"But it would have been necessary for this man to know the secret combinations of the Marquis, the mechanical device of the two stones and so on."
"Why not? Perhaps the Marquis left a copy of his letter ... or a draft of it. But no.... Of course!... Better than that! We know the truth from the Marquis de Beaugreval himself.... He foresaw it, since he alludes to an always possible defection of his old servant, Geoffrey, and takes into account the possibility of the good fellow's writing a description of what had taken place. This description the good fellow did write, and along different lines it has come down to our time."
"It's a simple supposition."
"It's a supposition more than probable, Maître Delarue, since besides us, besides these four young men and myself, there are other families in which the history, or a part of the history of Beaugreval, has been handed down; and as a consequence for some months I've been fighting for the possession of the indispensable gold medal stolen from my father."
Her words made a very deep impression. She entered into details:
"The family of Chagny-Roborey in the Orne, the family of Argonne in the Ardennes, the family of Davernoie in Vendée, are so many focuses of the tradition. And around it dramas, robberies, assassinations, madness, a regular boiling up of passion and violence."
"Nevertheless," observed Errington, "here there is no one but us. What are the others doing?"
"They're waiting. They're waiting for a date of which they are ignorant. They are waiting for the medal. I saw in front of the church of Roche-Périac a tramp and a factory hand, a woman, from Paris. I saw two poor mad people who came to the rendezvous and are waiting at the edge of the water. A week ago I handed over to the police a dangerous criminal of the name of d'Estreicher, a distant connection of my family, who had committed a murder to obtain possession of the gold medal. Will you believe me now when I tell you that we are dealing with an impostor?"
Dario said:
"Then the man who is here has come to play the same part as the Marquis expected to play two hundred years after his death?"