iS 
LAND & WATER 
February S, 1917 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
ITranslatcd by Alexander Teixeira dc MattosI 
Synoi'sis : Captain Palncc Bclval, a 'u'ouudai French 
officer, is in loir with a nurse itJto is known to her patients 
as " Little Mother Coralie." Bclval, following Coralic 
(0 her house, finds that Essares. her husband, a leading 
financier, ivho had' contemplated flight jrom Paris, has been 
brutally murdered. An examining magistrate explains 
to Bclval that Essares was prime mover in a plot for ex- 
porting gold from Erancc. In order to recover some 300 
■million francs 'ichich Essaris had concealed, the authorities 
consider it necessary to hush iip the circumstances of the 
financier's death. The only possible clue to the u^herc- 
abouts of the gold is a paper found in Essares' dead hand, 
bearing the icords. "Golden Triangle." Ya-Bon. Bclval's 
Senegalese ser.'ant, promises to call in Arshte Lupin to 
unravel the mystery, which includes a nivstcrious threatened 
vengeance on Coralie. Bclval ascertains that Simeon. 
Essare.s' attendant, has mysteriously befriended both him- 
self and Coralie, and also obtains evidence that twenty 
years before, Essares had been responsible for the murder 
of Coralie's mother and his {Bclval's) father and that an 
iinkno'dnt friend had tried to protect Coralie and himself. 
On the i^th of .April an anonymous letter -warns the authori- 
ties that an attempt is to be made to get the hidden gold out 
of France, and on the same day Bclval and Coralie, fol- 
lowing old Simeon to 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 had been similarly 
trapped, and then asphyxiated, twenty years before. Shut 
in the lodge, Patrice and Coralie arc similarly subjected — 
apparently by Simeon — to asphyxiation bv gas, until 
Patrice loses consciousness. 
CHAPTER XIV 
A Strange Character 
IT was not yet exactly death. In his present condition 
of agony, what lingered of Patrice's consciousness 
mingled, as in a nightmare, the life which he knew 
with tlie imaginary world in wjiich he now found him- 
self, the world which was that of death. 
In this world, Coralie no longer existed ; and her loss dis- 
tracted him with grief. But he seemed to hear and sec 
somebody whost> presence was rev(5aled by a shadow passing 
before his closed eyelids. This somebody he pictured to 
himself, though without reason, under the aspect of Simton, 
who came to verify the death of his victims, began by carry- 
ing Coralie away, then came back to Patrice and carried him 
away also and laid him down somewhere. And all this was 
.so well-defined that Patrice wondered whether he had not 
woke up. 
Next hours ]xissed ... or seconds. In the end, 
Patrice had a feeling that he was faUing asleep, but as a 
man sleeps in Hell, suffering the moral and physical tortmes 
of the damned. He was back at the bottom of the black 
pit, which be was making desperate efforts to leave, like a man 
who has fallen into the sea and is trying to reach the sur- 
face. In this way, with the greatest" difficultv, he passed 
through one waste of water after another, the weight of which 
stilled him. He had to scale them, gripping with his hands 
and feel things that slipped, to rope-ladders wliich, pos- 
sessing no points of support, gave way beneath him. 
.Meanwhile the darkness became less intense. ^ little 
muilled daylight mingled with it. Patrice felt less greatly 
opi^ressed. He half-opened his eyes, drew a breath or two 
and. looking round, beheld a sight that surprised him, the 
enibrasure of an open door, near which he was lying in the 
air, on a .sofa. Reside him he saw Coralie, on another sofa. 
She moved restlessly and seemcd-to be in great discomfort. 
" She is climbing out of the black pit," he thought to him- 
.■-tlf. " Like me, she is struggling. .My poor Coralie ! " 
There was a small table between tjiem, with two glasses 
f)f water on it. Parched with thirst, he took one of them in 
his hand. But he dared not drink. 
.\t that moment, someone came through tJie open door, 
which Patrice percei\ ed to be the door of the lodge ; and he 
obser\-ed that it was not old Simeon, as he liad thought, 
but a stranger whom he had never seen before. 
" 1 am not asleep," he said to himself. " I am sure 
that I am not asleep and that this stranger is a friend." 
And he tried to say it aloud, to make certainty doubly 
sure. But he had not the strength. 
The stranger, Inwever, came up to him and, in a gentle 
voice, said : 
" Don't tire yourself, captain. You're all right now. 
Allow me. Ha\-e some water." 
The stranger handed him one of the two glasses ; and Patrice 
emptied it at a draught, witiiout any feeling of distnist, and 
was glad to .see Coralie also drinking. 
" Yes, I'm all right now," he sairl. " Heavens, how good 
it is to be alive ! Coralie is really alive, isn't she ? "■ 
He did not hear the answer and dropped into a welcome 
sleep. 
When lie woke up, the crisis was over, though he still felt 
a buzzing in his head and a difficulty in drawing a deep dreath. 
He stood up, however, and realized that all these sensations 
were not fanciful, that he was really outside the door of the 
lodge and that Coralie had drunk the glass of water and was 
l)eacefully sleeping. 
" How good it is to be alive ! " he repeated. 
He now felt need for action, but dared not go into the 
lodge notwithstanding the open door. He moved away 
from it, skirting the cloisters containing the graves, and then, 
with no exact object, for he did not yet grasp the reason of 
his own actions, did not understand what had happened to 
him and was simply walking at random, he came back to- 
wards the lodge, on the other front, the one overlooking tiie 
garden. 
Suddenly he stopped. A few yards from the house, at the 
foot of a tree standing beside the slanting path, a man lay 
back in a wicker long-chair, with his face in the shade and 
his legs in the sun. He was sleeping, with his head fallen 
forward and an open book upon his knees. 
Then and not till then did Patrice clearly understand 
that he and Coralie had escaped being killed, that they were 
lx)th really alive and that they owed tlieir safety to this man 
whose sleep -suggested a state of absolute security and satis- 
fled conscience. ' 
Patrice studied the stranger's appearance. He was slim 
of figure, but broad-shouldered, with a sallow complexion, a 
slight moustache on his lips and hair beginning to turn grey 
at the temples. His age was probably fifty at most. The cut 
of his clothes pointed to dandyism. Patrice leaned forward 
and read the title of the book : The Memoirs of Benjamin 
Franklin. He also read the initials inside a hat lying on 
the grass : " L. V." 
" It was he who saved me," .said Patrice to himself, " I 
recognise him. He carried us both out of the studio and 
looked after us. Rut how was the miracle brought gbout ? 
Who sent him ? " 
He tapped him on the shoulder. The man was on his feet 
at once, his face lit up with a smile : . 
" Pardon me, captain, but my life is so much taken up that, 
when I have a few minutes to myself, I use them for sleeping, 
wherever I may be . . . like Napoleon, eh? Well. 
I don't object to the comparison . . . But enough about 
myself. How arc you feeling now ? And madame— ' Little 
Mother Coralic ' — is she better ? I saw no use in waking you, 
after I had opened the doors and taken you outside. I had 
done what was necessary and felt quite easy. You were both 
breathing. So I left the rest to the good pure air." 
He ])roke oft at the sight of Patrice's disconcerted attitude ; 
and his smile made way for a merry laugh : 
" Oh, I was forgetting : you don't know me ! Of course, 
it's true, the letter I sent you was intercepted. Let me in- 
t rod lice myself : Don Luis Perenna,* a member of an' jkl 
Spanish family, genuine patent of nobility, papers all in 
order , . . Rut I can sec thit all this tejls you nothing," 
he went on, laughing still more gaily. " No doubt Ya-Bon 
described me differently when he wrote my name on that street 
wall one evening a fortnight ago. Aha, you're beginning to 
understand! . . . Yes, I'm the man you sent for to 
{ConttHued on page 20) 
'The Teeth 0/ the Tiger. By Maurice Leblanc. Translated by Alex- 
tuider Teixeira dc Mattos. " Luis Perenna," is one of several anagranH 
<il" ' .\rsenc Lnmii." 
