The Secret Tomb quotes

Under a sky heavy with stars and faintly brighter for a low-hanging sickle moon, the gipsy caravan slept on the turf by the roadside, its shutters closed, its shafts stretched out like arms.

In the shadow of the ditch nearby a stertorous horse was snoring.

She took a handkerchief from Saint-Quentin’s pocket and bandaged her eyes with it.

“Astral vision, on condition of being blind,” she said. “The less I see the more I see.”

“Put your questions, madame. I will answer them to the best of my ability.”

“You’re amazing. You make combinations and calculations; you act; you foresee. One feels that you direct your course in accordance with a plan.”

“In accordance with nothing at all, my lad. I go forward at a venture, and decide as Fortune bids.”

“I have a definite aim, that’s all. Four people confront me, who, there’s no doubt about it, are linked together by a common secret.

“It’s all the same to me,” she said, wholly unmoved. “These people have a secret which perhaps belongs to me as much as to them. I wish to know it. Excitement, sensations, all that works in my favor.”

“Pipe, Saint-Quentin. Today decides my future. Instead of trembling, rejoice⁠ ⁠… a foxtrot, old chap!”

She threw an arm round his waist, and propping him up like a tailor’s dummy with wobbly legs, she forced him to turn;

I am a good girl. If one lets one’s self be guilty of a doubtful action, one repeats it without knowing it and one ends by yielding to temptation as one picks flowers and fruit over the hedge by the roadside.”

Dorothy did not pick flowers and fruit over the hedge.

For a long while she went on telling them all about herself. Saint-Quentin listened open-mouthed.

“There,” she said. “His car ought not to be long coming into sight. That’s his road.”

“I really believe that that excellent young fellow will not miss an opportunity of seeing me again,” she said, smiling.

Saint-Quentin, always rather jealous and easily upset, sighed:

“And the treasure? You know we’re hunting for treasure.”

“You’re the treasure, mummy. And I’m afraid that they’ll take you away from us.”

“Don’t you worry, my child. My four children will always come first.”

Moss and wall-pellitory were growing between the gaping stones of the face. Right at the bottom of it, under cover in a small niche, a bell awaited the stroke of the hammer.

A dead clock, whose heart had ceased to beat.

Dorothy had the impression that time had stopped there for centuries, suspended from these motionless hands, from that hammer which no longer struck, from that silent bell in its sheltering niche.

She paused; and with one accord they cried:

“Well, the truth is I’m hungry⁠—hungry with a two-hundred-year-old hunger⁠—as hungry as the Marquis de Beaugreval must be. Has any of you by any chance⁠—”

The three young men darted away. One ran to his motorcycle, the other two to their horses. Each had a haversack full of provisions which they brought and set out on the grass at Dorothy’s feet.

They turned the light of their lamps into the alcove.

At the back of it was a bed. On that bed lay a man.

This vision was, in spite of everything, so unexpected, that for a few seconds Dorothy’s legs almost failed her, and she let the tapestry fall.

“Well, for my part, I assert that you’re making a mistake. I’m not at all of your opinion, mademoiselle.”

Maître Delarue was one of those people who cling the more firmly to an opinion the longer they have been adopting it.

The resurrection of the Marquis suddenly appeared to him a dogma he was bound to defend.

… truth, they had the impression, since no living being had entered, that death itself had stepped over the threshold, crossed the room to the man, struck him in their presence with its invisible hand, and then gone away, leaving the murderous weapon in the corpse.

None but a phantom could have passed. None but a phantom could have killed.

“Errington,” said Dorothy, who had recovered her coolness more quickly than her companions, “there’s no one on the staircase, is there? Dario, surely the window is too small for anyone to slip through? Webster and Kourobelef look to the walls of the alcove.”

And how could she fail to observe that up to the very last minute, there had been in the working out of that plan, in the performance of unforeseen actions, necessitated by the chances, the same boldness, the same vigor, the same methodical decision?

There are battles which are only won when the chief is on the battlefield.

He is here, she thought, distracted. He has escaped from prison and he is here. His confederate was going to betray him and join us; he killed him. He is here.

There she expected help. Here nothing. No matter! With such a personage, there must be no weakening. The victor would be the one who should preserve an unshakable coolness, and should end, at some moment or other, by dominating the adversary.

“To hold out to the end!” she thought stubbornly. “… To the end.⁠ ⁠… And not till the last quarter of an hour⁠ ⁠… but till the last quarter of the last minute.”

She stared at her enemy and said in a tone of command:

She said clearly and positively:

“I am calm because I know you are lost.”

“Come, come,” he said laughing.

He shrunk back. He did not wish to obey. But Dorothy’s eyes, blazing, irresistible, stronger than he, compelled him; and yielding to their compulsion, he turned round.

It was the last quarter of the last minute.

With all the force of her being, with a strength of conviction which did not permit the ruffian to think, she commanded:

Dorothy sprang on him and in a second tore a revolver from his jacket pocket, and aiming at his head, without her heart quickening a beat and with a perfectly steady hand, she said slowly, her eyes gleaming maliciously:

“Idiot! I told you plainly you were lost.”

“I’m bent on this business of our ancestor Beaugreval ending as it ought to end, and that chance shouldn’t, some day or other, give those diamonds to someone, without any right to them, who happens to come along. Will you help us, Dorothy?”

“Because as far as I am concerned, the adventure came to an end with the punishment of the culprit.”

“Yes, I need rest and my four boys need it too. Twelve days here, leading the family life with you, will do us a world of good. On the twenty-fourth of July, in the morning, I’m off.”