i8 
LAND & WATER 
Ja,nuary ii, 191 7 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
[Translated by Alexander Teixeira de MattosI 
SvKOPSIS : Caftfain fatrice Bchal, a wounded French 
efficcr, prevents in a Paris street the abduction of a nurse 
'it'ho is knoivH to her patients as " Little Mother Coralie." 
Beival declares his love to Coralie only to be told by her 
that she is already married, and that he must take no further 
effort to retain her friendship. That night, after Coralie has 
left him, Beival has sent to him anonymously a box con- 
taining a rusty key, by means of which he gains access 
to a house, in uhich he finds five inen torturing another man, 
Essarcs, who turns out to he Coralie' s husband, obviously 
with a vieic to extracting information from him. Essarcs 
manages to gel hold of a revolver, with which he shools 
Colonel Faklii, one of the five men, dead. He buys off 
his other four assailatUs for a million francs apiece, xvith 
which they leave the house. The next day Beival, follow- 
ing Coralie to her house, finds that Essares, zcho had con- 
templated flight from Paris, has been brutally murdered. 
An examining, magistrate, after interviewing Coralie, calls 
Beival in and explains to him that Essares was 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 of the financier's death.- The only possible 
clue to the whereabouts of the gold is a paper found in 
Essares dead hand, -bearing the words, " Golden Triangle." 
Ya-Bon, Bclval's Senegalese servant, promises to call in 
Arsene Lupin to unravel the mystery, and Beival, -with 
seven, wounded and convalescent soldiers, takes up resid- 
ence in Essares house to protect Coralie from a mysterious 
threatened vengeance on her. The police search unavailingly 
for the place where the gold is concealed. 
CHAPTER IX {continued) 
C0R.\L1E'S mother was the daughter of a French 
consul at Salonika, where she married a very rich 
man of a certain age, called Coimt Odoiavitch, the 
liead of an ancient Serbiari family. He died a year 
after Coralie was bom. The widow and child were at that 
time in France, at this same house in the Rue Raynouard, 
which Count Odola\-itch had purchased through a young 
Eg^'ptian called Essares, his secretary and factotum. 
Coralie here spent three j^ears of her childhood. Then she 
suddenl\- lost her mother and was left alone in the world. 
Essares took her to Salonika, to a surviving sister of her 
grandfather the Consul, a woman many years younger than 
her brother. This Tady took charge of Coralie. Unfor- 
tunately, she fell under Essares' influence, signed papers and 
made her little grand-niece sign papers, until the child's 
whole fortune, administered by the Egyptian, gradually 
disappeared. 
At last, whon she was about seventeen, Coralie became 
the victim of an adventure which left the most hideous 
memory behinl, and which had a fatal effect on her life. 
She was kidnapped one morning by a band of Turks on the 
plains of Salonika, and spent a fortnight in the palace of the 
governor of the province, exposed t<i his desires. Essares 
released her. But the release was brought about in so 
fantastic a fashion that Coralie must have often wondered 
afterwards whether the Turk and the Egyptian were not in 
collusion. 
At any rate, sick in body and depressed in spirits, fearing 
a fresh assault upon her liberty and yielding to her aunt's 
wishes, a month later she married this Essares, who had 
already been paying her his addresses, and who now definitely 
assumed in her eyes the figure of a deliverer. It was a hope- 
less union, the horror of which tecame manifest to her on the 
very day on which it was cemented. Coralie was the wife 
of a man whom she hated and whoso love only grew with the 
hatred and contempt which she showed for it. 
Before the end of the year, they came and took up their 
residence at the house in the Rue RajTionard. Essares, 
who had long ago establislicd and was at that time managing 
the Salonika branch of tlie Franco-Oriental Bank, bought up 
almost all the shares of the liank itself, acquired the building 
in the Rue Laforette for tiic head oftice, became one of tlie 
financial magnates of Paris and received the title of Bey in 
Egypt. 
This was the storj' which Coralie told Patrice one day in 
the beautiful garden at Passy ; and, in this unhapp>- past 
which they explored together and compared with Patrice 
Belval's owti, neither he nor Coralie was able to discover a 
single point that was common to both. The two of them had 
lived in different parts of the world. Not one name evoked 
the same recollection in their minds. There was not a detail 
that enabled them to understand why each should possess a 
piece of the same amethyst bead nor wiiy their joint images 
should be contained in the same medallion-pendant ur stuck 
in the pages of the same album. 
'■ Failing everything else," said Patrice, " we can explain 
that the pendant found in the hand of Essarcs Bey was 
snatched by him from the unknown friend who was watching 
over us and whom he murdered. But what about the album 
which he wore in a pocket sewn inside h:'j vest ? " 
Neither attempted to answer the question. Then Patrice 
asked : 
" Tell me about Simeon." 
" Sim^-on has always lived here." 
" I'lven in your mother's time ? " 
" No, it was one or two years after my mother's death and 
after I went to Salonika that Essares put him to look after 
this property and keep it in good condition." 
" Was he Essares' secretary ? " 
" I never knew what his exact functions were. But he , 
was not Essares' secretary, nor his confidant either. They 
never talked together intimately. He came to see us two 
or three times at Salonika. I remember one of his visits. I 
was quite a child and I heard him speaking to Essares in a 
\-ery angry tone, apparently threatening him." 
'• With what ? " 
" I don't know. I know nothing at all about Simeon. He 
kept himself very much to himself and was nearly always in 
the garden, smoking his pipe, dreaming, tending the trees 
and flowers, sometimes M'ith the assistance of two or three 
gardeners whom lie would send for." 
" How did he behave to you ? " 
" Here again I can't give ^ny definite impression. We 
never talked ; and his occupations very seldom brought him 
into contact with me. Nevertheless I sometimes thought 
that his e3'es used to seek me, through their j'ellow spectacles, 
with a certain persistency and perhaps even a certain interest. 
Moreover, lately, he likecl going with me to the hospital ; and 
he woidd then, either there or on the way, show himself 
more attentive, more eager to please ... so much so 
that I have been wondering this last day or two. . . ." 
She hesitated for a moment, undecided whether to speak, 
and then continued : 
" Yes, it's a very vague notion . . . but, all the 
same. . . . Look here, there's one thing I forgot to tell 
you. Do you know why I joined the hospital in the Champs- 
Elysees, the hospital where you were lying wounded and ill ? 
It was because Simt^on took me there. He knew that I 
wanted to become a nurse and he suggested this hospital. . . 
And then, if you think, later on, the photograpli in the 
pendant, the one sliowing you in uniform and me as a nurse, 
can only have been taken at the hospital. Well, of the people 
here, in this house, no one except Simeon ever went there. 
You will also remember that he used to come to Salonika, 
where he saw me as a child and afterwards as a girl, and that 
there also he may have taken the snapshots in the albums. 
So that, if we allow that he had some coirespondent who on 
his side followed your footsteps in life, it would not be im- 
possible to believe that the unknown friend whom you assume 
to hn,ve intervened between us, the one who sent you the kej- 
of the garden. ..." 
" Was old Simeon ? " Patrice interrupted. " .The theory 
won't hold water." 
" Why not ? " 
" Because this friend is dead. The man who. as you say, 
sought to intervene between us, who sent me the key of the 
garden, who called me to the telepiione to tell me the truth, 
that man was murdered. There is not the least doubt about 
it. I heard the cries of a man wlio was being killed, dying cries, 
the cries which a man utters at the moment of death." 
You can never be sure." 
_" 1 .am, absolutely. There is no shadow of doubt in my 
mind. The man whom I call our unknown friend died before 
(Continued on. page' 10) 
