Maurice Leblanc - The Secret of Sarek

"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."

[Pg 272]"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.

[Pg 273]"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."

[Pg 274]"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, glitter[Pg 275]ing 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?"

"Velleda's."

Vorski eyed him with renewed uneasiness:

"Velleda?"

"Yes, or at least the woman whom I call Velleda, 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,[Pg 276] Velleda 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, Velleda 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 Velleda's finger, will you trust me and will you believe that your mother, in her grave, appointed Velleda to receive[Pg 277] 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.