“It’s there!” he murmured, moved to the very depths of his being. “It’s there! I have reached the goal!”
His hands were fumbling with the dynamite cartridges in his pocket and his eyes were seeking wildly the higher stone of which that priest of Jumièges had spoken. Was it this one, or that? A few seconds would be enough for him to introduce the cartridge into the cracks which earth and plants choked. Three minutes later he would be heaping the diamonds and rubies into the bag which he took from his knapsack. If there remained a few crumbs among the débris all the better for his enemies.
He walked forward and the nearer he came to it the more the mound took on an appearance which did not at all conform to what he expected. There was no higher stone.... There was no block which, in days gone by, would have afforded to her whom they called the Lady of Beauty, a seat from which to look for the arrival of the royal barque round the corner of the reach of the river. Nothing rose above the mound—on the contrary its top was level. What had happened? Had some sudden rush of the river, or some storm lately changed a spot which the storms of ages had respected? or had——
In two bounds Ralph crossed the ten paces which separated him from the mound.
An oath burst from his lips. The horrible truth was clear to his eyes. The center of the mound had been disemboweled. The block of granite, the legendary block was indeed there, but smashed asunder into fragments, its débris on every side of a gaping hole full of blackened pebbles and tufts of grass. Not a single jewel! Not a scrap of gold or silver! The enemy had passed that way.
Ralph did not stand before this paralyzing spectacle for more than a minute. Motionless, speechless, he studied it absentmindedly, and mechanically gathered in all the traces and evidence of the work that had been done some hours before; he marked the prints of a woman’s heel; but he refused to draw from them the only logical conclusion. He walked away from it, lit a cigarette and sat down on the bank of the dyke on the edge of the river.
He did not wish to think. The defeat, and above all the fashion in which it had been inflicted on him, was too painful for him to suffer himself to study its causes and effects. At such moments one can only strive to retain one’s coolness. But, in spite of everything, the events of the preceding afternoon and evening forced themselves on his attention. Whether he wished it, or not, the actions of Josephine Balsamo unfolded themselves before his mind. He saw her striving firmly against that nervous attack and recovering all the energy necessary at such a juncture. Rest when the hour of destiny had struck? Not she! Had he rested? And Beaumagnan, wounded as he was, had he allowed himself the slightest respite? No! And Josephine Balsamo would never make such a mistake. Before nightfall she had reached the meadow with her agents; and then in the daylight and later by the light of lanterns, she had directed their work. And when he, Ralph, had divined her presence behind the curtained window of her cabin, she was not making ready for the final expedition; she had returned from it, once more victorious because she never allowed mischances, futile hesitation, or superfluous scruples to prove an obstacle between her and the immediate execution of her designs.
For more than twenty minutes, letting himself relax from his fatigue in the warmth of the sun which rose above the hills on the opposite bank, Ralph considered the bitter reality into which had sunk his dreams of domination. He must indeed have been deeply absorbed in those bitter reflections not to hear the noise of a carriage which stopped in the road and see the three men who got out of it, climb over the fence and cross the meadow till the very moment at which one of them, on reaching the mound, uttered a cry of anguish.
It was Beaumagnan; his two friends were supporting him.
If the disappointment of Ralph was deep, what must have been the despair of a man who had staked all his life on the mysterious treasure! Livid, with starting eyes, the bandage which ran across his shoulder oozing blood, he gazed stupidly, as at the most horrible of spectacles, at the spot on which the miraculous stone had been violated. One would have said that the world was falling in ruins about his feet and that he was gazing into a gulf of terror and horror.