
The Secret Tomb
Translated by Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
Free public-domain edition — preview in your browser, no account required for the first chapter.
Preview free · sign up to save progress, download to your shelf, and sync with the apps
Already have an account? Sign in
This book offers a gripping blend of mystery, adventure, and wit, with a strong female protagonist who uses intelligence and courage to overcome every obstacle.
Edition details
Book Summary
A circus performer turned detective, Dorothy, uncovers a generations-old treasure of diamonds and gold medals while protecting her adopted family from the villainous d'Estreicher. Through daring escapes, clever disguises, and sharp intuition, she unravels a mystery tied to her own noble lineage.
Dorothy, a resourceful circus performer, leads her troupe—including four war orphans—through a series of adventures centered on a hidden treasure. After saving Saint-Quentin from an assassination attempt, she investigates the Château de Roborey and uncovers a plot involving stolen sapphires and a mysterious gold medal. She faces the cunning criminal d'Estreicher, who kidnaps her friends and threatens her life. Using her clairvoyance and marksmanship, Dorothy outwits him, exposing an impostor in a fake resurrection scheme. She deciphers the Latin motto 'In robore fortuna' to find diamonds hidden in an oak tree, while also discovering her aristocratic heritage. The story culminates in a tense standoff where Dorothy spares d'Estreicher, and her three suitors propose marriage, leaving her to choose among them.
Reading guide
Go deeper in The Secret Tomb
Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
- Setup
- Escalation
- Breaking point
- Closing
Dorothy’s psychological peak occurs when she realizes her bluff is failing—d’Estreicher sees through the illus…
Dorothy
Dorothy commands a traveling troupe of four orphaned boys while secretly pursuing the word 'Roborey' her dying father repeated, a thread that leads her to estranged aristocratic cousins and a buried family fortune. Her gaiety masks a fierce grief and a willingness to risk everything, even as she dreads that her father was murdered rather than lost to fever. She is the engine of the hunt: her daring, her instinct for the theatrical, and her refusal to be excluded from the inheritance make her both the story's heart and its most unpredictable force.
Baron Saint-Quentin
Saint-Quentin travels with Dorothy's caravan as her right-hand man, a stickler for propriety who nonetheless thrives on the road and in her company. When she promises him fine clothes and a princess's future once the Golden Fleece is won, his pleasure curdles, since wealth means the end of their close companionship. His quiet attachment and his unease about what awaits them give the treasure hunt a human cost beyond gold, and his steadiness anchors Dorothy's wilder schemes.
Raoul Davernoie
Raoul moves between Hillocks Manor and Dorothy's orbit as both kin and threat, the relative whose presence unsettles the four boys who guard her. He rows her across the lake where sunken stones spell out the family motto, and he joins her schemes with a laughing willingness that may conceal his own claim. His ambiguous loyalty keeps the early mystery taut: is he ally, rival, or the very danger the children sense in the thickets?
D'Estreicher
D'Estreicher orchestrates a long con built on a dress rehearsal, a bribed confederate, and a forged identity, all to seize the codicil at the reading of the will. When his accomplice wavers, he kills him without hesitation and vanishes into a Russian soldier's disguise, his shaved skull and slung arm rendering him unrecognizable. His cold methodical violence transforms the treasure hunt from a family puzzle into a manhunt, and his whistle in the dark signals that the real enemy is already inside the walls.
Maître Delarue
Delarue arrives at the clock tower clutching the gold medal and the instructions of a client long dead, the legal hinge on which the whole inheritance turns. He is pompous about his office yet craven in a crisis, cowering in corners and sniveling when shots are fired, and Dorothy must drag him by the hand like a child. His comic cowardice sharpens the stakes: the man who represents the dead is the least equipped to face what the dead have arranged.
Archibald Webster
Webster answers Dorothy's summons as one of the four scattered heirs, producing the medal passed down through his mother's line and speaking excellent French with quiet formality. He is a decorated veteran, and his calm competence contrasts with Delarue's panic and Dario's heat. His presence widens the family circle beyond France and makes the inheritance a matter of international cousins bound by a two-hundred-year-old promise, giving the hunt its sense of a scattered clan finally converging.
Treasure and Legacy
The central plot revolves around a hidden treasure of diamonds and gold medals passed down through generations, with characters driven by the promise of inherited wealth and the need to uncover family secrets.
Family and Kinship
The narrative explores bonds of blood and chosen family, as Dorothy adopts four orphans and later discovers her aristocratic lineage, while the treasure hunt unites distant cousins and tests loyalties.
Intelligence and Intuition
Dorothy repeatedly solves mysteries and outwits adversaries through keen observation, logical deduction, and a natural intuition, contrasting with brute force and criminal cunning.
Good Versus Evil
The story pits Dorothy and her allies against the villainous d'Estreicher, who commits murder, theft, and kidnapping, highlighting a clear moral struggle between justice and ruthless greed.