January ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
21 
{Continued from page 20) 
columns of a small, open temple, rudely constructed of pebbles 
and unmortared building-stonos. 
Un:ler the dome of this little temple was a tombstone and, 
in front of it, an old wooden praying-chair, from the bars of 
which hung, on the left, an ivory crucifix and, on the right, 
a rosary composed of amethyst beads in a gold filigree setting. 
" Corahe, Coralie," whispered Patrice, in a voice trembling 
with emotion, " who can be buried here ? " 
They went nearer. There were bead wreaths laid in rows 
on the tombstone. They counted nineteen, each bearing the 
date of one of the last nineteen years. Pushing them aside, 
they read the following inscription in gilt letters worn and 
soiled by the rain : 
Here Lie 
Patrice and Coralib 
Both of whom were Murdered 
ON the 14TH OF April, 1895. 
Vengeance is Mine : I Will Repay. 
CHAPTER X 
The Red Cord 
CORALIE, feeling her legs give way beneath her, had 
flung htrself on the prie-dieu and there knelt piaying 
(tivently and wildly. She could not tell on whcse 
behall, for the repcse of what unknown sotl hei prayers 
were offered ; but her whole being was afire with fever 
and exaltation and the very action of praying seemed able 
to assuage her. 
" What was your mother's name, Coralie ? " Patrice whis- 
pered, 
" Louise," she replied. 
" And my father's name was Armand. It cannot be either of 
them, therefore; and yet . . ." 
Patrice also was displaying the greatest agitation. Stooping 
down, he examined the nineteen wreaths, renewed his inspection 
cf the tombstone and said : 
" All the same, Coralie, the coincidence is really too ex- 
traoidinary. My father died in 1895." 
" And rny mother died in that year too," she said, " though 
I do not know the exact date." 
"We shall find out, Coralie," he declared. "These things 
can all be verified. But meanwhile one truth becomes clear. 
The man who used to interlace the names of Patrice and Coralie 
was not thinking only of us and was not considering only the 
future. PerhajJS he even thought more of the past, of that 
Coralie and Patrice whom he knew to have suffered a violent 
death and whom he had undertaken to avenge. Come away, 
Coralie, No one must susjx^ct that we have been here." 
They went down the path and through the two doors on the 
lane. They were not seen going in. Patrice at once bi ought 
Coralie indoors, urged Ya-Bon and his comrades to increase their 
vigilance and left the house. 
He came back in the evening only to go out again early the 
next day ; and it was not until the day after, at three o'clock 
in the afternoon, that he asked to be shown up to Coralie. 
" Have you found out ? " she asked him at once. 
" I have found out a great many things which do not dispel 
the darkness of the present. I am almost tempted to say that 
they increase it. They do, however, throw a very vivid light 
on the fiast." 
" Do they explain what we saw two days ago ? " she asked, 
inxiously. 
" Listen to me, Coralie." 
^He sat down opposite her and saidn: 
" I shall not tell you all the steps that I have taken. I will 
merely sum up the result of those which led to some result. 
I went, first of all, to the Mayor of Passy's office and from there 
to the Serbian Legation." 
" Then you persist in assuming that it was my mother ? 
" Yes. I took a copy of her death-certificate, Coralie. Your 
mother died on the fourteenth of April, 1895." 
" Oh ? " she said. " That is the date on the tomb ! " 
" The very date." 
" But the name ? Coralie ? My father used to call her 
Louise." 
" Your mother's name was Louise Coralie Countess Odola- 
vitch." 
" Oh, my mother ! " she murmured. " My poor darling 
mother ! Then it was she who was murdered. It was for her 
that I was praying over the way ? " 
" For her, Coralie, and for my father. I discovered his full 
name at the mayor's office in the Rue Drouot. My father was 
Armand Patrice Belval. He died on April 14th, 189=:." 
Patrice was right in saying that a singular light had been 
thrown upon the past. He had now ]iositively established that 
the inscription on the tombstone related to his father and 
Coralie 's mother, both cf whom were murdered on the same day. 
But by whom and for what reason, in consequence of what 
tragedies? This was what Coialie asked him to tell her. 
" I cannot answei your -questions yet," he replied. " But 
I addressed another to myself, one more easily solved ; and that 
I did solve. This also makes us certain of an essential point. 
I wanted to know to whom the lodge belonged. The outside, 
in the Rue Raynouard, affords no clue. You have seen the wall 
and the door of the yard ; they show nothing in particular. 
But the number of the property was sufficient for my j)urpose 
I went to the local receiver and learnt that the taxes were paid 
by a notary in the Avenue de I'Opera. 1 called on this notary 
who told me ..." 
He stopjied for a moment and then said : 
" The lodge was bought twenty one years ago by my father. 
Two years later, my iathei died ; and the lodge, which of couise 
formed part of his estate, was put up foi sale by the present 
notary's predecessor and bought by one Simeon Diodokis. a 
Greek subject." 
" It's he 1 " cried Coralie. " Simeon's name is Diodokis." 
" Well, Simeon Diodokis," Patrice continued, " was a friend 
of my father's, because my father appointed him the sole ex- 
ecutor of his will and because it was Simeon Diodokis who, 
through the notary in question and a London solicitor, paid my 
school-fees and, when I attained my majority, made over to 
me the sum of two hundred thousand francs, the balance of 
my inheritance." 
They maintained a long silence. Many things were becoming 
manifest, but indistinctly, as yet, and shaded, like things seen 
in the evening mist. And one thing stood in sharper outline 
than the rest, for Patrice murmured : 
" Your mother and my father loved each other, Coralie." 
The thought united them more closely and affected them 
profoundly. Their love was the counterpart of another love, 
bruised by trials, like theirs, but still more tragic and ending in 
bloodshed and death. 
" Your mother and my father loved each other," he repeated. 
" I should say they must have belonged to that class of rather 
enthusiastic lovers whose passion indulges in charming little 
childish ways, for they had a trick of calling each other, when 
alone, by names which nobody else used to them ; and they 
selected their second Christian names, which were also yours 
and mine. One day, your mother dropped her amethyst rosary. 
The largest of the two beads broke in two pieces. My father had 
one of the pieces mounted as a trinket which he hung on his 
watch chain. Both weie widowed. You were two years old 
and I was eight. In order to devote himsell altogether to the 
woman he loved, my father sent me to England and bought the 
lodge in which your mother, who lived in the big house next door, 
used to go and see him, crossing the lane and using the same key 
for both doors. It was no doubt in this lodge, or in the garelen 
round it, that they were murdered. We shall find that out, 
because there must be visible proofs of the murder, proofs which 
Sime'on Diodokis discovered, since he was not afraid to say 
so in the inscription on the tombstone." 
" And who was the murderer ? " Coralie asked. 
" You suspect it, Corahe. as I do."' 
" Essares ! " she cried, in anguish. 
" Most probably." 
She hid her face in her hands : 
" No, no, it is impossible. It is impossible that I should have 
been the wife of the man who killed my mother." 
" You bore his name, but you were never his wife. You 
told him so the evening before his death, in my presence. 
Let us say nothing that we are unable to say positively : but 
all the same let us remember that he was your evil genius. 
Remember also that Simeon, my father's friend and executor, 
the man who bought the lovers' lodge, the man who swore 
upon their tomb to avenge them : remember that Simeon, 
a few months after your mother's death, persuaded Essares 
to engage him as caretaker of the estate, became his secretary 
and gradually made his way into Essares' life. His only 
object must have be.en to carry out a plan of revenge." 
" There has been no revenge." 
" What do we know about it ? Do we know how Essares 
met his death ? Certainly it was not Sime'on who killed him, 
as Sime'on was at the hospital. But he may have caused 
him to be killed. Lastly, Simeon was most likely obeying 
instructions that came from my father. There is little doubt 
that he wanted first to achieve an aim which my f.ither and 
your mother had at heart : the union of our destinies, Coralie. 
And it was this aim that ruled his life. It was he evidently 
who placed among the knick-knacks which 1 collected as a 
child this amethyst of which the other half formed a bead in 
your rosary. It was he who collected our photographs. He 
lastly was our unknown friend and protector, the one who 
sent me the key, accompanied by a letter which I ne\cr 
received, unfortunately." 
" Then Patrice, you no longer believe that he is dead, this 
unknown friend, or that you heard his dying cries ? " 
