“Did he open it?”
“And did he find what he was after?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to take the thing from him. What sort of thing was it? The reliquary? No, it was too small for that.... Then what was it? Answer me, will you?...”
Lupin gathered from Gilbert’s silence and the determined expression on his face that he would not obtain a reply. With a threatening gesture, “I’ll make you talk, my man. Sure as my name’s Lupin, you shall come out with it. But, for the moment, we must see about decamping. Here, help me. We must get Vaucheray into the boat....”
They had returned to the dining-room and Gilbert was bending over the wounded man, when Lupin stopped him:
“Listen.”
They exchanged one look of alarm.... Some one was speaking in the pantry . . . a very low, strange, very distant voice.... Nevertheless, as they at once made certain, there was no one in the room, no one except the dead man, whose dark outline lay stretched upon the floor.
And the voice spake anew, by turns shrill, stifled, bleating, stammering, yelling, fearsome. It uttered indistinct words, broken syllables.
Lupin felt the top of his head covering with perspiration. What was this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from beyond the grave?