22 
LAND & WATER 
January 18, 1917 
{Conlinued from page 20) 
Patrice climbed the stairs, feeling a good deal calmed. 
Rut when he came to the first floor, he was astonished to lind 
that the electric light was not on. He turned on the s\\itch. 
Then he saw, at the end of the passage, Ya-Bon on iiis knees 
outside Coralie's room, with his head leaning against the 
wall. The door was open. 
" W'liat are you doing there ? " he shouted, running up. 
Ya-Bon made no reply. Patrice saw that there was blood 
on the shoulder of his jacket. At that moment the 
Senegalese sank to the floor. 
" Damn it ! He's wounded 1 Dead perhaps ! " 
He leapt over the body and rushed into the room, switching 
•n the light at once. 
Coralie was lying at full length on a sofa. Round her neck 
was the terrible little red-silk cord. And yet Patrice did 
mot experience that awful, numbing despair which we feel 
in the presence of irretrievable misfortune. It seemed to him 
that Coralie's face had not the pallor of death. 
He found that she was in fact breathing : 
■' She's not dead. She's not dead," said Patrice to himself. 
" And she's not going to die, I'm sure of it . . . nor 
Ya-Bon either . . . They've failed this time." 
He loosened the cord. In a few seconds, Coralie heaved 
a deep breath and recovered consciousness. A smile lit 
up her eyes at the sight of him. But, suddenly remembering, 
she threw her arms, still so weak, around him : 
" Oh, Patrice," she said, in a trembling voice, " I'm 
frightened . . . frightened for you ! " 
" What are you frightened of, Coralie ? Who is the scound- 
rel .' " 
" I didn't see him ... He put out the light, caught 
sue by the throat and whispered, ' You first . . . To- 
light it will be your lover's turn 1 ' . . . Oh, Patrice, 
I'm frightened for you ! ..." 
CHAPTER XI 
On the Brink 
PATRICE at once made up his mind what to do. 
He hfted Coralie to her bed and asked her not to 
move or call out. Then he made sure that Ya-Bon 
was not seriously wounded. Lastly, he rang violent- 
ly, sounding all the bells that communicated with the posts 
which he had placed in different parts of the house. \ 
The men came hurrying up. 
" You're a pack of nincompoops," he said. " Some ones 
Ween here. Little Mother Corahe and Ya-Bon have had a 
■arrow escape of being Idlled." 
They began to protest loudly. 
" Silence ! " he commanded. " You deserve a good hiding, 
every one of you. I'll forgive you on one condition, which 
is that, all this evening and all to-night, you speak of Little 
Motlier Coralie as though she were dead." 
" But whom are we to speak to, sir ? " one of them objected. 
".There's nobody here." 
' Yes, there is, you silly fool, since Little Mother CoraUe 
and Ya-Bon have been attacked. Unless it was yourselves 
who did it ! . . It wasn't ? Very well then . . . 
And let me have no more nonsense. It's not a question of 
bstening to others, but of talking among yourselves . . . 
and of thinking, even, without speaking. There are people 
speaking to you, spying on you, people who hoar wh-it you say 
and who guess what you don't say." 
" And old Sinv'on, sir ? " 
" Lock him up in his room. He's dangerous because he's 
mad. They may have taken advantage of his madness to 
make him open the door to them. Lock him up ! " 
Patrice's plan was a simple one. As the enemy, beheving 
Coralie to be on the point of death, had revealed to her his 
intention, which was to kill Patrice as well, it was necessary 
that he should think himself free to act, with nobody to suspect 
his schemes or to be on his guard agaiAst him. He woul 1 
enter upon the struggle and then would be caught in a trap. 
Pending this struggle, for which he longed with all his might, 
Patrice saw to Ya-Bon's wound, which proved to be only 
slight, and questioned him and Coralie. Their answers 
talHed at all points. Coralie, feeling a little tired, was lying 
down reading. Ya-Bon remained in the passage, outside the 
open door, squatting on the floor, Arab-fashion. Neither 
of them heard anything suspicious. And suddenly Ya-Bon 
saw a shadow between himself and the light in the passage. 
Ya-Bon, already half erect, felt a violent blow in the back 
of the neck and lost consciousness. CoraUe tried to escape 
by the dopr of her boudoir, but was unable to open it. began 
to cry out and was at once seized and thrown down. .Ml 
this had happened within thr ?pace of a few seconds. 
The only lunt that Pal ie succccdid in obtaiiin g was 
that the man came not from the staircase but from tlie ser- 
vants' wing. This had a smaller staircase .of its own, com- 
municating with the kitchen through a pantry 'oy which the 
tradesmen entered from the Rue Raynouard. The door 
leading to the street was locked. But someone might easily 
possess a key. 
After dinner, Patrice went in to see Coralie for a moment 
and then, at riine o'clock, retired to his bedroom, which was 
situated a little lower down, on the same side. It had been 
used, in Essares Bey's lifetime, as a smoking-room. ' 
As the attack from which he expected such good results 
was not likely to take place before the middle of the night 
Patrice sat down at a roll-top desk standing against the wall 
and took out the diary in which he had begun his detailed 
record of recent events. He wrote on for half an hour or 
forty minutes and was about to close the book when he seemed 
to here a \ague rustic, which he would certainly not have 
noticed if his nerves had not been stretched to their utmost 
state of tension. And he remembered the day when he and 
Coralie had once before been shot at. This time, however, 
the window was not open nor even ajar. 
He therefore went on writing without turning bis head or 
doing anything to suggest that his attention had been aroused 
and he set down, almost unconsciously, the actual phases 
of his anxiety : 
" He is here. He is watching me. I wonder what he means 
to do. I doubt if he will smash a pane of glass and hre a 
bullet at me. He has tried that method before and found 
it uncertain and a failure. No, his plan is thought out. 
I expect, in a different and more intelligent fashion. He is 
more hkely to wait for me to go to bed, when he can watch 
me sleeping and effect his entrance by some means which 
I can't guess. 
" Meanwhlile it's extraordinarily exhilarating to kui'w 
that his eyes are upon me. He hates me ; and his hatred . 
is coming nearer and nearer to mine, like one sword feeling 
its way towards another before clashing. He is watching 
me as a wild animal, lurking in the dark, watches its prey 
and selects the spot on which to fasten its fangs. But no, 
I am certain that it's he who is the prey, doomed before- 
hand to defeat and destruction. He is preparing his knife 
or his red-silk cord. And it's these two hands of mine that 
will finish the battle. They are strong and powerful and are 
already enjoying their victory. They will be victorious." 
Patrice shut down the desk, lit a cigarette and smoked 
it quietly, as his habit was before going to bed. Then he 
undressed, folded his clothes carefully, wound up his watch, 
got into bed and switched off the light. 
" At last," he said to himself, " I shall know the truth. 
I shall know who this man is. Some friend of Essares', 
continuing his work ? But why this hatred of Ccjralie ? 
Is he in love with her, as he is trying to finish me off too ? 
I shall know ... I shall soon know . . ." . 
An hour passed, however, and another hour, during which 
nothing happened on the side of the window. .\ single 
creaking came from somewhere beside the desk. But this 
no doubt was one of those sounds of creaking tuiiiitiue 
which we often hear in the silence of the night. 
Patrice began to lose the buoyant hope that had sustan.ed 
him so far. He perceived that his elaborate sham regard- 
ing Coralie's death was a poor thing after all and that a man 
of his enemy's stamp might well refuse to be taken in by it. 
Feeling rather put out, he was on the point of going to sleep, 
when he heard the same creaking sound at the same spot. 
The need to do something made him jump out of bed. 
He turned on the light. Everything seemed to be as he !iad 
left it. There was no trace of a strange presence. 
" Well," said Patrice, " one thing's certain : I'm no good. 
The enemy must have smelt a rat and guessed the trap 1 laid 
for him. Let's go to sleep. There will be nothing happening 
to-night." 
There was in lact no zl irm. 
Next morning, on examining the window, he observed that 
a stone ledge ran above the ground-floor all along the garden 
front of the house, wide enough for a man to walk upon by 
holding on to the balconies and rain-pipes. He inspected 
all the rooms to which the ledge gave access. None of them 
was old Simeon's room. 
• " He hasn't stirred out, I suppose? " he asked the two 
soldiers posted on guard. 
" Don't think so, sir. In any case, we haven't imlocked 
the door. " 
Patrice went in and, paying no attention to the old lollow, 
who was still sucking at his cold pipe, he searchpd tlieroom' 
having it at the back of his mind that the enemy might take 
refuge there. He found nobody. But what he did dis- 
cover, in a press in the wall, was a number of things which he 
had not seen during his investigations in M. Masserons 
company. These consisted of a rope ladder, a coil of 
lead pipes, apparently gas-pipes, and a small soldering- lamp. 
(To bt continued) 
