The Secret of Sarek - Maurice Leblanc (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📗

“What does it mean?” repeated Honorine. “François and M. Stéphane!⁠ ⁠… Why did they not make for the mainland?”

“Perhaps,” Véronique explained, “they were afraid of being observed and questioned on landing.”

“No, they are known, especially François, who often used to go with me. Besides, the identity-papers are in the boat. No, they were waiting there, hidden behind the rock.”

“But, Honorine, if they were hiding, why do they show themselves now?”

“Ah, that’s just it, that’s just it!⁠ ⁠… I don’t understand⁠ ⁠… and it strikes me as odd.⁠ ⁠… What must Corréjou and the others think?”

The two boats, of which the second was now gliding in the wake of the first, had almost stopped. All the passengers seemed to be looking round at the motorboat, which came rapidly in their direction and slackened speed when she was level with the second boat. In this way, she continued on a line parallel with that of the two boats and fifteen or twenty yards away.

“I don’t understand.⁠ ⁠… I don’t understand,” muttered Honorine.

The motor had been cut off and the motorboat now very slowly reached the space that separated the two fish-boats.

And suddenly the two women saw François stoop and then stand up again and draw his right arm back, as though he were going to throw something.

And at the same time Stéphane Maroux acted in the same way.

Then the unexpected, terrifying thing happened.

“Oh!” cried Véronique.

She hid her eyes for a second, but at once raised her head again and saw the hideous sight in all its horror.

Two things had been thrown across the little space, one from the bow, flung by François, the other from the stern, flung by Stéphane Maroux.

And two bursts of fire at once shot up from the two boats, followed by two whirls of smoke.

The explosions reechoed. For a moment, nothing of what happened amid that black cloud was visible. Then the curtain parted, blown aside by the wind, and Véronique and Honorine saw the two boats swiftly sinking, while their occupants jumped into the sea.

The sight, the infernal sight, did not last long. They saw, standing on one of the buoys that marked the channel, a woman holding a child in her arms, without moving: then some motionless bodies, no doubt killed by the explosion; then two men fighting, mad perhaps. And all this went down with the boats.

A few eddies, some black specks floating on the surface; and that was all.

Honorine and Véronique, struck dumb with terror, had not uttered a single word. The thing surpassed the worst that their anguished minds could have conceived.

When it was all over, Honorine put her hand to her head and, in a hollow voice which Véronique was never to forget, said:

“My head’s bursting. Oh, the poor people of Sarek! They were my friends, the friends of my childhood; and I shall never see them again.⁠ ⁠… The sea never gives up its dead at Sarek: it keeps them. It has its coffins all ready: thousands and thousands of hidden coffins.⁠ ⁠… Oh, my head is bursting!⁠ ⁠… I shall go mad⁠ ⁠… mad like François, my poor François!”

Véronique did not answer. She was grey in the face. With clutching fingers she clung to the balcony, gazing downwards as one gazes into an abyss into which one is about to fling oneself. What would her son do? Would he save those people, whose shouts of distress now reached her ears, would he save them without delay? One may have fits of madness; but the attacks pass away at the sight of certain things.

The motorboat had backed at first to avoid the eddies. François and Stéphane, whose red cap and white cap were still visible, were standing in the same positions at the bow and the stern; and they held in their hands⁠ ⁠… what? The two women could not see clearly, because of the distance, what they held in their hands. It looked like two rather long sticks.

“Poles, to help them,” suggested Véronique.

“Or guns,” said Honorine.

The black specks were still floating. There were nine of them, the nine heads of the survivors, whose arms also the two women saw moving from time to time and whose cries for help they heard.

Some were hurriedly moving away from the motorboat, but four were swimming towards it; and, of those four, two could not fail to reach it.

Suddenly François and Stéphane made the same movement, the movement of marksmen taking aim.

There were two flashes, followed by the sound of a single report.

The heads of the two swimmers disappeared.

“Oh, the monsters!” stammered Véronique, almost swooning and falling on her knees.

Honorine, beside her, began screaming:

“François! François!”

Her voice did not carry, first because it was too weak and then the wind was in her face. But she continued:

“François! François!”

She next stumbled across the room and into the corridor, in search of something, and returned to the window, still shouting:

“François! François!”

She had ended by finding the shell which she used as a signal. But, on lifting it to her mouth, she found that she could produce only dull and indistinct sounds from it:

“Oh, curse the thing!” she cried, flinging the shell away. “I have no strength left.⁠ ⁠… François! François!”

She was terrible to look at, with her hair all in disorder and her face covered with the sweat of fever. Véronique implored her:

“Please, Honorine, please!”

“But look at them, look at them!”

The motorboat was drifting forward down below, with the two marksmen at their posts, holding their guns ready for murder.

The survivors fled. Two of them hung back in the rear.

These two were aimed at. Their heads disappeared from view.

“But look at them!” Honorine said, explosively, in a hoarse voice. “They’re hunting them down! They’re killing them like game!⁠ ⁠… Oh, the poor people of Sarek!⁠ ⁠…”

Another shot. Another black speck vanished.

Véronique was writhing in despair. She shook the rails of the balcony, as she might have shaken the bars of a cage in which she was imprisoned.

“Vorski! Vorski!” she groaned, stricken by the recollection of her husband. “He’s Vorski’s son!”

Suddenly she felt herself seized by the throat and saw,