Daniel LeBlanc—Reinhold von Rumpel

Daniel LeBlanc and Reinhold von Rumpel are bound together by the search for the Sea of Flames, though the evidence presents no face-to-face meeting between them. Their connection is indirect and unequal: Daniel’s work and disappearance leave a trail, while von Rumpel, following that trail, tries to discover where the valuable object went and who might know its whereabouts. A librarian’s documents and a telephone call from France place the pursuit on two scales at once: the legendary history of a stone and the practical details of a locksmith’s arrest.

An indirect connection

Daniel enters von Rumpel’s account not through a conversation or shared scene, but through information gathered after his arrest. A year before the call described in the novel, von Rumpel had asked about the locksmith. The question identifies Daniel as a person of interest in a longer-running inquiry, but the available evidence does not establish that Daniel knew of von Rumpel or understood that he was being sought.

The distinction matters to the shape of their relationship. Von Rumpel can ask questions about Daniel, connect him with measurements made in Saint-Malo, and speculate about his family’s flight; Daniel is absent from the exchange and cannot confirm or correct any inference. What passes between them is evidence rather than dialogue: an arrest report, drawings, skeleton keys, a photograph, and von Rumpel’s deductions. Their connection is therefore investigative and object-centered, not a demonstrated personal feud or direct confrontation.

The stone behind the search

Von Rumpel’s interest in Daniel belongs to his pursuit of the Sea of Flames. While ill and weakened by treatment, von Rumpel receives a bundle from Vienna containing copies of the Tavernier and the Streeter, as well as stencil duplicates of the 1604 Latin work Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia. The librarian has gathered everything she could find concerning the stone; the surviving account amounts to nine paragraphs. Von Rumpel concentrates on those texts even as the treatment leaves him dizzy and weak and impairs ordinary tasks such as combing his hair and fastening his coat.

The documents join legendary accounts to his personal fixation. They describe a goddess of the earth who loved a god of the sea and a prince who recovered from catastrophic injuries. Von Rumpel imagines the flame-haired goddess moving through tunnels underground, and hears the legend that the keeper of the stone will live forever. These stories do not establish Daniel’s role in the stone’s history, but they show the mythic object that gives von Rumpel’s practical inquiries their direction. Daniel matters to him as a possible link in a search whose stakes have been enlarged by legend and by von Rumpel’s own condition.

Daniel’s arrest and the trail

The clearest account of Daniel’s fate comes by telephone from Jean Brignon, who identifies himself and reminds von Rumpel that the latter had previously offered help if Brignon found information. Brignon reports that Daniel was accused of conspiracy connected with a château in Brittany and arrested in January 1941 after a local person informed on him. The authorities found drawings and skeleton keys, and Daniel was photographed taking measurements in Saint-Malo.

Those details give Daniel’s trade a double meaning within the inquiry. Drawings, keys, and measurements are consistent with the work of a locksmith, yet to the authorities they accompany an accusation of conspiracy. The evidence does not explain what the château was, what Daniel’s measurements were for, or whether the accusation was true. Nor can Brignon establish where Daniel was taken: when von Rumpel asks whether he was sent to a camp, Brignon says he has not been able to find out because the system is elaborate. Daniel’s arrest thus produces information but not resolution. His location remains unknown, and the search for him cannot simply be separated from the wider search for the Sea of Flames.

Brignon also names the informer: Claude Levitte, a Malouin. This narrows one part of the chain by identifying the local source who tipped off the authorities, but it does not answer von Rumpel’s central questions about Daniel’s destination or the stone. The call brings a concrete piece of the past into view while preserving the uncertainty around what happened after the arrest.

Inference, absence, and consequence

After hearing Brignon’s report, von Rumpel connects Daniel with the blind daughter and the Apartment on rue des Patriarches, which had been vacant since June 1940 while the Paris Natural History Museum paid its rent. He reasons from those circumstances toward Saint-Malo: if Daniel had to flee and had something valuable to carry, he might choose that city because someone he trusted lived there. This is von Rumpel’s inference, not confirmation that Daniel carried the Sea of Flames or that his destination was established. The novel leaves the distinction between clue and proof intact.

That uncertainty defines the relation’s significance. Daniel’s movements become legible to von Rumpel only in fragments, and family circumstances are transformed into lines of investigation. The report of the arrest connects the locksmith to Saint-Malo; the vacant Paris flat and the blind daughter help von Rumpel imagine why he might have gone there; the still-unlocated Daniel remains the missing link. Yet, after receiving Brignon’s information, von Rumpel thanks him and ends the call without telling him whether he will help. The exchange therefore closes not with an alliance or a discovery, but with a fresh, private deduction. Daniel is the absent person around whom von Rumpel’s search gathers, while the stone remains the force that makes those scattered facts seem to point in one direction.