The coincidence of dates was all that stuck in Patrice’s mind. The two roads which M. Masseron and he were following suddenly met on this day so long since marked out by fate. The past and the present were about to unite. The catastrophe was at hand. The fourteenth of April was the day on which the gold was to disappear for good and also the day on which an unknown voice had summoned Patrice and Coralie to the same tryst which his father and her mother had kept twenty years ago.
And the next day was the fourteenth of April.
At nine o’clock in the morning Patrice asked after old Siméon.
“Gone out, sir. You had countermanded your orders.”
Patrice entered the room and looked for the wreath. It was not there. Moreover, the three things in the cupboard, the rope-ladder, the coil of lead and the glazier’s lamp, were not there either.
“Did Siméon take anything with him?”
“Yes, sir, a wreath.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, sir.”