“Tell them to go on, tell them to raise the third stone, and you are saved!”
The detective gave the order Fandor suggested. The two apaches raised the last flag—and started back in sheer terror! An atrocious spectacle lay beneath their eyes, Juve himself, who had stepped forward to see, stood there transfixed with horror. The third stone covered a black hole in the ground in which lay a corpse half devoured by the worms! The flesh showed the greenish hues of decomposition and exhaled a poisonous stench. The chest had fallen in, a mass of shattered bones and disintegrated, putrefying flesh, and from its midst gleamed the white, polished handle of a metal money-chest. Where the dead man’s heart should have been a strongbox had been deposited. It was there the master had concealed the money destined for his confederates—a ghastly hiding place, a hideous repository!
Juve, who understood nothing and dared not so much as turn around to question Fandor with a look, yet retained his coolness. Henceforth an impassive spectator of the appalling scene, he stood waiting to become, when his friend should give the word, one of the heroes of the new scene that was now to be staged.
Again Fandor prompted, and again Juve gave the order:
“Whoever of you is not afraid, let him go take the treasure from the depths of the ‘tomb.’”
The apaches gave a roar, but stood hesitating. All were bending over the gaping grave. Their eyes glittered with covetousness; their grinning faces worked spasmodically in mingled repugnance and desire; their hooked fingers twitched with eagerness to seize the shining handle of the treasure chest, the metal lid of which winked in the wavering light of the smoky lamps that supplied the only illumination in the gloomy cellar. But none dared to move; the apaches were afraid—for the first time!
But now the throng grouped round the hideous hole was pushed aside and an old woman, her face scarlet, her breath coming in gasps, advanced with arms akimbo to the edge of the grave.
“Why, what,” she croaked, “what’s amiss with you, you chaps? to be scared of a dead man, for shame! Well, I’m only a woman, I am, but I’m out to show you cowards what pluck means. True as I stand here, this hand I hold up is going to dive into the fellow’s guts and fetch out his gold heart!”
Her hearers shuddered as she carried out her gruesome purpose, remarking with a hideous laugh: “Why should I be scared of the good man? we’re old acquaintances, we are ... I was the one packed him in down there!”
Meantime the old harridan had deposited the strongbox at the feet of the man she too supposed to be Fantômas. Whereupon the apaches quickly found their tongues again and all bawling at once, demanded their fees in payment of the crimes they had committed. All that remained in fact was to open the little chest. The key was in the lock and an eager and obliging volunteer in the person of “Bull’s-eye” came forward; the lid was raised and a mass of gold coins revealed.