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Page 41
The admiral put on his Mandarin spectacles. With his hands behind his
back, he bent and critically examined the contents. Then, very
carefully, he extracted a packet of papers, yellow and old, bound with
heavy cording. Beneath this packet was a medal of the Legion of Honor,
some rose leaves, and a small glove.
"Know what I think?" said the admiral, stilling the shake in his voice.
"This belonged to that mysterious Frenchman who lived here eighty years
ago. I'll wager that medal cost some blood. By cracky, what a find!"
"And the poor little glove and the rose leaves!" murmured the girl, in
pity. "It seems like a crime to disturb them."
"We shan't, my child. Our midnight friend wasn't digging yonder for
faded keepsakes. These papers are the things." The admiral cut the
string, and opened one of the documents. "H'm! Written in French. So
is this," looking at another, "and this. Here, Laura, cast your eye
over these, and tell us why some one was hunting for them."
Fitzgerald eyed Breitmann thoughtfully. The whole countenance of the
man had changed. Indeed, it resembled another face he had seen
somewhere; and it grew in his mind, slowly but surely, as dawn grows,
that Breitmann was not wholly ignorant in this affair. He had not
known who had been working at night; but that dizziness of the moment
gone, the haste in opening the case, the eagerness of the search last
night; all these, to Fitzgerald's mind, pointed to one thing: Breitmann
knew.
"I shall watch him."
Laura read the documents to herself first. Here and there was a word
which confused her; but she gathered the full sense of the remarkable
story. Her eyes shone like winter stars.
"Father!" she cried, dropping the papers, and spreading out her arms.
"Father, it's the greatest thing in the world. A treasure!"
"What's that, Laura?" straining his ears.
"A treasure, hidden by the soldiers of Napoleon; put together, franc by
franc, in the hope of some day rescuing the emperor from St. Helena.
It is romance! A real treasure of two millions of francs!" clapping
her hands.
"Where?" It was Breitmann who spoke. His voice was not clear.
"Corsica!"
"Corsica!" The admiral laughed like a child. Right under his very
nose all these years, and he cruising all over the chart! "Laura,
dear, there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't take the yacht
and go and dig up this pretty sum."
"No reason in the world!" But the secretary did not pronounce these
words aloud.
"A telegram for you, sir," said the butler, handing the yellow envelope
to Fitzgerald.
"Will you pardon me?" he said drawing off to a window.
"Go ahead," said the admiral, fingering the medal of the Legion of
Honor.
Fitzgerald read:
"Have made inquiries. Your man never applied to any of the
metropolitan dailies. Few ever heard of him."
He jammed the message into a pocket, and returned to the group about
the case. Where should he begin? Breitmann had lied.
CHAPTER XI
PREPARATIONS AND COGITATIONS
The story itself was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the
grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not niggard with
his ink when he cursed the English and damned the Prussians; and he
obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he
termed the sniveling nobility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he
not himself noble? Had not his parents and his brothers gone to the
guillotine with the rest of them? But he, thank God, had no wooden
mind; he could look progress and change in the face and follow their
bent. And now, all the crimes and heroisms of the Revolution, all the
glorious pageantry of the empire, had come to nothing. A Bourbon,
thick-skulled, sordid, worn-out, again sat upon the throne, while the
Great Man languished on a rock in the Atlantic. Fools that they had
been, not to have hidden the little king of Rome as against this very
dog! It was pitiful. He never saw a shower in June that he did not
hail curses upon it. To have lost Waterloo for a bucketful of water!
Thousand thunders! could he ever forget that terrible race back to
Paris? Could he ever forget the shame of it? Grouchy for a fool and
Bl�cher for a blundering ass. _Eh bien_; they would soon tumble the
Bourbons into oblivion again.
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