The Secret of Sarek

"Yes," said Vorski, his eyes blazing with fever.

"The locket consists of a frame, without the photograph which used to be set in it."

"Yes, yes, a portrait of."

"Of your mother, I know: and you lost it."

"Yes, I lost it last year."

"You mean you think you've lost the portrait."

"Nonsense, the locket is empty."

"You think the locket's empty. It's not. Look and see."

Still moving mechanically, with his eyes starting from his head, Vorski unfastened the button of his shirt and pulled out the chain. The locket appeared. There was the portrait of a woman in a round gold frame.

"It's she, it's she," he muttered, completely taken aback.

"Quite sure?"

"Yes."

"Then what do you say to it all, eh? There's no fake about it, no deception. The ancient Druid's a smart chap and you're coming with him, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Vorski was beaten. The man had subjugated him. His superstitious instincts, his inherited belief in the mysterious powers, his restless and unbalanced nature, all imposed absolute submission on him. His suspicion persisted, but did not prevent him from obeying.

"Is it far?" he asked.

"Next door, in the great hall."

Otto and Conrad had been the astounded witnesses of this dialogue. Conrad tried to protest. But Vorski silenced him:

"If you're afraid, go away. Besides," he added, with an affectation of assurance, "besides, we shall walk with our revolvers ready. At the slightest alarm, fire."

"Fire on me?" chuckled the ancient Druid.

"Fire on any enemy, no matter who it may be."

"Well, you go first, Vorski.. What, won't you?"

He had brought them to the very end of the crypt, in the darkest shadow, where the lantern showed them a recess hollowed at the foot of the wall and plunging into the rocks in a downward direction.

Vorski hesitated and then entered. He had to crawl on his hands and knees in this narrow, winding passage, from which he emerged, a minute later, on the threshold of a large hall.

The others joined him.

"The hall of the God-Stone," the ancient Druid declared, solemnly.

It was lofty and imposing, similar in shape and size to the broad walk under which it lay. The same number of upright stones, which seemed to be the columns of an immense temple, stood in the same place and formed the same rows as the menhirs on the walk overhead: stones hewn in the same uncouth way, with no regard for art or symmetry. The floor was composed of huge irregular flagstones, intersected with a network of gutters and covered with round patches of dazzling light, falling from above at some distance one from the other.

In the centre, under Maguennoc's garden, rose a platform of unmortared stones, fourteen or fifteen feet high, with sides about twenty yards long. On the top was a dolmen with two sturdy supports and a long, oval granite table.

"Is that it?" asked Vorski, in a husky voice.

Without giving a direct answer, the ancient Druid said:

"What do you think of it? They were dabs at building, those ancestors of ours! And what ingenuity they displayed! What precautions against prying eyes and profane enquiries! Do you know where the light comes from? For we are in the bowels of the island and there are no windows opening on to the sky. The light comes from the upper menhirs. They are pierced from the top to bottom with a channel which widens as it goes down and which sheds floods of light below. In the middle of the day, when the sun is shining, it's like fairyland. You, who are an artist, would shout with admiration."

"Then that's it?" Vorski repeated.

"At any rate, it's a sacred stone," declared the ancient Druid, impassively, "since it used to overlook the place of the underground sacrifices, which were the most important of all. But there is another one underneath, which is protected by the dolmen and which you can't see from here; and that is the one on which the selected victims were offered up. The blood used to flow from the platform and along all these gutters to the cliffs and down to the sea."

Vorski muttered, more and more excited:

"Then that's it? If so, let's go on."

"No need to stir," said the old man, with exasperating coolness. "It's not that one either. There's a third; and to see that one you have only to lift your head a little."

"Where? Are you sure?"

"Of course! Take a good look.. above the upper table, yes, in the very vault which forms the ceiling and which is like a mosaic made of great flagstones.. You can twig it from here, can't you? A flagstone forming a separate oblong, long and narrow like the lower table and shaped like it.. They might be two sisters.. But there's only one good one, stamped with the trademark.."

Vorski was disappointed. He had expected a more elaborate introduction to a more mysterious hiding-place.

"Is that the God-Stone?" he asked. "Why, it has nothing particular about it."

"From a distance, no; but wait till you see it close by. There are coloured veins in it, glittering lodes, a special grain: in short, the God-Stone. Besides, it's remarkable not so much for its substance as for its miraculous properties."

"What are the miracles in question?" asked Vorski.

"It gives life and death, as you know, and it gives a lot of other things."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, hang it, you're asking me too much! I don't know anything about it."

"How do you mean, you don't know?"

The ancient Druid leant over and, in a confidential tone:

"Listen, Vorski," he said, "I confess that I have been boasting a bit and that my function, though of the greatest importance – keeper of the God-Stone, you know, a first-class berth – is limited by a power which in a manner of speaking is higher than my own."

"What power?"

"Velléda's."

Vorski eyed him with renewed uneasiness:

"Velléda?"

"Yes, or at least the woman whom I call Velléda, the last of the Druidesses: I don't know her real name."

"Where is she?"

"Here."

"Here?"

"Yes, on the sacrificial stone. She's asleep."

"What, she's asleep?"

"She's been sleeping for centuries, since all time. I've never seen her other than sleeping: a chaste and peaceful slumber. Like the Sleeping Beauty, Velléda is waiting for him whom the gods have appointed to awake her; and that is."

"Who?"

"You, Vorski, you."

Vorski knitted his brows. What was the meaning of this improbable story and what was his impenetrable interlocutor driving at?

The ancient Druid continued:

"That seems to ruffle you! Come, there's no reason, just because your hands are red with blood and because you have thirty coffins on your mind, why you shouldn't have the right to act as Prince Charming. You're too modest, my young friend. Look here, Velléda is marvellously beautiful: I tell you, hers is a superhuman beauty. Ah, my fine fellow, you're getting excited! What? Not yet?"

Vorski hesitated. Really he was feeling the danger increase around him and rise like a swelling wave that is about to break. But the old man would not leave him alone:

"One last word, Vorski; and I'm speaking low so that your friends shan't hear me. When you wrapped your mother in her shroud, you left on her fore-finger, in obedience to her formal wish, a ring which she had always worn, a magic ring made of a large turquoise surrounded by a circle of smaller turquoises set in gold. Am I right?"

"Yes," gasped Vorski, taken aback, "yes, you're right: but I was alone and it is a secret which nobody knew."

"Vorski, if that ring is on Velléda's finger, will you trust me and will you believe that your mother, in her grave, appointed Velléda to receive you, that she herself might hand you the miraculous stone?"

Vorski was already walking towards the tumulus. He quickly climbed the first few steps. His head passed the level of the platform.

"Oh," he said, staggering back, "the ring.. the ring is on her finger!"

Between the two supports of the dolmen, stretched on the sacrificial table and clad in a spotless gown that came down to her feet, lay the Druidess. Her body and face were turned the other way; and a veil hanging over her forehead hid her hair. Almost bare, her shapely arm lay along the table. On the forefinger was a turquoise ring.

"Is that your mother's ring all right?" asked the ancient Druid.

"Yes, there's no doubt about it."

Vorski had hurried across the space between himself and the dolmen and, stooping, almost kneeling, was examining the turquoises.

"The number is complete," he whispered. "One of them is cracked. Another is half covered by the gold setting which has worked down over it."

"You needn't be so cautious," said the old man. "She won't hear you; and your voice can't wake her. What you had better do is to stand up and pass your hand lightly over her forehead. That is the magic caress which will rouse her from her slumber."

Vorski stood up. Nevertheless he hesitated to approach the woman, who inspired him with ungovernable fear and respect.

"Don't come any nearer, you two," said the ancient Druid, addressing Otto and Conrad. "When Velléda's eyes open, they must rest on no one but Vorski and behold no other sight. Well, Vorski, are you afraid?"

"No, I'm not afraid."

"Only you're not feeling comfortable. It's easier to murder people than to bring them to life, what? Come, show yourself a man! Put aside her veil and touch her forehead. The God-Stone is within your reach. Act and you will be the master of the world."

Vorski acted. Standing against the sacrificial altar, he looked down upon the Druidess. He bent over the motionless bust. The white gown rose and fell to the regular rhythm of the breathing. With an undecided hand he drew back the veil and then stooped lower, so that his other hand might touch the uncovered forehead.

But at that moment his action remained, so to speak, suspended and he stood without moving, like a man who does not understand but is vainly trying to understand.

"Well, what's up, old chap?" exclaimed the Druid. "You look petrified. Another squabble? Something gone wrong? Must I come and help you?"

Vorski did not answer. He was staring wildly, with an expression of stupefaction and affright which gradually changed into one of mad terror. Drops of perspiration trickled over his face. His haggard eyes seemed to be gazing upon the most horrible vision.

The old man burst out laughing:

"Lord love us, how ugly you are! I hope the last of the Druidesses won't raise her divine eyelids and see that hideous mug of yours! Sleep, Velléda, sleep your pure and dreamless sleep."

Vorski stood muttering between his teeth incoherent words which conveyed the menace of an increasing anger. The truth became partly revealed to him in a series of flashes. A word rose to his lips which he refused to utter, as though, in uttering it, he feared lest he should give life to a being who was no more, to that woman who was dead, yes, dead though she lay breathing before him: she could not but be dead, because he had killed her. However, in the end and in spite of himself, he spoke; and every syllable cost him intolerable suffering:

"Véronique.. Véronique.."

"So you think she's like her?" chuckled the ancient Druid. "Upon my word, may be you are right: there is a sort of family resemblance.. I dare say, if you hadn't crucified the other with your own hands and if you hadn't yourself received her last breath, you would be ready to swear that the two women are one and the same person.. and that Véronique d'Hergemont is alive and that she's not even wounded.. not even a scar.. not so much as the mark of the cords round her wrists.. But just look, Vorski, what a peaceful face, what comforting serenity! Upon my word, I'm beginning to believe that you made a mistake and that it was another woman you crucified! Just think a bit!.. Hullo, you're going to go for me now! Come to my rescue, O Teutatès! The prophet wants to have my blood!"

Vorski had drawn himself up and was now facing the ancient Druid. His features, fashioned for hatred and fury, had surely never expressed more of either than at this moment. The ancient Druid was not merely the man who for an hour had been toying with him as with a child. He was the man who had performed the most extraordinary feat and who suddenly appeared to him as the most ruthless and dangerous foe. A man like that must be got rid of on the spot, since the opportunity presented itself.

"I'm done!" said the old man. "He's going to eat me up! Crikey, what an ogre!.. Help! Murder! Help!.. Oh, look at his iron fingers! He's going to strangle me!.. Unless he uses a dagger.. or a rope.. No, a revolver! I prefer that, it's neater.. Fire away, Alexis. Two of the seven bullets have already made holes in my best Sunday robe. That leaves five. Fire away, Alexis."

Each word aggravated Vorski's fury. He was eager to get the work over and he shouted:

"Otto.. Conrad.. are you ready?"

He raised his arm. The two assistants likewise took aim. Four paces in front of them stood the old man, laughingly pleading for mercy:

"Please, kind gentlemen, have pity on a poor beggar.. I won't do it again.. I'll be a good boy.. Kind gentlemen, please.."

Vorski repeated:

"Otto.. Conrad.. attention!.. I'm counting three: one.. two.. three.. fire!"

The three shots rang out together. The Druid whirled round with one leg in the air, then drew himself up straight, opposite his adversaries, and cried, in a tragic voice:

"A hit, a palpable hit! Shot through the body! Dead, for a ducat!.. The ancient Druid's kaput!.. A tragic development! Oh, the poor old Druid, who was so fond of his joke!"

"Fire!" roared Vorski. "Shoot, can't you, you idiots? Fire!"

"Fire! Fire!" repeated the Druid. "Bang! Bang! A bull's eye!.. Two!.. Three bull's eyes!.. Your shot, Conrad: bang!.. Yours, Otto: bang!"

The shots rattled and echoed through the great resounding hall. The bewildered and furious accomplices were gesticulating before their target, while the invulnerable old man danced and kicked, now almost squatting on his heels, now leaping up with astounding agility:

"Lord, what fun one can have in a cave! And what a fool you are, Vorski, my own! You blooming old prophet!.. What a mug! But, I say, however could you take it all in? The Bengal lights! The crackers! And the trouser-button! And your old mother's ring!.. You silly juggins! What a spoof!"

Vorski stopped. He realized that the three revolvers had been made harmless, but how? By what unprecedented marvel? What was at the bottom of all this fantastic adventure? Who was that demon standing in front of him?

He flung away his useless weapon and looked at the old man. Was he thinking of seizing him in his arms and crushing the life out of him? He also looked at the woman and seemed ready to fall upon her. But he obviously no longer felt equal to facing those two strange creatures, who appeared to him to be remote from the world and from actuality.

Then, quickly, he turned on his heel and, calling to his accomplices, made for the crypts, followed by the ancient Druid's jeers:

"Look at that now! He's slinging his hook! And the God-Stone, what about it? What do you want me to do with it?.. I say, isn't he showing a clean pair of heels!.. Hi! Are your trousers on fire? Yoicks, tally-ho, tally-ho! Proph – et Proph – et!."

CHAPTER XV

THE HALL OF THE UNDERGROUND SACRIFICES

Vorski had never known fear and he was perhaps not yielding to an actual sense of fear in taking to flight now. But he no longer knew what he was doing. His bewildered brain was filled with a whirl of contradictory and incoherent ideas in which the intuition of an irretrievable and to some extent supernatural defeat held the first place.

Believing as he did in witchcraft and wonders, he had an impression that Vorski, the man of destiny, had fallen from his mission and been replaced by another chosen favourite of destiny. There were two miraculous forces opposed to each other, one emanating from him, Vorski, the other from the ancient Druid; and the second was absorbing the first. Véronique's resurrection, the ancient Druid's personality, the speeches, the jokes, the leaps and bounds, the actions, the invulnerability of that spring-heeled individual, all this seemed to him magical and fabulous; and it created, in these caves of the barbaric ages, a peculiar atmosphere which stifled and demoralized him.

He was eager to return to the surface of the earth. He wanted to breathe and see. And what he wanted above all to see was the tree stripped of its branches to which he had tied Véronique and on which Véronique had expired.

"For she is dead," he snarled, as he crawled through the narrow passage which communicated with the third and largest of the crypts. "She is dead. I know what death means. I have often held it in my hands and I make no mistakes. Then how did that demon manage to bring her to life again?"

He stopped abruptly near the block on which he had picked up the sceptre:

"Unless." he said.

Conrad, following him, cried:

"Hurry up, instead of chattering."

Vorski allowed himself to be pulled along; but, as he went, he continued:

"Shall I tell you what I think, Conrad? Well, the woman he showed us, the one asleep, wasn't that one at all. Was she even alive? Oh, the old wizard is capable of anything! He'll have modelled a figure, a wax doll, and given it her likeness."

"You're mad. Get on!"

"I'm not mad. That woman was not alive. The one who died on the tree is properly dead. And you'll find her again up there, I warrant you. Miracles, yes, but not such a miracle as that!"

Having left their lantern behind them, the three accomplices kept bumping against the wall and the upright stones. Their footsteps echoed from vault to vault. Conrad never ceased grumbling:

"I warned you.. We ought to have broken his head."

Otto, out of breath with walking, said nothing.

Thus, groping their way, they reached the lobby which preceded the entrance-crypt; and they were not a little surprised to find that this first hall was dark, though the passage which they had dug in the upper part, under the roots of the dead oak, ought to have given a certain amount of light.

"That's funny," said Conrad.

"Pooh!" said Otto. "We've only got to find the ladder hooked to the wall. Here, I have it.. here's a step.. and the next.."

He climbed the rungs, but was pulled up almost at once:

"Can't get any farther.. It's as if there had been a fall of earth."

"Impossible!" Vorski protested. "However, wait a bit, I was forgetting: I have my pocket-lighter."

He struck a light; and the same cry of anger escaped all three of them: the whole of the top of the staircase and half the room was buried under a heap of stones and sand, with the trunk of the dead oak fallen in the middle. Not a chance of escape remained.

Vorski gave way to a fit of despair and collapsed on the stairs:

"We're tricked. It's that old brute who has played us this trick.. which shows that he's not alone."

He bewailed his fate, raving, lacking the strength to continue the unequal struggle. But Conrad grew angry:

"I say, Vorski, this isn't like you, you know."

"There's nothing to be done against that fellow."

"Nothing to be done! In the first place, there's this, as I've told you twenty times: wring his neck. Oh, why did I restrain myself?"

"You couldn't even have laid a hand on him. Did any of our bullets touch him?"

"Our bullets.. our bullets," muttered Conrad. "All this strikes me as mighty queer. Hand me your lighter. I have another revolver, which comes from the Priory: and I loaded it myself yesterday morning. I'll soon see."

He examined the weapon and was not long in discovering that the seven cartridges which he had put in the cylinder had been replaced by seven cartridges from which the bullets had been extracted and which could therefore fire nothing except blank shots.

"That explains it," he said, "and your ancient Druid is no more of a wizard than I am. If our revolvers had been really loaded, we'd have shot him down like a dog."

But the explanation only increased Vorski's alarm:

"And how did he unload them? At what moment did he manage to take our revolvers from our pockets and put them back after drawing the charges? I did not leave go of mine for an instant."

"No more did I," Conrad admitted.

"And I defy any one to touch it without my knowing. So what then? Doesn't it prove that that demon has a special power? After all, we must look at things as they are. He's a man who possesses secrets of his own.. and who has means at his disposal, means which."

Conrad shrugged his shoulders:

"Vorski, this business has shattered you. You were within reach of the goal and yet you let go at the first obstacle. You're turned into a dish-cloth. Well, I don't bow my head like you. Tricked? Why so? If he comes after us, there are three of us."

"He won't come. He'll leave us here shut up in a burrow with no way out of it."

"Then, if he doesn't come, I'll go back there, I will! I've got my knife; that's enough for me."

"You're wrong, Conrad."

"How am I wrong? I'm a match for any man, especially for that old blighter; and he's only got a sleeping woman to help him."

"Conrad, he's not a man and she's not a woman. Be careful."

"I'm careful and I'm going."

"You're going, you're going; but what's your plan?"

"I've no plan. Or rather, if I have, it's to out that beggar."

"All the same, mind what you're doing. Don't go for him bull-headed; try to take him by surprise."

"Well, of course!" said Conrad, moving away. "I'm not ass enough to risk his attacks. Be easy, I've got the bounder!"

Conrad's daring comforted Vorski.

"After all," he said, when his accomplice was gone, "he's right. If that old Druid didn't come after us, it's because he's got other ideas in his head. He certainly doesn't expect us to return on the offensive; and Conrad can very well take him by surprise. What do you say, Otto?"

Otto shared his opinion:

"He has only to bide his time," he replied.

Fifteen minutes passed. Vorski gradually recovered his assurance. He had yielded to the reaction, after an excess of hope followed by disappointment too great for him to bear and also because of the weariness and depression produced by his drinking-bout. But the fighting spirit stimulated him once more; and he was anxious to have done with his adversary.

"I shouldn't be surprised," he said, "if Conrad had finished him off by now."

By this time he had acquired an exaggerated confidence which proved his unbalanced state of mind; and he wanted to go back again at once.

"Come along, Otto, it's the last trip. An old beggar to get rid of; and the thing's done. You've got your dagger? Besides, it won't be wanted. My two hands will do the trick."

"And suppose that blasted Druid has friends?"

"We'll see."

He once more went towards the crypts, moving cautiously and watching the opening of the passages which led from one to the other. No sound reached their ears. The light in the third crypt showed them the way.

"Conrad must have succeeded," Vorski observed. "If not, he would have shirked the fight and come back to us."

Otto agreed.

"It's a good sign, of course, that we don't see him. The ancient Druid must have had a bad time of it. Conrad is a scorcher."

They entered the third crypt. Things were in the places where they had left them: the sceptre on the block and the pommel, which Vorski had unfastened, a little way off, on the ground. But, when he cast his eyes towards the shadowy recess where the ancient Druid was sleeping when they first arrived, he was astounded to see the old fellow, not exactly at the same place, but between the recess and the exit to the passage.

"Hang it, what's he doing?" he stammered, at once upset by that unexpected presence. "One would think he was asleep!"

The ancient Druid, in fact, appeared to be asleep. Only, why on earth was he sleeping in that attitude, flat on his stomach, with his arms stretched out on either side and his face to the floor? No man on his guard, or at least aware that he was in some sort of danger, would expose himself in this way to the enemy's attack. Moreover – Vorski's eyes were gradually growing accustomed to the half-darkness of the end crypt – moreover the white robe was marked with stains which looked red, which undoubtedly were red. What did it mean?