l8 
LAND & WATER 
February i, 1917 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
[Translated by Alexander Tcixeira de MattosI 
Synopsis ; Captain Patrice Belval. a iiuounded French 
officer, is in love loith a nurse who is knovsn to her patients 
as "Little Mother Coralie." Belval. following Coralic 
to her house, finds that Essares, her husband, a leading 
financier, who had contemplated flight from Paris, has been 
brutally murdered. An examining magistrate explains 
to Belval that Essares was prime mover in a plot for ex- 
porting gold from France. In order to recover some 300 
million francs which Essares had concealed, the authorities 
consider it necessary to hush up the circumstances of the 
financier's death. The only possible clue to the where- 
abouts of the gold is a paper found in Essares' dead hand, 
bearing the words, ".Golden Triangle." Ya-Bon. Belval' s 
Senegalese servant, promises to call in Arsenc Lupin to 
unravel the mystery, which incliuies a mysterious threatened 
vengeance on Coralie. Belval ascertains that Simeon. 
Essares' attendant, has mysteriously befriended both him- 
self and Coralie. and also obtains evidence thai twenty 
years before, Essares had been responsible for the murder 
of Coralie' s mother aiul his (Belval' s) father and that an 
unknown friend -had tried to protect Coralie and himself. 
On the T..\ih of April an anonymous letter warns the authon- 
tics that an attempt is to be made to gel the hidden gold out 
of France, and on the same day Belval and Coralie. fol- 
lowing old Simeon lo the scene of their parents' murder. 
a disused lodge in the garden next to Essares' house, find 
themselves imprisoned -without possibility of escape. Behind 
the -wainscoting of the lodge a pencilled message tells how 
Bclval's father and Coralie s mother hud been similarly 
trapped twenty years before, and had heard sounds as of 
digging outside the lodge. 
CHAPTER XII [continued) 
PATRICE ivdoubkd his dioits. Coralk' cahu; and 
helix'd liim. 'Jhis time ho felt that a corner uf the 
\eil was bt'ing hfted. The writing went on. 
" Another hour, with alternate spells of sound and 
silence: the same sound of digging and the same 
silence which suggests work that is being continued. 
" And then someone entered the hall, one person : lie, 
evidently. We recognised his step ; . . He walks with- 
out attempting to deaden it . . . Then he went to the 
kitchen, where he worked the same way as before, with a 
pick-axe, but on the stones this time. We also hear the noise 
of a {xine of glass breaking. 
" And now he has gone cmtside again and there is a new 
sort' of sound, against the house, a sound that seems to travel 
up the liousc as though the wetch had to climb to a height 
in order to carrv out liis plan . . ." 
' I'atrice stopjx'd reading and looked at Coralie. Both of 
them were listening. 
" Hark! " he said, in a low voice. 
'■ Yes, yes," she answered, " I hear . . . Steps outside 
the house ... in the garden . . ." 
They went to one of the windows, where they had left the 
casement open behind the wall of building-stones, and listened. 
There was really someone walking ; and the knowledge that 
the enemy was approaching gave them the same sense of relief 
that their jiarents had e.\perienceil. 
Some I'lie walked thrice round the house. But they did 
not, like their ])arents, lecognise the sound of the lootstei>s. 
They were those of a stranger, or else steps that had changed 
their tread. Then, for a few minutes, they heard nothing 
more And suddenly another sound arose ; and, though 
in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they were 
nevertheless stupe lied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow 
\-oice, la>'ing stress \ipon each syllable, uttered the sentence 
which his lather had written twenty years before. 
" Its the sound which you make when you dig the ground 
with a pick-axe." . 1 
Yes, it must l^e that. Someone was digging the ground, 
not in front of the house, but on the right, near the kitchen. 
And so the abominable miracle of the revived tragedy was 
continuing. Here again the former act was repeated, a 
siftiple enough act in itself, but one which became sinister 
bccauM- it was one of those which had already been performed 
and Ijecause it was announcing and preparing the death once 
before announced and i)rej)ared. 
An hour passed. The work went on, paused and went on 
again It was likp the sound of a sjxide at work in a court- 
yard, when the grave-digger is in no hiurry and takes a rest 
and then resumes his work. 
Patrice and CoraUe stood listening side by side, their 
eyes in each other's eyes, their hands in each other's hands. 
" He's stopping," whispered Patrice. 
" Yes," said Coralie, " only I think. . . " 
" Yes, Coralie, there's some one in the hall . . . Oh, 
we need not trouble to listen ! We have only to remember. 
There. ' He goes to the kitchen and digs as he did just now, 
but on the stones this time.' . . . And then . . . oh, 
Coralie, the same sound of broken glass ! " 
It was memories mingling with the gruesome reality. The 
])resent and the j^ast formed but one. They foresaw events 
at the \ery instant when these took place. 
The enemy went outside again ; and, forthwith the snund 
seemed " to travel up the house as though the wretch had to 
cUmb to a height in order to carry out his plans." 
.\nd then . . . and then what would happen next ? 
They no longer thought of consulting the inscription on the 
wall, or perhaps they did not dare. Their attention was 
concentrated on the invisible and sometimes imperceptible 
deeds that were being acc(jmplislied against them outsidi\ 
an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a nivsterious twenty-year-old 
plan whereof each slightest detail was settled as by clock work. 
The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling 
at the b(jttom of the door, a rustling of soft things a])parently 
being heai>ed or pushed against the wood. Next came other 
vague noises in the two adjoining rooms, against the walled 
doors, and similar noises outside, between the stones of the 
windows and the open shutters. .\nd then they heard sonv;- 
one on the roof. 
They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that 
the last act was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the 
last act. The roof to them was the. framed skylight which 
occupied the centre of the ceiling and admitted the only day- 
liglit that entered the room. And still the same agonizing 
question arose to their minds. What was going to hapjien :' 
Would the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal 
himself at last ? 
This work on the rot)f contimied for a considerable time. 
Footsteps shook the zinc sheets that covered it, moving 
between the right-hand side of the house and the edge of the 
skylight. .Vnd suddenly this skylight, or rather a part of it. 
a square containing four ])anes, was lifted, a very little way, 
by a liand wliich inserted a stick to keep it open. 
And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down 
the side of the house. 
Thev were almost disappointed and felt such a craving 
to know the truth that Patrice once more fell to brealdng the 
boards of the Mainscotiug. removing the last pieces, which 
covered the end of tiie inscriijtion. And what they read made 
them li\-e the last few minutes all over again. The enemy's 
return, the. rustle against the walls and the walled windows, 
the noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method 
of supporting it : all this had happened in the same order and 
so to speak, within the same limit of time. Patrice's father 
and Coralie's mother had undergone the same impressions, 
J)estiiiy seemed bent on following tlie suiue paths and making 
the same ino\ einents in seeking the same object. 
-Vnd the writing went on : , 
■■ lie is going u]) again, he is going up again. . . . There s 
his footstep on the roof. . . . He is near- the skylight. 
. . . Will he look through ? . ... Shall we see his 
hated face ? . . ." 
" He is going up again, he is going up again," gasped Coralie, 
nestling agauist Patrice. 
The enemy's footsteps were pounding over the zinc. 
" Yes," said Patrice, " he is going up as before, without 
departing from 1 he ))rocediire followed by the other. Only we 
do not know whose face will appear to us. Our parents knew 
their enemy." 
She shuddered nt her image of the man who had lulled 
her mother ; and she asked : 
" It was he, was it not ? " 
" Yi ■-, it was he. There is his name, wriK'H liv mv futlun-." 
{.Continued on page 20) 
