Part 17 (1/2)

The admiral put on his Mandarin spectacles. With his hands behind his back, he bent and critically examined the contents. Then, very carefully, he extracted a packet of papers, yellow and old, bound with heavy cording. Beneath this packet was a medal of the Legion of Honor, some rose leaves, and a small glove.

”Know what I think?” said the admiral, stilling the shake in his voice.

”This belonged to that mysterious Frenchman who lived here eighty years ago. I'll wager that medal cost some blood. By cracky, what a find!”

”And the poor little glove and the rose leaves!” murmured the girl, in pity. ”It seems like a crime to disturb them.”

”We shan't, my child. Our midnight friend wasn't digging yonder for faded keepsakes. These papers are the things.” The admiral cut the string, and opened one of the doc.u.ments. ”H'm! Written in French. So is this,” looking at another, ”and this. Here, Laura, cast your eye over these, and tell us why some one was hunting for them.”

Fitzgerald eyed Breitmann thoughtfully. The whole countenance of the man had changed. Indeed, it resembled another face he had seen somewhere; and it grew in his mind, slowly but surely, as dawn grows, that Breitmann was not wholly ignorant in this affair. He had not known who had been working at night; but that dizziness of the moment gone, the haste in opening the case, the eagerness of the search last night; all these, to Fitzgerald's mind, pointed to one thing: Breitmann knew.

”I shall watch him.”

Laura read the doc.u.ments to herself first. Here and there was a word which confused her; but she gathered the full sense of the remarkable story. Her eyes shone like winter stars.

”Father!” she cried, dropping the papers, and spreading out her arms.

”Father, it's the greatest thing in the world. A treasure!”

”What's that, Laura?” straining his ears.

”A treasure, hidden by the soldiers of Napoleon; put together, franc by franc, in the hope of some day rescuing the emperor from St. Helena.

It is romance! A real treasure of two millions of francs!” clapping her hands.

”Where?” It was Breitmann who spoke. His voice was not clear.

”Corsica!”

”Corsica!” The admiral laughed like a child. Right under his very nose all these years, and he cruising all over the chart! ”Laura, dear, there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't take the yacht and go and dig up this pretty sum.”

”No reason in the world!” But the secretary did not p.r.o.nounce these words aloud.

”A telegram for you, sir,” said the butler, handing the yellow envelope to Fitzgerald.

”Will you pardon me?” he said drawing off to a window.

”Go ahead,” said the admiral, fingering the medal of the Legion of Honor.

Fitzgerald read:

”Have made inquiries. Your man never applied to any of the metropolitan dailies. Few ever heard of him.”

He jammed the message into a pocket, and returned to the group about the case. Where should he begin? Breitmann had lied.

CHAPTER XI

PREPARATIONS AND COGITATIONS

The story itself was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not n.i.g.g.ard with his ink when he cursed the English and d.a.m.ned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling n.o.bility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not himself n.o.ble? Had not his parents and his brothers gone to the guillotine with the rest of them? But he, thank G.o.d, had no wooden mind; he could look progress and change in the face and follow their bent. And now, all the crimes and heroisms of the Revolution, all the glorious pageantry of the empire, had come to nothing. A Bourbon, thick-skulled, sordid, worn-out, again sat upon the throne, while the Great Man languished on a rock in the Atlantic. Fools that they had been, not to have hidden the little king of Rome as against this very dog! It was pitiful. He never saw a shower in June that he did not hail curses upon it. To have lost Waterloo for a bucketful of water!

Thousand thunders! could he ever forget that terrible race back to Paris? Could he ever forget the shame of it? Grouchy for a fool and Blucher for a blundering a.s.s. _Eh bien_; they would soon tumble the Bourbons into oblivion again.