, and that he must make no further 
effort to retain her friendship. That night, after Coralie has 
left him, Belval has sent to him anonymously a box con- 
taining a large rusty key, by means of which he gains access 
to a house, in which he finds five men torturing another man, 
Essares, obviously with a view to extracting injormation 
from him. Essares manages to get hold of a revolver, with 
which he shoots Colonel Fakhi, one of the five men, dead. 
He buys off his other four assailants for a million francs 
apiece, with which they leave the house. From an altercation 
between Essares and Coralie Belval learns that Essares is 
Coralie's husband, and that he has betrayed State secrets 
to the enemies of his country, and then has attempted to 
betray his associates in treachery. The next day Belval, 
following Coralie to her house, finds that Essares, who had 
contemplated flight from Paris, has been brutally murdered. 
An examining magistrate, after interviewing Coralie, calls 
Belval in and explains to him that Essares ivas prime 
mover in a plot for exporting gold from France. In order 
to recover some 300 million francs which Essares had con- 
cealed, the authorities consider it necessary to hush up 
the circumstances 0/ the financier's death. This the magis- 
trate proceeds to explain to Belval, between whom and Coralie 
some mysterious links had been found at the time of Essares' 
death. 
I 
CHAPTER V I ir .{continued) 
FEEL certain that my own onqnirios will reveal 
a series of weak concessions and unworthy bargains 
on the part of several more or less important banks and 
.credit houses, transactions on which I do not wish 
to insist, but which it would be the gravest of blunders to 
publish. TJierefore, silence." The Magistrate said, 
" But is silence possible ? " Belval asked. 
" \Miy not ? " 
" Bless my soul, there are a good few corpses to be ex- 
plained away ! Colonel Fakhi's, for instance ? " 
" Suicide." 
" Mustapha's, which you will discovigr or which you have 
already discovered in the Galliera garden ? " 
" Found dead." 
•• Essares Bey's ? " 
" An accident." 
" So that all these manifestations of the same power will 
remain separated ? '.' 
" There is nothing to show the link that connects them." 
" Perhaps the public will think otherwise." 
" The public will think what we wish it to think. This 
is war-time." 
" The press will speak." 
" Tiic press will do nothing of the kind. We have the 
censorship." 
" But, if some fact or, rather, a fresh crime . . . ? " 
" Why should there be a fresh crime ? The matter is 
finished, at least on its active and dramatic side. The chief 
actors are dead. The curtain falls on the murder of Es.sares 
Bey. As for the supernumeraries, Bournef and the others, 
we shall have them stowed away in an internment camp before 
a week is past. We therefore find ourselves in the presence 
of a certain number of millions, with no owner, with no one 
who dares to claim them, on which France is entitled to lay 
hands. I shall devote my acti\'ity to securing tint money 
for the Republic." 
Patrice Belval shook his head : 
" Mnie! Essares remains, sir. We must not forget her hus- 
band's threats." 
" He is dead." 
" No matter, the threats are there. Old Simeon tells you 
so in a striking fashion." 
" He's half mad." 
" Exactly, his brain retains the impression of great and 
innninent danger. No, the struggle is not ended. Perhaps 
indeed it is only beginning." 
" Well, captain, are we not here ? Make it your business 
to protect and defend Mme. Essares by all the means in your 
power and by all those which 1 jilace at your disposal. Our 
collaboration will be interrupted, because my task lies here 
and because, if the battle — which you expect and I do not— 
takes place, it will be within the walls of this house and 
garden." 
" What makes you think that ? " 
" Some words which Mme. Essares overheard last night. 
The colonel repeated several times, ' The gold is here, Essares.' 
He added, ' For years past, your car brought to this house 
all that there was at your bank in the Kue Lafayette. Simeon, 
you and the chauffeur used to let the sacks down the last 
grating on the left. How you used to send it away I do not 
know. But of what was here on the day when the war broke 
out, of the seventeen or eighteen hundred bags which they 
were expecting out yonder, none has left your place. I sus- 
pected the trick ; and we kept watch night and day. TJie 
gold is here.' " 
" And have you no clue ? " 
" Not one. • Or this at most ; but I attach comparatively 
little value to it." 
He took a crumpled paper from his pocket, unfolded it 
and continued : 
" Besides the pendant, Essares Bey held in his hand this 
bit of blotted paper, on which you can see a few straggling 
hurriedly written words. The only ones that are more or 
less legible are these : ' Golden triangle.' What this golden 
triangle means, what it has to do with the case in hand, I 
can't for the present tell. The most that I am able to pre- 
sume is that, like the pendant, the scrap of paper was snatched 
by Essares Bey from the man who died at nineteen minutes 
past seven this morning and that, when he himself was 
killed at twenty-three minutes past twelve, he was occupied 
in examiniYig it." 
" And then there is the album," said Patrice, making his 
last point. " You see how all the details are linked together. 
You may safely believe that it is all one case." 
" Very well," said M. Masseron. " One case in two parts. 
You, captain, had better follow up the second. I grant you 
that nothing could be stranger than this discovery of photo- 
graphs of Mme. Essares and yourself in the same album and 
in the same pendant. It sets a problem the solution of which 
will no doubt bring us very near t^e truth. We shall meet 
again soon. Captain Belval, I hope. And, once more, make 
use of me and of my inen." 
He shook Patrice by the hand. Patrice held him back. 
" I shall make use of you, sir, as you suggest. But is this 
not the time to take necessary precautions ? " 
" They are taken, captain. We are in occupation of the 
house." 
" Yes ... yes ... I know ; but, all the same 
. . . I have a sort of presentiment that the day will not 
end without . . . Remember old Simeon^s strange 
words . . ." 
M. Masseron began to laugh. 
"Come, Captain Belval, we mustn't exaggerate things. If 
any enemies remain for us to fight, they must stand in great 
need, for the moment, of taking council with themselves. 
We'll talk about this to-morrow, shall we, captain ? " 
He shook hands with Patrice again, bowed to Mme. Essares 
and left the room. 
Belval at first made a discreet movement to go out with 
him. He stopped at the door and walked back again. Mme. 
Essares who seemed not to hear him, sat motionless, bent in 
two, with her head turned away from him. 
" Cofalie," he said. 
She did not reply ; and he uttered her name a second time, 
hoping that again she might not answer, for her silence sud- 
denly appeared to him to be the one thing in the world for 
him to desire. That silence no longer impUed either constraint 
or rebellion. Coralie accepted the fact that he was there, 
by her side, as a helpful friend. And Patrice no longer 
thought of all the problems that harassed him, nor of the 
murders that had mounted up, one after another, around them, 
nor of the dangers that might still encompass them. 
He thought only of Coralie's yielding gentleness. 
" Don't answer, Coralie, don't say a word. It is for me to 
speak. 1 must tell you what you do not know, the reasons 
[Continued on t^ase in) 
