then my mind is at rest about that. The safe in my bedroom has only two keys. Here is one." He took a key from his waistcoat pocket and held it out to them. "And the other is in this safe."
The face of M. Formery was lighted up with a splendid satisfaction. He might have rescued the coronet with his own hands. He cried triumphantly, "There, you see!"
"See? See?" cried the millionaire in a sudden bellow. "I see that they have robbed me—plundered me. Oh, my pictures! My wonderful pictures! Such investments!"
CHAPTER XII
THE THEFT OF THE PENDANT
They stood round the millionaire observing his anguish, with eyes in which shone various degrees of sympathy. As if no longer able to bear the sight of such woe, Sonia slipped out of the room.
The millionaire lamented his loss and abused the thieves by turns, but always at the top of his magnificent voice.
Suddenly a fresh idea struck him. He clapped his hand to his brow and cried: "That eight hundred pounds! Charolais will never buy the Mercrac now! He was not a bona fide purchaser!"
The Duke's lips parted slightly and his eyes opened a trifle wider than their wont. He turned sharply on his heel, and almost sprang into the other drawing-room. There he laughed at his ease.
M. Formery kept saying to the millionaire: "Be calm, M. Gournay-Martin. Be calm! We shall recover your masterpieces. I pledge you my word. All we need is time. Have patience. Be calm!"
His soothing remonstrances at last had their effect. The millionaire grew calm:
"Guerchard?" he said. "Where is Guerchard?"
M. Formery presented Guerchard to him.
"Are you on their track? Have you a clue?" said the millionaire.
"I think," said M. Formery in an impressive tone, "that we may now proceed with the inquiry in the ordinary way."
He was a little piqued by the millionaire's so readily turning from him to the detective. He went to a writing-table, set some sheets of paper before him, and prepared to make notes on the answers to his questions. The Duke came back into the drawing-room; the inspector was summoned. M. Gournay-Martin sat down on a couch with his hands on his knees and gazed gloomily at M. Formery. Germaine, who was sitting on a couch near the door, waiting with an air of resignation for her father to cease his lamentations, rose and moved to a chair nearer the writing-table. Guerchard kept moving restlessly about the room, but noiselessly. At last he came to a standstill, leaning against the wall behind M. Formery.
M. Formery went over all the matters about which he had already questioned the Duke. He questioned the millionaire and his daughter about the Charolais, the theft of the motor-cars, and the attempted theft of the pendant. He questioned them at less length about the composition of their household—the servants and their characters. He elicited no new fact.
He paused, and then he said, carelessly as a mere matter of routine: "I should like to know, M. Gournay-Martin, if there has ever been any other robbery committed at your house?"
"Three years ago this scoundrel Lupin—" the millionaire began violently.
"Yes, yes; I know all about that earlier burglary. But have you been robbed since?" said M. Formery, interrupting him.
"No, I haven't been robbed since that burglary; but my daughter has," said the millionaire.
"Your daughter?" said M. Formery.
"Yes; I have been robbed two or three times during the last three years," said Germaine.
"Dear me! But you ought to have told us about this before. This is extremely interesting, and most important," said M. Formery, rubbing his hands, "I suppose you suspect Victoire?"
"No, I don't," said Germaine quickly. "It couldn't have been Victoire. The last two thefts were committed at the chateau when Victoire was in Paris in charge of this house."
M. Formery seemed taken aback, and he hesitated, consulting his notes. Then he said: "Good—good. That confirms my hypothesis."
"What hypothesis?" said M. Gournay-Martin quickly.
"Never mind—never mind," said M. Formery solemnly. And, turning to Germaine, he went on: "You say, Mademoiselle, that these thefts began about three years ago?"
"Yes, I think they began about three years ago in August."
"Let me see. It was in the month of August, three years ago, that your father, after receiving a threatening letter like the one he received last night, was the victim of a burglary?" said M. Formery.
"Yes, it was—the scoundrels!" cried the millionaire fiercely.
"Well, it would be interesting to know which of your servants entered your service three years ago," said M. Formery.
"Victoire has only been with us a year at the outside," said Germaine.
"Only a year?" said M. Formery quickly, with an air of some vexation. He paused and added, "Exactly—exactly. And what was the nature of the last theft of which you were the victim?"
"It was a pearl brooch—not unlike the pendant which his Grace gave me yesterday," said Germaine.
"Would you mind showing me that pendant? I should like to see it," said M. Formery.
"Certainly—show it to him, Jacques. You have it, haven't you?" said Germaine, turning to the Duke.
"Me? No. How should I have it?" said the Duke in some surprise. "Haven't you got it?"
"I've only got the case—the empty case," said Germaine, with a startled air.
"The empty case?" said the Duke, with growing surprise.
"Yes," said Germaine. "It was after we came back from our useless journey to the station. I remembered suddenly that I had started without the pendant. I went to the bureau and picked up the case; and it was empty."
"One moment—one moment," said M. Formery. "Didn't you catch this young Bernard Charolais with this case in his hands, your Grace?"
"Yes," said the Duke. "I caught him with it in his pocket."
"Then you may depend upon it that the young rascal had slipped the pendant out of its case and you only recovered the empty case from him," said M. Formery triumphantly.
"No," said the Duke. "That is not so. Nor could the thief have been the burglar who broke open the bureau to get at the keys. For long after both of them were out of the house I took a cigarette from the box which stood on the bureau beside the case which held the pendant. And it occurred to me that the young rascal might have played that very trick on me. I opened the case and the pendant was there."
"It has been stolen!" cried the millionaire; "of course it has been stolen."
"Oh, no,
