“But it’s absurd!” she protested. “You revolutionize the whole situation. As it is it’s absolutely in my power to do what I like.”
“Not now,” he declared. “Now you depend on me; and it is for me to dictate the conditions.”
She shrugged her shoulders and looked round the room somewhat helplessly, then she was obliged to say: “Swear to speak the exact truth. Swear it by the tomb of your mother.”
He said calmly: “By the tomb of my mother I swear to you that twenty minutes after Clarice has crossed this threshold I will show you the exact place where that block of granite is, that is to say, the hiding-place of the treasure accumulated by the monks of the abbeys of France.”
She tried to thrust off the incredible fascination that Ralph was of a sudden exercising over her with this fabulous offer, and cried in a tone of revolt: “No, no! It’s a trap! You know nothing at all!”
“Not only do I know, but I’m not the only one to know,” he said.
“Who else knows?”
“Beaumagnan and the Baron.”
“Impossible!” she cried.
“Think a little,” he said quietly. “The day before yesterday Beaumagnan was at La Haie d’Etigues. Why? Because the Baron had recovered the casket and they studied the inscription together. Then, if there are not only the five words mentioned by the Cardinal, if there is also the word, the magic word which sums them up and gives the key to the mystery, they have seen it and they know it.”