"Yes, your death will make it easier for us."

"My death? Thanks to the information lodged by the colonel, in a few hours you will be tracked down and most likely caught: in any case, you will be unable to pursue your search. Therefore you have hardly any choice. It's the money which I'm offering you, or else . . . prison."

"And, if we accept," asked Bournef, to whom the argument seemed to appeal, "when shall we be paid?"

"At once."

"Then the money is here?"

"Yes."

"A contemptible sum, as I said before?"

"No, a much larger sum than you hope for; infinitely larger."

"How much?"

"Four millions."

CHAPTER V

HUSBAND AND WIFE

The accomplices started, as though they had received an electric shock.

Bournef darted forward:

"What did you say?"

"I said four millions, which means a million for each of you."

"Look here! . . . Do you mean it? . . . Four millions? . . ."

"Four millions is what I said."

The figure was so gigantic and the proposal so utterly unexpected that the accomplices had the same feeling which Patrice Belval on his side underwent. They suspected a trap; and Bournef could not help saying:

"The offer is more than we expected. . . . And I am wondering what induced you to make it."

"Would you have been satisfied with less?"

"Yes," said Bournef, candidly.

"Unfortunately, I can't make it less. I have only one means of escaping death; and that is to open my safe for you. And my safe contains four bundles of a thousand bank-notes each."

Bournef could not get over his astonishment and became more and more suspicious.

"How do you know that, after taking the four millions, we shall not insist on more?"

"Insist on what? The secret of the site?"

"Yes."

"Because you know that I would as soon die as tell it you. The four millions are the maximum. Do you want them or don't you? I ask for no promise in return, no oath of any kind, for I am convinced that, when you have filled your pockets, you will have but one thought, to clear off, without handicapping yourselves with a murder which might prove your undoing."

The argument was so unanswerable that Bournef ceased discussing and asked:

"Is the safe in this room?"

"Yes, between the first and second windows, behind my portrait."

Bournef took down the picture and said:

"I see nothing."

"It's all right. The lines of the safe are marked by the moldings of the central panel. In the middle you will see what looks like a rose, not of wood but of iron; and there are four others at the four corners of the panel. These four turn to the right, by successive notches, forming a word which is the key to the lock, the word Cora."

"The first four letters of Coralie?" asked Bournef, following Essares'

instructions as he spoke.

"No," said Essares Bey, "the first four letters of the Coran. Have you done that?"

After a moment, Bournef answered:

"Yes, I've finished. And the key?"

"There's no key. The fifth letter of the word, the letter N, is the letter of the central rose."

Bournef turned this fifth rose; and presently a click was heard.

"Now pull," said Essares. "That's it. The safe is not deep: it's dug in one of the stones of the front wall. Put in your hand. You'll find four pocket-books."

It must be admitted that Patrice Belval expected to see something startling interrupt Bournef's quest and hurl him into some pit suddenly opened by Essares' trickery. And the three confederates seemed to share this unpleasant apprehension, for they were gray in the face, while Bournef himself appeared to be working very cautiously and suspiciously.

At last he turned round and came and sat beside Essares. In his hands he held a bundle of four pocket-books, short but extremely bulky and bound together with a canvas strap. He unfastened the buckle of the strap and opened one of the pocket-books.

His knees shook under their precious burden, and, when he had taken a huge sheaf of notes from one of the compartments, his hands were like the hands of a very old man trembling with fever.

"Thousand-franc notes," he murmured. "Ten packets of thousand-franc notes."

Brutally, like men prepared to fight one another, each of the other three laid hold of a pocket-book, felt inside and mumbled:

"Ten packets . . . they're all there. . . . Thousand-franc notes . . ."

And one of them forthwith cried, in a choking voice: