Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/88

 However, he took courage again: he had not gone so far to turn back with empty hands.

But it was of no use to search the whole room, to open and shut all the drawers, even that privileged one where the parcel which had been so fatal to Cornelius had been deposited; he found ticketed, as in a botanical garden, the “Jane,” the “Jolin De Witte,” the hazelnut, and the roasted coffee-coloured tulip; but of the black tulip, or rather of the seedling bulbs within which it was still sleeping, not a trace was to be found.

And yet, on looking over the register of seeds and bulbs, which Van Baerle kept, if possible, even with greater exactitude and care than the first commercial houses of Amsterdam their ledgers, Boxtel read the following entry:—

“To-day, 20th of August, 1672, I have taken up the mother bulb of the grand black tulip, which I have divided into three perfect suckers.”

“Oh, these suckers, these suckers!” howled Boxtel, turning over everything in the dry-room, “Where could he have concealed them?”

Then suddenly striking his forehead in his frenzy, he called out, “Oh, wretch that I am! Would any one be separated from his suckers? Would one leave them at Dort, when one goes to the Hague? Could one live far from one’s bulbs, when they inclose the grand black tulip? He had time to get hold of them, the scoundrel, he has them about him, he has taken them to the Hague!”

It was like a flash of lightning which showed to Boxtel the abyss of a uselessly-committed crime.

Boxtel sank quite paralysed on that very table, and on that very spot where, some hours before, the unfortunate Van Baerle had so leisurely, and with such intense delight, contemplated his darling bulbs.