“You can count me in to the finish, Buddy. You stick to the job and you can safely bet that I’ll stick to you.”
“Don’t I know that, my truest of friends?”
Henri gave Billy a hand-squeeze that made that husky youngster wince.
Francois was rapidly regaining strength, his wound nicely healing, and, with the progress, his interest in Henri’s mission to the Meuse was first in mind.
“In my letter,” he said to Henri, “I feared to give details that might be read by other eyes than yours. You only would know even the name and location of our house by that letter. But I got it all right from mother about the secret hiding place of the fortune.
“Neither Jules, you, nor I had ever learned of the more than a century-old plan of the Château Trouville, handed down by a great-grandfather, which included an underground way from the hills through the valley and ending in the north wing of the château.
“Mother herself had almost forgotten that such a place was in existence until she recalled that some thirty years ago our father gave her what he jokingly called a honeymoon trip through the tunnel, and she also recalled that it was a journey which she never repeated. She spoiled a new dress going through.
“Of course, you and I know that the old house itself is full of queer corners, walks between the walls, panel openings and all that; we played hide-and-seek there enough, but the outside passage we never struck. Father might have told us about it if he had lived.”
“I suppose the tunnel came in handy when old times were squally,” suggested Henri.
“Never handier, I think, than it may be to you if you ever get within a mile of what you are going after,” replied Francois; “you will never get in by the front door the way things are now.”