"My Dear Victorien,"Recent events, combined with certain very serious circumstances of which I will tell you, prove that I am the object of a cunningly devised plot against which I have perhaps delayed defending myself longer than I ought. At any rate, it is my duty, in the midst of the dangers which threaten my very life, to protect the magnificent discovery which mankind will owe to my efforts and to take precautionary measures which you will certainly not think unwarranted."I have, therefore, drawn up—as I alwaysrefused to do before—a detailed report of my discovery, the investigations that led up to it and the conclusions to which my experiments have led me. However improbable it may seem, however contrary to all the accepted laws, the truth is as I state and not otherwise."I have added to my report a very exact definition of the technical processes which should be employed in the installation and exploitation of my discovery, as also of my special views upon the financial management of the amphitheatre, the advertising, the floating of the business and the manner in which it might subsequently be extended by building in the garden and where the Lodge now stands a second amphitheatre to face the other side of the wall."I am sending you this report by the same post, sealed and registered, and I will ask you not to open it unless I come by some harm. As an additional precaution, I have not included in it the chemical formula which has resulted from my labours and which is the actual basis of my discovery. You will find it engraved on a small and very thin steel plate which I always carry inside the lining of my waistcoat. In this way you and you alone will have in your hands all the necessary factors for exploiting the invention. This will need no special qualificationsor scientific preparation. The report and the formula are ample. Holding these two, you are master of the situation; and no one can ever rob you of the material profits of the wonderful secret which I am bequeathing to you."And now, my dear boy, let us hope that all my presentiments are unfounded and that we shall soon be celebrating together the happy events which I foresee, including first and foremost your marriage with Bérangère. I have not yet been able to obtain a favourable reply from her and she has for some time appeared to me to be, as you put it, in a rather fanciful mood; but I have no doubt that your return will make her reconsider a refusal which she does not even attempt to justify."Ever affectionately yours,Noël Dorgeroux."
"My Dear Victorien,
"Recent events, combined with certain very serious circumstances of which I will tell you, prove that I am the object of a cunningly devised plot against which I have perhaps delayed defending myself longer than I ought. At any rate, it is my duty, in the midst of the dangers which threaten my very life, to protect the magnificent discovery which mankind will owe to my efforts and to take precautionary measures which you will certainly not think unwarranted.
"I have, therefore, drawn up—as I alwaysrefused to do before—a detailed report of my discovery, the investigations that led up to it and the conclusions to which my experiments have led me. However improbable it may seem, however contrary to all the accepted laws, the truth is as I state and not otherwise.
"I have added to my report a very exact definition of the technical processes which should be employed in the installation and exploitation of my discovery, as also of my special views upon the financial management of the amphitheatre, the advertising, the floating of the business and the manner in which it might subsequently be extended by building in the garden and where the Lodge now stands a second amphitheatre to face the other side of the wall.
"I am sending you this report by the same post, sealed and registered, and I will ask you not to open it unless I come by some harm. As an additional precaution, I have not included in it the chemical formula which has resulted from my labours and which is the actual basis of my discovery. You will find it engraved on a small and very thin steel plate which I always carry inside the lining of my waistcoat. In this way you and you alone will have in your hands all the necessary factors for exploiting the invention. This will need no special qualificationsor scientific preparation. The report and the formula are ample. Holding these two, you are master of the situation; and no one can ever rob you of the material profits of the wonderful secret which I am bequeathing to you.
"And now, my dear boy, let us hope that all my presentiments are unfounded and that we shall soon be celebrating together the happy events which I foresee, including first and foremost your marriage with Bérangère. I have not yet been able to obtain a favourable reply from her and she has for some time appeared to me to be, as you put it, in a rather fanciful mood; but I have no doubt that your return will make her reconsider a refusal which she does not even attempt to justify.
"Ever affectionately yours,
Noël Dorgeroux."
This letter reached me too late to allow me to catch the evening express. Besides, was there any urgency for my departure? Ought I not to wait for further news?
A casual observation made short work of my hesitation. As I sat reflecting, mechanically turning the envelope in my hands, I perceived that it had been opened and then fastened down again; what is more, this had been done ratherclumsily, probably by some one who had only a few seconds at his disposal.
The full gravity of the situation at once flashed across my mind. The man who had opened the letter before it was dispatched and who beyond a doubt was the man whom Noël Dorgeroux accused of plotting, this man now knew that Noël Dorgeroux carried on his person, in the lining of his waistcoat, a steel plate bearing an inscription containing the essential formula.
I examined the registered packet and observed that it had not been opened. Nevertheless, at all costs, though I was firmly resolved not to read my uncle's report, I undid the string and discovered a pasteboard tube. Inside this tube was a roll of paper which I eagerly examined. It consisted of blank pages and nothing else. The report had been stolen.
Three hours later, I was seated in a night train which did not reach Paris until the afternoon of the next day, Sunday. It was four o'clock when I walked out of the station at Meudon. The enemy had for at least two days known the contents of my uncle's letter, his report and the dreadful means of procuring the formula.
The staff at the Lodge consisted in its entirety of one old maid-servant, a little deaf and very short-sighted, who combined the functions, as occasion demanded, of parlour-maid, cook and gardener. Notwithstanding these manifold duties, Valentine hardly ever left her kitchen-range, which was situated in an extension built on to the house and opening directly upon the street.
This was where I found her. She did not seem surprised at my return—nothing, for that matter, ever surprised or perturbed her—and I at once saw that she was still living outside the course of events and that she would be unable to tell me anything useful. I gathered, however, that my uncle and Bérangère had gone out half an hour earlier.
"Together?" I asked.
"Good gracious, no! The master came through the kitchen and said, 'I'm going to post a letter. Then I shall go to the Yard.' Heleft a bottle behind him, you know, one of those blue medicine-bottles which he uses for his experiments."
"Where did he leave it, Valentine?"
"Why, over there, on the dresser. He must have forgotten it when he put on his overcoat, for he never parts with those bottles of his."
"It's not there, Valentine."
"Now that's a funny thing! M. Dorgeroux hasn't been back, I know."
"And has no one else been?"
"No. Yes, there has, though; a gentleman, a gentleman who came for Mlle. Bérangère a little while after."
"And did you go to fetch her?"
"Yes."
"Then it must have been while you were away . . ."
"You don't mean that! Oh, how M. Dorgeroux will scold me!"
"But who is the gentleman?"
"Upon my word, I couldn't tell you. . . . My sight is so bad. . . ."
"Do you know him?"
"No, I didn't recognize his voice."
"And did they both go out, Bérangère and he?"
"Yes, they crossed the road . . . opposite."
Opposite meant the path in the wood.
I thought for a second or two; and then, tearing a sheet of paper from my note-book, I wrote:
"My Dear Uncle,"Wait for me, when you come back, and don't leave the Lodge on any account. The danger is imminent."Victorien."
"My Dear Uncle,
"Wait for me, when you come back, and don't leave the Lodge on any account. The danger is imminent.
"Victorien."
"Give this to M. Dorgeroux as soon as you see him, Valentine. I shall be back in half an hour."
The path ran in a straight line through dense thickets with tiny leaves burgeoning on the twigs of the bushes. It had rained heavily during the last few days, but a bright spring sun was drying the ground and I could distinguish no trace of footsteps. After walking three hundred yards, however, I met a small boy of the neighbourhood, whom I knew by sight, coming back to the village and pushing his bicycle, which had burst a tyre.
"You don't happen to have seen Mlle. Bérangère, have you?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "with a gentleman."
"A gentleman wearing glasses?"
"Yes, a tall chap, with a big beard."
"Are they far away?"
"When I saw them, they were a mile and aquarter from here. I turned back later . . . they had taken the old road . . . the one that goes to the left."
I quickened my pace, greatly excited, for I was conscious of an increasing dread. I reached the old road. But, a little farther on, it brought me to an open space crossed by a number of paths. Which was I to take?
Feeling more and more anxious, I called out:
"Bérangère! . . . Bérangère!"
Presently I heard the hum of an engine and the sound of a motor-car getting under way. It must have been five hundred yards from where I was. I turned down a path in which, almost at once, I saw footsteps very clearly marked in the mud, the footsteps of a man and of a woman. These led me to the entrance of a cemetery which had not been used for over twenty years and which, standing on the boundary of two parishes, had become the subject of claims, counterclaims and litigation generally.
I made my way in. The tall grass had been trampled down along two lines which skirted the wall, passed before the remnants of what had once been the keeper's cottage, joined around the kerb of a cistern fitted up as a well and were next continued to the wall of a half-demolished little mortuary chapel.
Between the cistern and the chapel the soil had been trodden several times over. Beyond the chapel there was only one track of footsteps, those of a man.
I confess that just then my legs gave way beneath me, although there was no trace of a definite idea in my mind. I examined the inside of the chapel and then walked round it.
Something lying on the ground, at the foot of the only wall that was left wholly standing, attracted my attention. It was a number of bits of loose plaster which had fallen there and which were of a dark-grey colour that at once reminded me of the sort of wash with which the screen in the Yard was coated.
I looked up. More pieces of plaster of the same colour, placed flat against the wall and held in position by clamp-headed nails, formed another screen, an incomplete, broken screen, on which I could plainly see that a quite fresh layer of substance had been spread.
By whom? Evidently by one of the two persons whom I was tracking, by the man with the eye-glasses or by Bérangère, perhaps even by both. But with what object? Was it to conjure up the miraculous vision? And was I to believe—the supposition really forced itself upon me as a certainty—that the fragments of plasterhad first been stolen from the rubbish in the Yard and then pieced together like a mosaic?
In that case, if the conditions were the same, if the necessary substance was spread precisely in accordance with the details of the discovery, if I was standing opposite a screen identical at all points with the other, it was possible . . . it was possible. . . .
While this question was taking shape, my mind received so plain an answer that I saw the Three Eyes before they emerged from the depths whence I was waiting for them to appear. The image which I was evoking blended gradually with the real image which was forming and which presently opened its threefold gaze upon me, a fixed and gloomy gaze.
Here, then, as yonder, in the abandoned cemetery as in the Yard where Noël Dorgeroux summoned his inexplicable phantoms from the void, the Three Eyes were awakening to life. Chipped in one place, cracked in another, they looked through the fragments of disjointed plaster as they had done through the carefully tended screen. They gazed in this solitude just as though Noël Dorgeroux had been there to kindle and feed their mysterious flame.
The gloomy eyes, however, were changing their expression. They became wicked, cruel, implacable, ferocious even. Then they faded away; and I waited for the spectacle which those three geometrical figures generally heralded. And in fact, after a break, there was a sort of pulsating light, but so confused that it was difficult for me to make out any clearly defined scenes.
I could barely distinguish some trees, a river with an eyot in it, a low-roofed house and some people; but all this was vague, misty, unfinished, broken up by the cracks in the screen, impeded by causes of which I was ignorant. One might have fancied a certain hesitation in the will that evoked the image. Moreover, after a few fruitless attempts and an effort of which I perceived the futility, the image abruptly faded away and everything relapsed into death and emptiness.
"Death and emptiness," I said aloud.
I repeated the words several times over. They rang within me like a funereal echo with which the memory of Bérangère was mingled. The nightmare of the Three Eyes became one with the nightmare that drove me in pursuit of her. And I remained standing in front of the gruesome chapel, uncertain, not knowing what to do.
Bérangère's footprints brought me back to the well, near which I found in four places the marks of both her slender soles and both her pointed heels. The well was covered with a small, tileddome. Formerly a bucket was lowered by means of a pulley to bring up the rainwater that had been gathered from the roof of the house.
There was of course no valid reason to make me believe that a crime had been committed. The footmarks did not constitute a sufficient clue. Nevertheless I felt myself bathed in perspiration; and, leaning over the open mouth, from which floated a damp and mildewed breath I faltered:
"Bérangère!"
I heard not a sound.
I lit a piece of paper, which I screwed into a torch, throwing a glimmer of light into the widened reservoir of the cistern. But I saw nothing save a sheet of water, black as ink and motionless.
"No," I protested, "it's impossible. I have no right to imagine such an atrocity. Why should they have killed her? It was my uncle who was threatened, not she."
At all events I continued my search and followed the man's single track. This led me to the far side of the cemetery and then to an avenue of fir-trees, where I came upon some cans of petrol. The motor-car had started from here. The tracks of the tyres ran through the wood.
I went no farther. It suddenly occurred tome that I ought before all to think of my uncle, to defend him and to take joint measures with him.
I therefore turned in the direction of the post-office. But, remembering that this was Sunday and that my uncle after dropping his letter in the box, had certainly gone back to the Yard, I ran to the Lodge and called out to Valentine:
"Has my uncle come in? Has he had my note?"
"No, no," she said. "I told you, the master has gone to the Yard."
"Exactly: he must have come this way!"
"Not at all. Coming from the post-office, he would go straight through the new entrance to the amphitheatre."
"In that case," I said, "all I need do is to go through the garden."
I hurried away, but the little door was locked. And from that moment, though there was nothing to prove my uncle's presence in the Yard, I felt certain that he was there and also felt afraid that my assistance had come too late.
I called. No one answered. The door remained shut.
Then, terrified, I went back to the house and out into the street and ran round the premises on the left, in order to go in by the new entrance.
This turned out to be a tall gate, flanked on either side by a ticket-office and giving access to a large courtyard, in which stood the back of the amphitheatre.
This gate also was closed, by means of a strong chain which my uncle had padlocked behind him.
What was I to do? Remembering how Bérangère and then I myself had climbed over the wall one day, I followed the other side of the Yard, in order to reach the old lamp-post. The same deserted path skirted the same stout plank fence, the corner of which ran into the fields.
When I came to this corner, I saw the lamp-post. At that moment, a man appeared on the top of the wall, caught hold of the post and let himself down by it. There was no room for doubt; the man leaving the Yard in this way had just been with my uncle. What had passed between them?
The distance that separated us was too great to allow me to distinguish his features. As soon as he saw me, he turned down the brim of his soft hat and drew the two ends of a muffler over his face. A loose-fitting grey rain-coat concealed his figure. I received the impression, however, that he was shorter and thinner than the man with the eye-glasses.
"Stop!" I cried, as he moved away.
My summons only hastened his flight; and it was in vain that I darted forward in his pursuit, shouting insults at him and threatening him with a revolver which I did not possess. He covered the whole width of the fields, leapt over a hedge and reached the skirt of the woods.
I was certainly younger than he, for I soon perceived that the interval between us was decreasing; and I should have caught him up, if we had been running across open country. But I lost sight of him at the first clump of trees; and I was nearly abandoning the attempt to come up with him, when, suddenly, he retraced his steps and seemed to be looking for something.
I made a rush for him. He did not appear to be perturbed by my approach. He merely drew a revolver and pointed it at me, without saying a word or ceasing his investigations.
I now saw what his object was. Something lay gleaming in the grass. It was a piece of metal which, I soon perceived, was none other than the steel plate on which Noël Dorgeroux had engraved the chemical formula.
We both flung ourselves on the ground at the same time. I was the first to seize the strip of steel. But a hand gripped mine; and on this hand, which was half-covered by the sleeve of the rain-coat, there was blood.
I was startled and suffered from a moment's faintness. The vision of Noël Dorgeroux dying, nay, dead, had flashed upon me so suddenly that the man succeeded in overpowering me and stretching me underneath him.
As we thus lay one against the other, with our faces almost touching, I saw only part of his, the lower half being hidden by the muffler. But his two eyes glared at me, under the shadow of his hat; and we stared at each other in silence, while our hands continued to grapple.
Those eyes of his were cruel and implacable, the eyes of a murderer whose whole being is bent upon the supreme effort of killing. Where had I seen them before? For I certainly knew those fiercely glittering eyes. Their gaze penetrated my brain at a spot into which it had already been deeply impressed. It bore a familiar look, a look which had crossed my own before. But when? In what eyes had I seen that expression? In the eyes looming out of the wall perhaps? The eyes shown on the fabulous screen?
Yes, yes, those were the eyes! I recognized them now! They had shone in the infinite space that lay in the depths of the plaster! They had lived before my sight, a few minutes ago, on the ruined wall of the mortuary chapel. They were the same cruel, pitiless eyes, the eyes which hadperturbed me then even as they were perturbing me now, sapping my last remnant of strength.
I released my hold. The man sprang up, caught me a blow on the forehead with the butt of his revolver and ran away, carrying the steel plate with him.
This time I did not think of pursuing him. Without doing me any great hurt, the blow which I received had stunned me. I was still tottering on my feet when I heard, in the woods, the same sound of an engine being started and a car getting under way which I had heard near the cemetery. The motor-car, driven by the man with the eye-glasses, had come to fetch my assailant. The two confederates, after having probably rid themselves of Bérangère and certainly rid themselves of Noël Dorgeroux, were making off. . . .
My heart wrung with anguish, I hurried back to the foot of the old lamp-post, hoisted myself to the top of the fence and in this way jumped into the front part of the Yard, contained between the main wall and the new structure of the amphitheatre.
This wall, entirely rebuilt, taller and wider than it used to be, now had the size and the importance of the outer wall of a Greek or Roman amphitheatre. Two square columns and a canopy marked the place of the screen, whoseplaster, from the distance at which I stood, did not seem yet to be coated with its layer of a dark-grey composition, which explained why my uncle had left it uncovered. Nor could I at first see the lower part, which was concealed by a heap of materials of all kinds. But how certain I felt of what I should see when I came nearer! How well I knew what was there, behind those planks and building-stones!
My legs were trembling. I had to seek a support. It cost me an untold effort to take a few steps forward.
Right against the wall, in the very middle of his Yard, Noël Dorgeroux lay prone, his arms twisted beneath him.
A cursory inspection showed me that he had been murdered with a pick-axe.
Notwithstanding Noël Dorgeroux's advanced age, there had been a violent struggle. The murderer, whose footprints I traced along the path which led from the fence to the wall, had flung himself upon his victim and had first tried to strangle him. It was not until later, in the second phase of the contest, that he had seized a pick-axe with which to strike Noël Dorgeroux.
Nothing of intrinsic value had been stolen. I found my uncle's watch and note-case untouched. But the waistcoat had been opened; and the lining, which formed a pocket, was, of course, empty.
For the moment I wasted no time in the Yard. Passing through the garden and the Lodge, where I told old Valentine in a few words what had happened, I called the nearest neighbours, sent a boy running to the mayor's and went on to the disused cemetery, accompanied by some men with ropes, a ladder and a lantern. It was growing dark when we arrived.
I had decided to go down the cistern myself; and I did so without experiencing any great emotion. Notwithstanding the reasons which led me to fear that Bérangère might have been thrown into it, the crime appeared to me to be absolutely improbable. And I was right. Nevertheless, at the bottom of the cistern, which was perforated by obvious cracks and held only a few puddles of stagnant water, I picked up in the mud, among the stones, brickbats and potsherds, an empty bottle, the neck of which had been knocked off. I was struck by its blue colour. This was doubtless the bottle which had been taken from the dresser at the Lodge. Besides, when I brought it back to the Lodge that evening, Valentine identified it for certain.
What had happened might therefore be reconstructed as follows: the man with the eye-glasses, having the bottle in his possession, had gone to the cemetery to meet the motor-car which was waiting for him and had stopped in front of the chapel, to which were nailed the fragments from the old wall in the Yard. These fragments he had smeared with the liquid contained in the bottle. Then, when he heard me coming, he threw the bottle down the well and, without having time to see the picture which I myselfwas to see ten minutes later, he ran away and went off in the car to pick up Noël Dorgeroux's murderer near the Yard.
Things as they turned out confirmed my explanation, or at least confirmed it to a great extent. But what of Bérangère? What part had she played in all this? And where was she now?
The enquiry, first instituted in the Yard by the local police, was pursued next day by a magistrate and two detectives, assisted by myself. We learnt that the car containing the two accomplices had come from Paris on the morning of the day before and that it had returned to Paris the same night. Both coming and going it had carried two men whose descriptions tallied exactly with that of the two criminals.
We were favoured by an extraordinary piece of luck. A road-mender working near the ornamental water in the Bois de Boulogne told us, when we asked him about the motor-car, that he recognized it as having been garaged in a coach-house close by the house in which he lived and that he recognized the man with the eye-glasses as one of the tenants of this same house!
He gave us the address. The house was behind the Jardin des Batignolles. It was an old barrack of a tenement-house swarming withtenants. As soon as we had described to the concierge the person for whom we were searching, she exclaimed:
"You mean M. Velmot, a tall, good-looking man, don't you? He has had a furnished flat here for over six months, but he only sleeps here now and again. He is out of town a great deal."
"Did he sleep at home last night?"
"Yes. He came back yesterday evening, in his motor, with a gentleman whom I had never seen before; and they did not leave until this morning."
"In the motor?"
"No. The car is in the garage."
"Have you the key of the flat?"
"Of course! I do the housework!"
"Show us over, please."
The flat consisted of three small rooms; a dining-room and two bedrooms. It contained no clothes or papers. M. Velmot had taken everything with him in a portmanteau, as he did each time he went away, said the concierge. But pinned to the wall, amid a number of sketches, was a drawing which represented the Three Eyes so faithfully that it could not have been made except by some one who had seen the miraculous visions.
"Let's go to the garage," said one of the detectives.
We had to call in a locksmith to gain admittance. In addition to the muffler and a coat stained with blood we found two more mufflers and three silk handkerchiefs, all twisted and spoilt. The identification-plate of the car had been recently unscrewed. The number, newly repainted, must be false. Apart from these details there was nothing specially worth noting.
I am trying to sum up the phases of the preliminary and magisterial enquiries as briefly as possible. This narrative is not a detective-story any more than a love-story. The riddle of the Three Eyes, together with its solution, forms the only object of these pages and the only interest which the reader can hope to find in them. But, at the stage which we have reached, it is easy to understand that all these events were so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate one from the other. One detail governs the next, which in its turn affects what came before.
So I must repeat my earlier question: what part was Bérangère playing in it all? And what had become of her? She had disappeared, suddenly, somewhere near the chapel. Beyond that point there was not a trace of her, not a clue.And this inexplicable disappearance marked the conclusion of several successive weeks during which, we are bound to admit, the girl's behaviour might easily seem odd to the most indulgent eyes.
I felt this so clearly that I declared, emphatically, in the course of my evidence:
"She was caught in a trap and carried off."
"Prove it," they retorted. "Find some justification for the appointments which she made and kept all through the winter with the fellow whom you call the man with the glasses, in other words, with the man Velmot."
And the police based their suspicions on a really disturbing charge which they had discovered and which had escaped me. During his struggle with his assailant, very likely at the moment when the latter, after reducing him to a state of helplessness, had moved away to fetch the pick-axe, Noël Dorgeroux had managed to scrawl a few words with a broken flint at the foot of the screen. The writing was very faint and almost illegible, for the flint in places had merely scratched the plaster; nevertheless, it was possible to decipher the following:
"B-ray. . . . Berge. . ."
The term "B-ray" evidently referred to NoëlDorgeroux's invention. My uncle's first thought, when threatened with death, had been to convey in the briefest (but, unfortunately, also the most unintelligible) form the particulars which would save his marvellous discovery from oblivion. "B-ray" was an expression which he himself understood but which suggested nothing to those who did not know what he meant by it.
The five letters "B.E.R.G.E.," on the other hand, allowed of only one interpretation. "Berge" stood for Bergeronnette, the pet name by which Noël Dorgeroux called his god-daughter.
"Very well," I exclaimed before the magistrate, who had taken me to the screen. "Very well, I agree with your interpretation. It relates to Bérangère. But my uncle was simply wishing to express his love for her and his extreme anxiety on her behalf. In writing his god-daughter's name at the very moment when he is in mortal danger, he shows that he is uneasy about her, that he is recommending her to our care."
"Or that he is accusing her," retorted the magistrate.
Bérangère accused by my uncle! Bérangère capable of sharing in the murder of her god-father! I remember shrugging my shoulders.But there was no reply that I could make beyond protests based upon no actual fact and contradicted by appearances.
All that I said was:
"I fail to see what interest she could have had! . . ."
"A very considerable interest: the exploitation of the wonderful secret which you have mentioned."
"But she is ignorant of the secret!"
"How do you know? She's not ignorant of it, if she is in league with the two accomplices. The manuscript which M. Dorgeroux sent you has disappeared: who was in a better position than she to steal it? However, mark me, I make no assertions. I have my suspicions, that's all; and I'm trying to discover what I can."
But the most minute investigations led to no result. Was Bérangère also a victim of the two criminals?
Her father was written to, at Toulouse. The man Massignac replied that he had been in bed for a fortnight with a sharp attack of influenza, that he would come to Paris as soon as he was well, but that, having had no news of his daughter for years, he was unable to furnish any particulars about her.
So, when all was said and done, whether kidnapped, as I preferred to believe, or in hiding, as the police suspected, Bérangère was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, the public was beginning to grow excited about a case which, before long, was to rouse it to a pitch of delirium. No doubt at first there was merely a question of the crime itself. The murder of Noël Dorgeroux, the abduction of his god-daughter—the police consented, at my earnest entreaties, to accept this as the official version—the theft of my uncle's manuscript, the theft of the formula: all this, at the outset, only puzzled men's minds as a cunningly-devised conspiracy and a cleverly-executed crime. But not many days elapsed before the revelations which I was constrained to make diverted all the attention of the newspapers and all the curiosity of the public to Noël Dorgeroux's discovery.
For I had to speak, notwithstanding the promise of silence which I had given my uncle. I had to answer the magistrate's questions, to tell all I knew, to explain matters, to enter into details, to write a report, to protest against ill-formed judgments, to rectify mistakes, to specify, enumerate, classify, in short, to confide to the authorities and incidentally to the eager reporters all that my uncle had said to me, all his dreams, all the wonders of the Yard, all thephantasmal visions which I had beheld upon the screen.
Before a week was over, Paris, France, the whole world knew in every detail, save for the points which concerned Bérangère and myself alone, what was at once and spontaneously described as the mystery of the Three Eyes.
Of course I was met with irony, sarcasm and uproarious laughter. A miracle finds no believers except among its astounded witnesses. And what but a miracle could be put forward as the cause of a phenomenon which, I maintained, had no credible cause? The execution of Edith Cavell was a miracle. So was the representation of the fight between two airmen. So was the scene in which Noël Dorgeroux's son was hit by a bullet. So, above all, was the looming of those Three Eyes, which throbbed with life, which gazed at the spectator and which were the eyes of the very people about to figure in the spectacle as the actors thus miraculously announced!
Nevertheless, one by one, voices were raised in my defence. My past was gone into, the value of my evidence was weighed; and, though people were still inclined to accuse me of being a visionary or a sick man, subject to hallucinations, at least they had to admit my absolutebona fides.A party of adherents took up the cudgels for me. There was a noisy battle of opinions. Ah, my poor uncle Dorgeroux had asked for wide publicity for his amphitheatre! His fondest wishes were far exceeded by the strident and tremendous clamour which continued like an unbroken peal of thunder.
For the rest, all this uproar was dominated by one idea, which took shape gradually and summed up the thousand theories which every one was indulging. I am copying it from a newspaper-article which I carefully preserved:
"In any case, whatever opinion we may hold of Noël Dorgeroux's alleged discovery, whatever view we may take of M. Victorien Beaugrand's common sense and mental equilibrium, one thing is certain, which is that we shall sooner or later know the truth. When two such competent people as Velmot and his accomplice join forces to accomplish a definite task, namely, the theft of a scientific secret, when they carry out their plot so skilfully, when they succeed beyond all hopes, their object, it will be agreed, is certainly not that they may enjoy the results of their enterprise by stealth."If they have Noël Dorgeroux's manuscript in their hands, together with the chemical formulathat completes it, their intention beyond a doubt is to make all the profits on which Noël Dorgeroux himself was counting. To make these profits the secret must first be exploited. And, to exploit a secret of this kind, its possessors must act openly, publicly, in the face of the world. And, to do this, it will not pay them to settle down in a remote corner in France or elsewhere and to set up another enterprise. It will not pay, because, in any case, there would be the same confession of guilt. No, it will pay them better and do them no more harm to take up their quarters frankly and cynically in the amphitheatre of the Yard and to make use of what has there been accomplished, under the most promising conditions, by Noël Dorgeroux."To sum up, therefore. Before long, some one will emerge from the darkness. Some one will remove the mask from his face. The sequel and the conclusion of the unfinished plot will be enacted in their fullness. And, three weeks hence, on the date fixed, the 14th of May, we shall witness the inauguration of the amphitheatre erected by Noël Dorgeroux. And this inauguration will take place under the vigorous management of the man who will be, who already is, the owner of the secret: a formidable person, we must admit."
"In any case, whatever opinion we may hold of Noël Dorgeroux's alleged discovery, whatever view we may take of M. Victorien Beaugrand's common sense and mental equilibrium, one thing is certain, which is that we shall sooner or later know the truth. When two such competent people as Velmot and his accomplice join forces to accomplish a definite task, namely, the theft of a scientific secret, when they carry out their plot so skilfully, when they succeed beyond all hopes, their object, it will be agreed, is certainly not that they may enjoy the results of their enterprise by stealth.
"If they have Noël Dorgeroux's manuscript in their hands, together with the chemical formulathat completes it, their intention beyond a doubt is to make all the profits on which Noël Dorgeroux himself was counting. To make these profits the secret must first be exploited. And, to exploit a secret of this kind, its possessors must act openly, publicly, in the face of the world. And, to do this, it will not pay them to settle down in a remote corner in France or elsewhere and to set up another enterprise. It will not pay, because, in any case, there would be the same confession of guilt. No, it will pay them better and do them no more harm to take up their quarters frankly and cynically in the amphitheatre of the Yard and to make use of what has there been accomplished, under the most promising conditions, by Noël Dorgeroux.
"To sum up, therefore. Before long, some one will emerge from the darkness. Some one will remove the mask from his face. The sequel and the conclusion of the unfinished plot will be enacted in their fullness. And, three weeks hence, on the date fixed, the 14th of May, we shall witness the inauguration of the amphitheatre erected by Noël Dorgeroux. And this inauguration will take place under the vigorous management of the man who will be, who already is, the owner of the secret: a formidable person, we must admit."
The argument was strictly logical. Stolen jewels are sold in secret. Money changes hands anonymously. But an invention yields no profit unless it is exploited.
Meanwhile the days passed and no one emerged from the darkness. The two accomplices betrayed not a sign of life. It was now known that Velmot, the man with the glasses, had practised all sorts of callings. Some Paris manufacturers, for whom he had travelled in the provinces, furnished an exact description of his person. The police learnt a number of things about him, but not enough to enable them to lay hands upon him.
Nor did a careful scrutiny of Noël Dorgeroux's papers supply the least information. All that the authorities found was a sealed, unaddressed envelope, which they opened. The contents surprised me greatly. They consisted of a will, dated five years back, in which Noël Dorgeroux, while naming me as his residuary legatee, gave and bequeathed to his god-daughter, Bérangère Massignac the piece of ground known as the Yard and everything that the Yard might contain on the day of his death. With the exception of this document, which was of no importance, since my uncle, in one of his last letters to me, had expressed different intentions,they found nothing but immaterial notes which had no bearing upon the great secret. Thereupon they indulged in the wildest conjectures and wandered about in a darkness which not even the sworn chemists called in to examine the screen were able to dispel. The wall revealed nothing in particular, for the layer of plaster with which it was covered had not received the special glaze; and it was precisely the formula of this glaze that constituted Noël Dorgeroux's secret.
But the glaze existed on the old chapel in the cemetery, where I had seen the geometrical figure of the Three Eyes appear. Yes, they certainly found something clinging to the surface of the fragments of plaster taken from that spot. But they were not able with this something to produce a compound capable of yielding any sort of vision. The right formula was obviously lacking; and so, no doubt, was some essential ingredient which had already been eliminated by the sun or the rain.
At the end of April there was no reason to believe in the prophecies which announced a theatrical culmination as inevitable. And the curiosity of the public increased at each fresh disappointment and on each new day spent in waiting. Noël Dorgeroux's yard had become aplace of pilgrimage. Motor-cars and carriages arrived in swarms. The people crowded outside the locked gates and the fence, trying to catch a glimpse of the wall. I even received letters containing offers to buy the Yard at any price that I chose to name.
One day, old Valentine showed into the drawing-room a gentleman who said that he had come on important business. I saw a man of medium height with hair which was turning grey and with a face which was wider than it was long and which was made still wider by a pair of bushy whiskers and a perpetual smile. His threadbare dress and down-at-heel shoes denoted anything but a brilliant financial position. He expressed himself at once, however, in the language of a person to whom money is no object:
"I have any amount of capital behind me," he declared, cheerfully and before he had even told me his name. "My plans are made. All that remains is for you and me to come to terms."
"What on?" I asked.
"Why, on the business that I have come to propose to you!"
"I am sorry, sir," I replied, "but I am doing no business."
"That's a pity!" he cried, still more cheerfully and with his mouth spreading still fartheracross his face. "That's a pity! I should have been glad to take you into partnership. However, since you're not willing, I shall act alone, without of course exceeding the rights which I have in the Yard."
"Your rights in the Yard?" I echoed, astounded at his assurance.
"Why, rather!" he answered, with a loud laugh. "My rights: that's the only word."
"I don't follow you."
"I admit that it's not very clear. Well, suppose—you'll soon understand—suppose that I have come into Noël Dorgeroux's property."
I was beginning to lose patience and I took the fellow up sharply:
"I have no time to spare for jesting, sir. Noël Dorgeroux left no relatives except myself."
"I didn't say that I had come into his property as a relative."
"As what, then?"
"As an heir, simply . . . as the lawful heir, specifically named as such by Noël Dorgeroux."
I was a little taken aback and, after a moment's thought, rejoined:
"Do you mean to say that Noël Dorgeroux made a will in your favour?"
"I do."
"Show it to me."
"There's no need to show it to you: you've seen it."
"I've seen it?"
"You saw it the other day. It must be in the hands of the examining-magistrate or the solicitor."
I lost my temper:
"Oh, it's that you're speaking of! Well, to begin with, the will isn't valid. I have a letter from my uncle . . ."
He interrupted me:
"That letter doesn't affect the validity of the will. Any one will tell you that."
"And then?" I exclaimed. "Granting that it is valid, Noël Dorgeroux mentions nobody in it except myself for the Lodge and his god-daughter for the Yard. The only one who benefits, except myself, is Bérangère."
"Quite so, quite so," replied the man, without changing countenance. "But nobody knows what has become of Bérangère Massignac. Suppose that she were dead . . ."
I grew indignant:
"She's not dead! It's quite impossible that she should be dead!"
"Very well," he said, calmly. "Then suppose that she's alive, that she's been kidnapped or that she's in hiding. In any event, one fact iscertain, which is that she is under twenty, consequently she's a minor and consequently she cannot administer her own property. From the legal point of view she exists only in the person of her natural representative, her guardian, who in this case happens to be her father."
"And her father?" I asked, anxiously.
"Is myself."
He put on his hat, took it off again with a bow and said:
"Théodore Massignac, forty-two years of age, a native of Toulouse, a commercial traveller in wines."
It was a violent blow. The truth suddenly appeared to me in all its brutal nakedness. This man, this shady and wily individual, was Bérangère's father; and he had come in the name of the two accomplices, working in their interest and placing at their service the powers with which circumstances had favoured him.
"Her father?" I murmured. "Can it be possible? Are you her father?"
"Why, yes," he replied, with a fresh outburst of hilarity, "I'm the girl's daddy and, as such, the beneficiary, with the right to draw the profits for the next eighteen months, of Noël Dorgeroux's bequest. For eighteen months only! You can imagine that I'm itching to take possessionof the estate, to complete the works and to prepare for the fourteenth of May an inauguration worthy in every respect of my old friend Dorgeroux."
I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my forehead. He had spoken the words which were expected and foretold. He was the man of whom public opinion had said:
"When the time comes, some one will emerge from the darkness."
"When the time comes," they had said, "some one will emerge from the darkness. When the time comes, some one will remove the mask from his face."
That face now beamed expansively before me. That some one, who was about to play the game of the two accomplices, was Bérangère's father. And the same question continued to suggest itself, each time more painfully than the last:
"What had been Bérangère's part in the horrible tragedy?"
There was a long, heavy silence between us. I began to stride across the room and stopped near the chimney, where a dying fire was smouldering. Thence I could see Massignac in a mirror, without his perceiving it; and his face, in repose, surprised me by a gloomy expression which was not unknown to me. I had probably seen some photograph of him in Bérangère's possession.
"It's curious," I said, "that your daughter should not have written to you."
I had turned round very briskly; nevertheless he had had time to expand his mouth and to resume his smile:
"Alas," he said, "the dear child hardly ever wrote to me and cared little about her poor daddy. I, on the other hand, am very fond of her. A daughter's always a daughter, you know. So you can imagine how I jumped for joy when I read in the papers that she had come into money. I should at last be able to devote myself to her and to devote all my strength and all my energy to the great and wonderful task of defending her interests and her fortune."
He spoke in a honeyed voice and assumed a false and unctuous air which exasperated me. I questioned him:
"How do you propose to fulfill that task?"
"Why, quite simply," he replied, "by continuing Noël Dorgeroux's work."
"In other words?"
"By throwing open the doors of the amphitheatre."
"Which means?"
"Which means that I shall show to the public the pictures which your uncle used to produce."
"Have you ever seen them?"
"No. I speak from your evidence and your interviews."
"Do you know how my uncle used to produce them?"
"I do, since yesterday evening."
"Then you have seen the manuscript of which I was robbed and the formula stolen by the murderer?"
"Since yesterday evening, I say."
"But how?" I exclaimed, excitedly.
"How? By a simple trick."
"What do you mean?"
He showed me a bundle of newspapers of the day before and continued, with a smirking air:
"If you had read yesterday's newspapers, or at least the more important of them, carefully, you would have noticed a discreet advertisement in the special column. It read, 'Proprietor of the Yard wishes to purchase the two documents necessary for working. He can be seen this evening in the Place Vendôme.' Nothing much in the advertisement, was there? But, to the possessors of the two documents, how clear in its meaning . . . and what a bait! To them it was the one opportunity of making a profit, for, with all the publicity attaching to the affair, they were unable to benefit by the result of their robberies without revealing their identity to the public. My calculation was correct. After Ihad waited an hour by the Vendôme Column, a very luxurious motor-car picked me up, you might almost say without stopping, and, ten minutes afterwards, dropped me at the Étoile, with the documents in my possession. I spent the night in reading the manuscript. Oh, my dear sir, what a genius your uncle was! What a revolution his discovery! And in what a masterly way he expounded it! I never read anything so methodical and so lucid! All that remains for me to do is mere child's-play."
I had listened to the man Massignac with ever-increasing amazement. Was he assuming that anybody would for a moment credit so ridiculous a tale?
He was laughing, however, with a look of a man who congratulates himself on the events with which he is mixed up, or rather, perhaps, on the very skilful fashion in which he believes himself to have manipulated them.
With one hand, I pushed in his direction the hat which he had laid on the table. Then I opened the door leading into the hall.
He rose and said:
"I am staying close by, at the Station Hotel. Would you mind having any letters sent there which may come for me here? For I suppose you have no room for me at the Lodge?"
I abruptly gripped him by the arm and cried:
"You know what you're risking, don't you?"
"In doing what?"
"In pursuing your enterprise."
"Upon my word, I don't quite see . . ."
"Prison, sir, prison."
"Oh, come! Prison!"
"Prison, sir. The police will never accept all your stories and all your lies!"
His mouth widened into a new laugh:
"What big words! And how unjust, when addressed to a respectable father who seeks nothing but his daughter's happiness! No, no, sir, believe me, the inauguration will take place on the fourteenth of May . . . unless, indeed, you oppose the wishes which your uncle expresses in his will. . . ."
He gave me a questioning look, which betrayed a certain uneasiness; and I myself wavered as to the answer which I ought to give him. My hesitation yielded to a motive of which I did not weigh the value clearly but which seemed to me so imperious that I declared:
"I shall raise no opposition: not that I respect a will which does not represent my uncle's real intentions, but because I am bound to sacrifice everything to his fame. If Noël Dorgeroux's discovery depends on you, go ahead: the meanswhich you have employed to get hold of it do not concern me."
With a fresh burst of merry laughter and a low bow, the fellow left the room. That evening, in the course of a visit to the solicitor, and next day, through the newspapers, he boldly set forth his claims, which, I may say, from the legal point of view, were recognized as absolutely legitimate. But, two days later, he was summoned to appear before the examining-magistrate and an enquiry was opened against him.
Against him is the right term. Certainly, there was no fact to be laid to his charge. Certainly, he was able to prove that he had been ill in bed, nursed by a woman-of-all-work who had been looking after him for a month, and that he had left his place in Toulouse only to come straight to Paris. But what had he done in Paris? Whom had he seen? From whom had he obtained the manuscript and the formula? He was unable to furnish explanations in reply to any of these questions.
He did not even try:
"I am pledged to secrecy," he said. "I gave my word of honour not to say anything about those who handed me the documents I needed."
The man Massignac's word of Honour! The man Massignac's scruples! Lies, of course!Hypocrisy! Subterfuge! But, all the same, however suspect the fellow might be, it was difficult to know of what to accuse him or how to sustain the accusation when made.
And then there was this element of strangeness, that the suspicion, the presumption, the certainty that the man Massignac was the willing tool of the two criminals, all this was swept away by the great movement of curiosity that carried people off their feet. Judicial procedure, ordinary precautions, regular adjournments, legal procrastinations which delay the entry into possession of the legatees were one and all neglected. The public wanted to see and know; and Théodore Massignac was the man who held the prodigious secret.
He was therefore allowed to have the keys of the amphitheatre and went in alone, or with labourers upon whom he kept an eye, replacing them by fresh gangs so as to avoid plots and machinations. He often went to Paris, throwing off the scent of the detectives who dogged his movements, and returned with bottles and cans carefully wrapped up.
On the day before that fixed for the inauguration, the police were no wiser than on the first day in matters concerning the man Massignac, or Velmot's hiding-place, or the murderer's, orBérangère's. The same ignorance prevailed regarding Noël Dorgeroux's secret, the circumstances of his death and the ambiguous words which he had scribbled on the plaster of the wall. As for the miraculous visions which I have described, they were denied or accepted as vigorously and as unreasonably by both the disputing parties. In short, nobody knew anything.
And this perhaps was the reason why the thousand seats in the amphitheatre were sold out within a few hours. Priced at a hundred francs apiece, they were bought up by half-a-dozen speculators who got rid of them at two or three times their original cost. How delighted my poor uncle would have been had he lived to see it!
The night before the fourteenth of May, I slept very badly, haunted by nightmares that kept on waking me with a start. At the first glimmer of dawn, I was sitting on the side of my bed when, in the deep silence, which was barely broken by the twittering of a few birds, I seemed to hear the sound of a key in a lock and a door creaking on its hinges.
I must explain that, since my uncle's death, I had been sleeping next to the room that used to be his. Now the noise came from that room, from which I was separated only by a glazed door covered with a chintz curtain. I listenedand heard the sound of a chair moved from its place. There was certainly some one in the next room; and this some one, obviously unaware that I occupied the adjoining chamber, was taking scarcely any precautions. But how had he got in?
I sprang from the bed, slipped on my trousers, took up a revolver and drew aside a corner of the curtain. At first, the shutters were closed and the room in darkness and I saw only an indistinct shadow. Then the window was opened softly. Somebody lifted the iron bar and pushed back the shutters, thus admitting the light.
I now saw a woman return to the middle of the room. She was draped from head to foot in a brown stuff cloak. Nevertheless I knew her at once. It was Bérangère.
I had a feeling not so much of amazement as of sudden and profound pity at the sight of her emaciated face, her poor face, once so bright and eager, now so sad and wan. I did not even think of rejoicing at the fact of her being alive, nor did I ask myself what clandestine business had brought her back to the Lodge. The one thing that held me captive was the painful spectacle of her pallid face, with its feverish, burning eyes and blue eyelids. Her cloak betrayed the shrunken figure beneath it.
Her heart must have been beating terribly, for she held her two hands to her breast to suppress its throbbing. She even had to lean on the edge of the table. She staggered and nearly fell. Poor Bérangère. I felt anguish-stricken as I watched her.
She pulled herself together, however, and looked around her. Then, with a tottering gait, she went to the mantelpiece, where two old engravings, framed in black with a gold beading, hung one on either side of the looking-glass. She climbed on a chair and took down the one on the right, a portrait of D'Alembert.
Stepping down from the chair, she examined the back of the frame, which was closed by a piece of old card-board the edges of which were fastened to the sides of the frame by strips of gummed cloth. Bérangère cut these strips with a pen-knife, bending back the tacks which held the cardboard in position. It came out of the frame; and I then saw—Bérangère had her back turned in my direction, so that not a detail escaped me—I then saw that there was inserted between the cardboard and the engraving a large sheet of paper covered with my uncle's writing.
At the top, in red ink, was a drawing of the three geometrical eyes.
Next came the following words, in bold black capitals: