i8 
LAND & WATER 
T'cbruaiy 15, 191 7 
The Golden Triangle 
By Maurice Leblanc 
I Translated by Alexander Tcixcira de Mattosl 
Synopsis : Captain Patrice Bclval, a wounded French 
officer, is in love with a nurse u<ho is known to her patients 
as " Little Mother Coralie." Belval, following Cora lie 
to her house, finds that Essares, her husband, a leading 
financier, uM had contemplated flight from Paris, has been 
hnUally 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 
miltton francs which Essares had concealed, the authorities 
consider it necessary to hush up the circumstances of 
the financier's death. Ya-Bon, Belval's Senegalese 
servant, promises to call in Arsene Lupin to unravel 
the mystery, which includes a mysterious threatened 
vengeance on Coralie. Belval ascertains that Simeon, 
Essares 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 (Belval's) father and that an 
unjcnown friend had tried to protect Coralie a)ui himself. 
On the 14th of April Belval and Coralie, following old 
Simeon to tlic scene of their parents' murder, a disused 
lodge in the garden next to Essarh' house, find them- 
selves imprisoned without possibility of escape. Behind 
the wainscoting of the lodge a pencilled message tells how 
Belval'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 by gas, until 
Patrice loses consciousness. Arsene Lupin, posing as 
Count Luis Perenna, rescues both Patrice and Coralie just 
in time, and proceeds to explain to Patrice how Essares 
removed the gold by a subterranean channel to barges on 
the Seine. . 
CHAPTER XIV {continued) 
j^LL the way down the Seine are wharves, built on 
f^L the bank of the river and used lor loading and 
Z— J^ unloading vessels. Barges put in alongside, dis- 
1 jL.charge their cargoes, take in fresh ones and often 
lie moored one next to the other. At the spot were Don 
Luis and Patrice descended by a flight of steps there 
was a series of yards, one of which, the one which 
they reached first, appeared to be abandoned, no doubt 
since the war. It contained, amid a quantity of useless 
materials, several heaps of bricks and building stones, a hut 
with broken windows and the lower part of a steam crane. 
A placard swinging from a post bore the inscription : 
Berthou, 
Wharfinger and Builder. 
Don Luis walked along the foot of the embankment, ten 
or twelve feet high, above which the quay was suspended like 
a terrace. Half of it was occupied by a heap of sand ; and 
they saw in the wall the bars of an iron grating, the lower 
half of which was hidden by the sand-heap shored up with 
planks. 
Don Luis cleared the grating and said, jestingly : 
" Have you noticed tliat the doors are never locked in this 
adventure ? Let's hope that it's the same with this one." 
His theory ^vas confirmed, somewhat to his own surprise, 
and they entered one of those recesses where workmen put 
awav their tools. 
"So far, nothing out of the common," said Don Luis, 
switching on an electric torch. " Buckets, pick-axes, wheel- 
barrows, a ladder . . . Ah ! Ah ! Just as I expected : 
rails, a complete set of light rails ! . . . Lend me a hand, 
captain. Let's clear out the back. Good, that's done it." 
Level with the ground and opposite the grating was a 
rectangular opening exactly similar to the one in the basin 
of the fountain in the garden. The wire was visible above, 
with a number of hooks hanging from it. 
" So this is where the bags arrived," Don Luis explained. 
" They dropped, so to speak, into one of the two little trollies 
which you see over there, in the corner. The rails were 
laid across the bank, of course at night ; and the trollies 
were pnslied to a barge into wlu'cii they tipped their 
contents." 
" So that . . . ? " 
" So that the French gold went this wav . . . any- 
where you like . . . somewhere abroad." 
" And you think that the last eighteen hundred bags have 
also been dispatched ? "■ 
" I fear so." 
" Then we are too late ? " 
Don Luis reflected for a while witiiout answering. Patrice, 
though disappointed by a development which he had not fore- 
seen, remained amazed at the extraordinary skill with which 
his conipanion, in so short a time, had succeeded in un- 
ravelling a portion of the tangled skein. 
" It's an absolute miracle," he said, at last. " How on earth 
did you do it ? " , 
Without a word, Don Luis took from his pocket the book 
which Patrice had seen lying on his knees. The Memoirs 
of Benjamin Franklin, and motioned him to read some 
lines which he indicated with his finger. They were written 
towards the end of the reign of Louis XVI. ana ran : 
We go daily to the village of Passy adjoining my home, where you 
take the waters in a beautiful garden. Streams and waterfalls 
Four down on all sides, this way and that, in artfully levelled beds. 
am known to like skilful mechanism, so I have been shown the 
ibasin where the waters of all the rivulets meet and mingle. There 
stands a little marble figure in the midst ; and the weight of the 
water is strong enough to turn it a quarter circle to the loft and 
then pjur down straight to the Seine by a conduit, which opens 
in the ground of the basin. 
Patrice closed the book ; and Don Luis went on to explain ." 
" Things have changed since, no doubt, thanlvs to the 
energies of Essares Bey. The water escapes some other way 
now ; and the aqueduct was used to drain off the gold. Besides 
the bed of the river has narrowed. Quays have been built, 
with a system of canals underneath them. You see. Captain, 
all this was easy enough to disco\er, once I had the book to 
tell me. Doctus cum lihro." 
" Yes, but, even so, you had to read the book."- 
" A pure accident. I unearthed it in Simeon's room 
and put in in my pocket, because I was curious to know why 
he was reading it. 
" Why, that's just how he must have discovered Essares 
Bey's secret ! " cried Patrice. " He didn't know the secret. 
He found the book among his employer's papers and got up 
his facts that way. What do you think ? Don't you agree ? 
You seem not to share my opinion. Have you some other 
view ? 
Don Luis did not reply. He stood looking at the river. 
Besides the wharves, at a sliglit distance from the yard, a 
barge lay moored, with apparently no one on her. But a 
slender thread of smoke now began to rise from a pipe that 
stood out above the deck. 
" Let s go and have a look at her," he said. 
The barge was lettered : 
La Noxchalante Beaune. 
They had to cross the space between the barge and the 
wharf and to step over a number of ropes and empty barrels 
covering the flat portions of the deck. A companion-way 
brought them to a sort of cabin which did duty as a state- 
room and kitchen in one. Here they found a powerful- 
looking man, with broad shoulders, curly black hair and a 
clean-shaven face. His only clothes were a blouse and a pair 
of dirty patched canvas trousers. 
Don Luis offered him a twenty-franc note. The man took 
it eagerly. 
" Just tell me something mate. Have you seen a barge 
lately, lying at Berthou's Wharf ? " ■ 
" Ves a motor-barge. She left two days ago." 
" What was her name ? " 
" The Belle Helenc. The people on board, two men and 
a woman, were foreigners talking I don't know what 
lingo . . . We didn't speak to one another." 
" But Berthou's Wharf has stopped work, hasn't it ? " 
" Yes, the owner's joined the army . . . and the fore- 
man as well. We've all got to, haven't we ? I'm expecting 
to be called up myself . . . thoug'n I've got a weak 
heart." 
" But, if the yard's stopped work, what was tlie boat 
doing here ? " 
" I don t know. They worked the whole of one night, 
however. They had laid rails along the quay. I heard the 
(Continued from page 20) 
