[Gutenberg 34939] • The Secret of Sarek

One day in July 1902, M. Antoine d'Hergemont, the author of a series of well-known studies on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, was walking in the Bois with his daughter VEronique, when he was assaulted by four men, receiving a blow in the face with a walking-stick which felled him to the ground.

After a short struggle and in spite of his desperate efforts, VEronique, the beautiful VEronique, as she was called by her friends, was dragged away and bundled into a motorcar which the spectators of this very brief scene saw making off in the direction of Saint-Cloud.

It was a plain case of kidnapping. The truth became known next morning. Count Alexis Vorski, a young Polish nobleman of dubious reputation but of some social prominence and, by his own account, of royal blood, was in love with VEronique d'Hergemont and VEronique with him. Repelled and more than once insulted by the father, he had planned the incident entirely without VEronique's knowledge or complicity.