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Title: The Three Eyes
Author: Maurice Leblanc
Illustrator: G. W. Gage
Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Release Date: December 16, 2010 [EBook #34653]
Language: English
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THE THREE EYES
[Illustration: Bérangère stopped.... (The Three Eyes) Frontispiece]
The Three Eyes
BY MAURICE LEBLANC
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
AUTHOR OF
"_The Secret of Sarek_."
[Illustration]
FRONTISPIECE BY
G. W. GAGE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with The Macaulay Company
Copyright, 1921, by
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
_PRINTED IN U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I BERGERONNETTE 9
II THE "TRIANGULAR CIRCLES" 23
III AN EXECUTION 39
IV NOËL DORGEROUX'S SON 51
V THE KISS 66
VI ANXIETIES 86
VII THE FIERCE-EYED MAN 99
VIII "SOME ONE WILL EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS" 113
IX THE MAN WHO EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS 132
X THE CROWD SEES 148
XI THE CATHEDRAL 161
XII THE "SHAPES" 174
XIII THE VEIL IS LIFTED 192
XIV MASSIGNAC AND VELMOT 214
XV THE SPLENDID THEORY 227
XVI WHERE LIPS UNITE 247
XVII SUPREME VISIONS 262
XVIII THE CHÂTEAU DE PRÉ-BONY 275
XIX THE FORMULA 293
THE THREE EYES
CHAPTER I
BERGERONNETTE
For me the strange story dates back to that autumn day when my uncle
Dorgeroux appeared, staggering and unhinged, in the doorway of the
room which I occupied in his house, Haut-Meudon Lodge.
None of us had set eyes on him for a week. A prey to that nervous
exasperation into which the final test of any of his inventions
invariably threw him, he was living among his furnaces and retorts,
keeping every door shut, sleeping on a sofa, eating nothing but fruit
and bread. And suddenly he stood before me, livid, wild-eyed,
stammering, emaciated, as though he had lately recovered from a long
and dangerous illness.
He was really altered beyond recognition! For the first time I saw him
wear unbuttoned the long, threadbare, stained frock-coat which fitted
his figure closely and which he never discarded even when making his
experiments or arranging on the shelves of his laboratories the
innumerable chemicals which he was in the habit of employing. His
white tie, which, by way of contrast, was always clean, had become
unfastened; and his shirt-front was protruding from his waistcoat. As
for his good, kind face, usually so grave and placid and still so
young beneath the white curls that crowned his head, its features
seemed unfamiliar, ravaged by conflicting expressions, no one of which
obtained the upper hand over the others: violent expressions of terror
and anguish in which I was surprised, at moments, to observe gleams of
the maddest and most extravagant delight.
I could not get over my astonishment. What had happened during those
few days? What tragedy could have caused the quiet, gentle Noël
Dorgeroux to be so utterly beside himself?
"Are you ill, uncle?" I asked, anxiously, for I was exceedingly fond
of him.
"No," he murmured, "no, I'm not ill."
"Then what is it? Please, what's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter . . . nothing, I tell you."
I drew up a chair. He dropped into it and, at my entreaty, took a
glass of water; but his hand trembled so that he was unable to lift
it to his lips.
"Uncle, speak, for goodness' sake!" I cried. "I have never seen you in
such a state. You must have gone through some great excitement."
"The greatest excitement of my life," he said, in a very low and
lifeless voice. "Such excitement as nobody can have ever experienced
before . . . nobody . . . nobody. . . ."
"Then do explain yourself."
"No, you wouldn't understand. . . . I don't understand either. It's so
incredible! It is taking place in the darkness, in a world of
darkness! . . ."
There was a pencil and paper on the table. His hand seized the pencil;
and mechanically he began to trace one of those vague sketches to
which the action of an overmastering idea gradually imparts a clearer
definition. And his sketch, as it assumed a more distinct form, ended
by representing on the sheet of white paper three geometrical figures
which might equally well have been badly-described circles or
triangles with curved lines. In the centre of these figures, however,
he drew a regular circle which he blackened entirely and which he
marked in the middle with a still blacker point, as the iris is marked
with the pupil:
"There, there!" he cried, suddenly, starting up in his agitation.
"Look, that's what is throbbing and quivering in the darkness. Isn't
it enough to drive one mad? Look! . . ."
He had seized another pencil, a red one, and, rushing to the wall, he
scored the white plaster with the same three incomprehensible figures,
the three "triangular circles," in the centre of which he took the
pains to draw irises furnished with pupils:
"Look! They're alive, aren't they? You see they're moving, you can see
that they're afraid. You can see, can't you? They're alive! They're
alive!"
I thought that he was going to explain. But, if so, he did not carry
out his intention. His eyes, which were generally full of life, frank
and open as a child's, now bore an expression of distrust. He began to
walk up and down and continued to do so for a few minutes. Then, at
last, opening the door and turning to me again, he said, in the same
breathless tone as before:
"You will see them, Vivien; you will have to see them too and tell me
that they are alive, as I have seen them alive. Come to the Yard in an
hour's time, or rather when you hear a whistle, and you shall see
them, the three eyes, and plenty of other things besides. You'll
see."
He left the room.
* * * * *
The house in which we lived, the Lodge, as it was called, turned its
back upon the street and faced an old, steep, ill-kept garden, at the
top of which was the big yard in which my uncle had now for many years
been squandering the remnants of his capital on useless inventions.
As far back as I could remember, I had always seen that old garden
ill-tended and the long, low house in a constant state of
dilapidation, with its yellow plaster front cracked and peeling. I
used to live there in the old days with my mother, who was my aunt
Dorgeroux's sister. Afterwards, when both the sisters were dead, I
used to come from Paris, where I was going through a course of study,
to spend my holidays with my uncle. He was then mourning the death of
his poor son Dominique, who was treacherously murdered by a German
airman whom he had brought to the ground after a terrific fight in the
clouds. My visits to some extent diverted my uncle's thoughts from his
grief. But I had had to go abroad; and it was not until after a very
long absence that I returned to Haut-Meudon Lodge, where I had now
been some weeks, waiting for the end of the vacation and for my
appointment as a professor at Grenoble.
And at each of my visits I had found the same habits, the same regular
hours devoted to meals and walks, the same monotonous life,
interrupted, at the time of the great experiments, by the same hopes
and the same disappointments. It was a healthy, vigorous life, which
suited the tastes and the extravagant dreams of Noël Dorgeroux, whose
courage and confidence no trial was able to defeat or diminish.
* * * * *
I opened my window. The sun shone down upon the walls and buildings of
the Yard. Not a cloud tempered the blazing sky. A scent of late roses
quivered on the windless air.
"Victorien!" whispered a voice below me, from a hornbeam overgrown
with red creeper.
I knew that it must be Bérangère, my uncle's god-daughter, reading, as
usual, on a stone bench, her favourite seat.
"Have you seen your god-father?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "He was going through the garden and back to his
Yard. He looked so queer!"
Bérangère pushed aside the leafy curtain at a place where the
trelliswork which closed the arbour was broken; and her pretty face,
crowned with rebellious golden curls, came into view.
"This is pleasant!" she said laughing. "My hair's caught. And there
are spiders' webs too. Ugh! Help!"
These are childish recollections, insignificant details. Yet why did
they remain engraved on my memory with such precision? It is as though
all our being becomes charged with emotion at the approach of the
great events which we are fated to encounter and our senses thrilled
beforehand by the impalpable breath of a distant storm.
I hastened down the garden and ran to the hornbeam. Bérangère was
gone. I called her. I received a merry laugh in reply and saw her
farther away, swinging on a rope which she had stretched between two
trees, under an arch of leaves.
She was delicious like that, graceful and light as a bird perched on
some swaying bough. At each swoop, all her curls flew now in this
direction, now in that, giving her a sort of moving halo, with which
mingled the leaves that fell from the shaken trees, red leaves, yellow
leaves, leaves of every shade of autumn gold.
Notwithstanding the anxiety with which my uncle's excessive agitation
had filled my mind, I lingered before the sight of this incomparable
light-heartedness and, giving the girl the pet name formed years ago
from her Christian name of Bérangère, I said, under my voice and
almost unconsciously:
"Bergeronnette!"
She jumped out of her swing and, planting herself in front of me,
said:
"You're not to call me that any longer, Mr. Professor!"
"Why not?"
"It was all right once, when I was a little mischief of a tomboy,
hopping and skipping all over the place. But now . . ."
"Well, your god-father still calls you that."
"My god-father has every right to."
"And I?"
"No right at all."
This is not a love-story; and I did not mean to speak of Bérangère
before coming to the momentous part which, as everybody knows, she
played in the adventure of the Three Eyes. But this part was so
closely interwoven, from the beginning and during all the early period
of the adventure, with certain episodes of our intimate life that the
clearness of my narrative would suffer if it were not mentioned,
however briefly.
Well, twelve years before the time of which I am speaking, there
arrived at the Lodge a little girl to whom my uncle was god-father and
from whom he used to receive a letter regularly on each 1st of
January, bringing him her good wishes for the new year. She lived at
Toulouse with her father and mother, who had formerly been in business
at Meudon, near my uncle's place. Now the mother had died; and the
father, without further ceremony, sent the daughter to Noël Dorgeroux
with a short letter of which I remember a few sentences:
"The child is dull here, in the town. . . . My
business"--Massignac was a wine-agent--"takes me all
over the country . . . and Bérangère is left behind
alone. . . . I was thinking that, in memory of our
friendly relations, you might be willing to keep her
with you for a few weeks. . . . The country air will
restore the colour to her cheeks. . . ."
My uncle was a very kindly, good-hearted man. The few weeks were
followed by several months and then by several years, during which the
worthy Massignac at intervals announced his intention of coming to
Meudon to fetch the child. So it came about that Bérangère did not
leave the Lodge at all and that she surrounded my uncle with so much
gay and boisterous affection that, in spite of his apparent
indifference, Noël Dorgeroux had felt unable to part with his
god-daughter. She enlivened the silent old house with her laughter and
her charm. She was the element of disorder and delightful
irresponsibility which gives a value to order, discipline and
austerity.
Returning this year after a long absence, I had found, instead of the
child whom I had known, a girl of twenty, just as much a child and
just as boisterous as ever, but exquisitely pretty, graceful in form
and movement and possessed of the mystery which marks those who have
led solitary lives within the shadow of an old and habitually silent
man. From the first I felt that my presence interfered with her habits
of freedom and isolation. At once audacious and shy, timid and
provocative, bold and shrinking, she seemed to shun me in particular;
and, during two months of a life lived in common, when I saw her at
every meal and met her at every turn, I had failed to tame her. She
remained remote and wild, suddenly breaking off our talks and
displaying, where I was concerned, the most capricious and
inexplicable moods.
Perhaps she had an intuition of the profound disturbance that was
awaking within me; perhaps her confusion was due to my own
embarrassment. She had often caught my eyes fixed on her red lips or
observed the change that came over my voice at certain times. And she
did not like it. Man's admiration disconcerted her.
"Look here," I said, adopting a roundabout method so as not to startle
her, "your god-father maintains that human beings, some of them more
than others, give forth a kind of emanation. Remember that Noël
Dorgeroux is first and foremost a chemist and that he sees and feels
things from the chemist's point of view. Well, to his mind, this
emanation is manifested by the emission of certain corpuscles, of
invisible sparks which form a sort of cloud. This is what happens, for
instance, in the case of a woman. Her charm surrounds you . . ."
My heart was beating so violently as I spoke these words that I had to
break off. Still, she did not seem to grasp their meaning; and she
said, with a proud little air:
"Your uncle tells me all about his theories. It's true, I don't
understand them a bit. However, as regards this one, he has spoken to
me of a special ray, which he presupposed to explain that discharge of
invisible particles. And he calls this ray after the first letter of
my name, the B-ray."
"Well done, Bérangère; that makes you the god-mother of a ray, the ray
of seductiveness and charm."
"Not at all," she cried, impatiently. "It's not a question of
seductiveness but of a material incarnation, a fluid which is even
able to become visible and to assume a form, like the apparitions
produced by the mediums. For instance, the other day . . ."
She stopped and hesitated; her face betrayed anxiety; and I had to
press her before she continued:
"No, no," she said, "I oughtn't to speak of that. It's not that your
uncle forbade me to. But it has left such a painful impression. . . ."
"What do you mean, Bérangère?"
"I mean, an impression of fear and suffering. I saw, with your uncle,
on a wall in the Yard, the most frightful things: images which
represented three--sort of eyes. _Were_ they eyes? I don't know. The
things moved and looked at us. Oh, I shall never forget it as long as
I live."
"And my uncle?"
"Your uncle was absolutely taken aback. I had to hold him up and bring
him round, for he fainted. When he came to himself, the images had
vanished."
"And did he say nothing?"
"He stood silent, gazing at the wall. Then I asked him, 'What is it,
god-father?' Presently he answered, 'I don't know, I don't know: it
may be the rays of which I spoke to you, the B-rays. If so, it must be
a phenomenon of materialization.' That was all he said. Very soon
after, he saw me to the door of the garden; and he has shut himself up
in the Yard ever since. I did not see him again until just now."
She ceased. I felt anxious and greatly puzzled by this revelation:
"Then, according to you, Bérangère," I said, "my uncle's discovery is
connected with those three figures? They were geometrical figures,
weren't they? Triangles?"
She formed a triangle with her two fore-fingers and her two thumbs:
"There, the shape was like that. . . . As for their arrangement . . ."
She picked up a twig that had fallen from a tree and was beginning to
draw lines in the sand of the path when a whistle sounded.
"That's god-father's signal when he wants me in the Yard," she cried.
"No," I said, "to-day it's for me. We fixed it."
"Does he want you?"
"Yes, to tell me about his discovery."
"Then I'll come too."
"He doesn't expect you, Bérangère."
"Yes, he does; yes, he does."
I caught hold of her arm, but she escaped me and ran to the top of the
garden, where I came up with her outside a small, massive door in a
fence of thick planks which connected a shed and a very high wall.
She opened the door an inch or two. I insisted:
"Don't do it, Bérangère! It will only vex him."
"Do you really think so?" she said, wavering a little.
"I'm positive of it, because he asked me and no one else. Come,
Bérangère, be sensible."
She hesitated. I went through and closed the door upon her.
CHAPTER II
THE "TRIANGULAR CIRCLES"
What was known at Meudon as Noël Dorgeroux's Yard was a piece of
waste-land in which the paths were lost amid the withered grass,
nettles and stones, amid stacks of empty barrels, scrap-iron,
rabbit-hutches and every kind of disused lumber that rusts and rots or
tumbles into dust.
Against the walls and outer fences stood the workshops, joined
together by driving-belts and shafts, and the laboratories filled with
furnaces, pneumatic receivers, innumerable retorts, phials and jars
containing the most delicate products of organic chemistry.
The view embraced the loop of the Seine, which lay some three hundred
feet below, and the hills of Versailles and Sèvres, which formed a
wide circle on the horizon towards which a bright autumnal sun was
sinking in a pale blue sky.
"Victorien!"
My uncle was beckoning to me from the doorway of the workshop which he
used most often. I crossed the Yard.
"Come in," he said. "We must have a talk first. Only for a little
while: just a few words."
The room was lofty and spacious and one corner of it was reserved for
writing and resting, with a desk littered with papers and drawings, a
couch and some old, upholstered easy-chairs. My uncle drew one of the
chairs up for me. He seemed calmer, but his glance retained an
unaccustomed brilliance.
"Yes," he said, "a few words of explanation beforehand will do no
harm, a few words on the past, the wretched past which is that of
every inventor who sees fortune slipping away from him. I have pursued
it for so long! I have always pursued it. My brain had always seemed
to me a vat in which a thousand incoherent ideas were fermenting, all
contradicting one another and mutually destructive. . . . And then
there was one that gained strength. And thenceforward I lived for that
one only and sacrificed everything for it. It was like a sink that
swallowed up all my money and that of others . . . and their happiness
and peace of mind as well. Think of my poor wife, Victorien. You
remember how unhappy she was and how anxious about the future of her
son, of my poor Dominique! And yet I loved her so devotedly. . . ."
He stopped at this recollection. And I seemed to see my aunt's face
again and to hear her telling my mother of her fears and her
forebodings:
"He will ruin us," she used to say. "He keeps on making me sell out.
He considers nothing."
"She did not trust me," Noël Dorgeroux continued. "Oh, I had so many
disappointments, so many lamentable failures! Do you remember,
Victorien, do you remember my experiment on intensive germination by
means of electric currents, my experiments with oxygen and all the
rest, all the rest, not one of which succeeded? The pluck it called
for! But I never lost faith for a minute! . . . One idea in particular
buoyed me up and I came back to it incessantly, as though I were able
to penetrate the future. You know to what I refer, Victorien: it
appeared and reappeared a score of times under different forms, but
the principle remained the same. It was the idea of utilizing the
solar heat. It's all there, you know, in the sun, in its action upon
us, upon cells, organisms, atoms, upon all the more or less mysterious
substances that nature has placed at our disposal. And I attacked the
problem from every side. Plants, fertilizers, diseases of men and
animals, photographs: for all these I wanted the collaboration of the
solar rays, utilized by the aid of special processes which were mine
alone, my secret and nobody else's."
My uncle Dorgeroux was talking with renewed eagerness; and his eyes
shone feverishly. He now held forth without interrupting himself:
"I will not deny that there was an element of chance about my
discovery. Chance plays its part in everything. There never was a
discovery that did not exceed our inventive effort; and I can confess
to you, Victorien, that I do not even now understand what has
happened. No, I can't explain it by a long way; and I can only just
believe it. But, all the same, if I had not sought in that direction,
the thing would not have occurred. It was due to me that the
incomprehensible miracle took place. The picture is outlined in the
very frame which I constructed, on the very canvas which I prepared;
and, as you will perceive, Victorien, it is my will that makes the
phantom which you are about to see emerge from the darkness."
He expressed himself in a tone of pride with which was mingled a
certain uneasiness, as though he doubted himself and as though his
words overstepped the actual limits of truth.
"You're referring to those three--sort of eyes, aren't you?" I asked.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, with a start. "Who told you? Bérangère, I
suppose! She shouldn't have. That's what we must avoid at all costs:
indiscretions. One word too much and I am undone; my discovery is
stolen. Only think, the first man that comes along . . ."
I had risen from my chair. He pushed me towards his desk:
"Sit down here, Victorien," he said, "and write. You mustn't mind my
taking this precaution. It is essential. You must realize what you are
pledging yourself to do if you share in my work. Write, Victorien."
"What, uncle?"
"A declaration in which you acknowledge that . . . But I'll dictate it
to you. That'll be better."
I interrupted him:
"Uncle, you distrust me."
"I don't distrust you, my boy. I fear an imprudence, an indiscretion.
And, generally speaking, I have plenty of reasons for being
suspicious."
"What reasons, uncle?"
"Reasons," he replied, in a more serious voice, "which make me think
that I am being spied upon and that somebody is trying to discover
what my invention is. Yes, somebody came in here, the other night,
and rummaged among my papers."
"Did they find anything?"
"No. I always carry the most important notes and formulae on me.
Still, you can imagine what would happen if they succeeded. So you do
admit, don't you, that I am obliged to be cautious? Write down that I
have told you of my investigations and that you have seen what I
obtain on the wall in the Yard, at the place covered by a black-serge
curtain."
I took a sheet of paper and a pen. But he stopped me quickly:
"No, no," he said, "it's absurd. It wouldn't prevent . . . Besides,
you won't talk, I'm sure of that. Forgive me, Victorien. I am so
horribly worried!"
"You needn't fear any indiscretion on my part," I declared. "But I
must remind you that Bérangère also has seen what there was to see."
"Oh," he said, "she wouldn't understand!"
"She wanted to come with me just now."
"On no account, on no account! She's still a child and not fit to be
trusted with a secret of this importance. . . . Now come along."
But it so happened that, as we were leaving the workshop, we both of
us at the same time saw Bérangère stealing along one of the walls of
the Yard and stopping in front of a black curtain, which she suddenly
pulled aside.
"Bérangère!" shouted my uncle, angrily.
The girl turned round and laughed.
"I won't have it! I will not have it!" cried Noël Dorgeroux, rushing
in her direction. "I won't have it, I tell you! Get out, you
mischief!"
Bérangère ran away, without, however, displaying any great
perturbation. She leapt on a stack of bricks, scrambled on to a long
plank which formed a bridge between two barrels and began to dance as
she was wont to do, with her arms outstretched like a balancing-pole
and her bust thrown slightly backwards.
"You'll lose your balance," I said, while my uncle drew the curtain.
"Never!" she replied, jumping up and down on her spring-board.
She did not lose her balance. But the plank shifted and the pretty
dancer came tumbling down among a heap of old packing-cases.
I ran to her assistance and found her lying on the ground, looking
very white.
"Have you hurt yourself, Bérangère?"
"No . . . hardly . . . just my ankle . . . perhaps I've sprained it."
I lifted her, almost fainting, in my arms and carried her to a wooden
bench a little farther away.
She let me have my way and even put one arm round my neck. Her eyes
were closed. Her red lips opened and I inhaled the cool fragrance of
her breath.
"Bérangère!" I whispered, trembling with emotion.
When I laid her on the bench, her arm held me more tightly, so that I
had to bend my head with my face almost touching hers. I meant to draw
back. But the temptation was too much for me and I kissed her on the
lips, gently at first and then with a brutal violence which brought
her to her senses.
She repelled me with an indignant movement and stammered, in a
despairing, rebellious tone:
"Oh, it's abominable of you! . . . It's shameful!"
In spite of the suffering caused by her sprain, she had managed to
stand up, while I, stupefied by my thoughtless conduct, stood bowed
before her, without daring to raise my head.
We remained for some seconds in this attitude, in an embarrassed
silence through which I could catch the hurried rhythm of her
breathing. I tried gently to take her hands. But she released them at
once and said:
"Let me be. I shall never forgive you, never."
"Come, Bérangère, you will forget that."
"Leave me alone. I want to go indoors."
"But you can't, Bérangère."
"Here's god-father. He'll take me back."
* * * * *
My reasons for relating this incident will appear in the sequel. For
the moment, notwithstanding the profound commotion produced by the
kiss which I had stolen from Bérangère, my thoughts were so to speak
absorbed by the mysterious drama in which I was about to play a part
with my uncle Dorgeroux. I heard my uncle asking Bérangère if she was
not hurt. I saw her leaning on his arm and, with him, making for the
door of the garden. But, while I remained bewildered, trembling, dazed
by the adorable image of the girl whom I loved, it was my uncle whom I
awaited and whom I was impatient to see returning. The great riddle
already held me captive.
"Let's make haste," cried Noël Dorgeroux, when he came back. "Else it
will be too late and we shall have to wait until to-morrow."
He led the way to the high wall where he had caught Bérangère in the
act of yielding to her curiosity. This wall, which divided the Yard
from the garden and which I had not remarked particularly on my rare
visits to the Yard, was now daubed with a motley mixture of colours,
like a painter's palette. Red ochre, indigo, purple and saffron were
spread over it in thick and uneven layers, which whirled around a more
thickly-coated centre. But, at the far end, a wide curtain of black
serge, like a photographer's cloth, running on an iron rod supported
by brackets, hid a rectangular space some three or four yards in
width.
"What's that?" I asked my uncle. "Is this the place?"
"Yes," he answered, in a husky voice, "it's behind there."
"There's still time to change your mind," I suggested.
"What makes you say that?"
"I feel that you are afraid of letting me know. You are so upset."
"I am upset for a very different reason."
"Why?"
"_Because I too am going to see._"
"But you have done so already."
"One always sees new things, Victorien; that's the terrifying part of
it."
I took hold of the curtain.
"Don't touch it, don't touch it!" he cried. "No one has the right,
except myself. Who knows what would happen if any one except me were
to open the closed door! Stand back, Victorien. Take up your position
at two paces from the wall, a little to one side. . . . And now look!"
His voice was vibrant with energy and implacable determination. His
expression was that of a man facing death; and, suddenly, with a
single movement, he drew the black-serge curtain.
* * * * *
My emotion, I am certain, was just as great as Noël Dorgeroux's and my
heart beat no less violently. My curiosity had reached its utmost
bounds; moreover, I had a formidable intuition that I was about to
enter into a region of mystery of which nothing, not even my uncle's
disconcerting words, was able to give me the remotest idea. I was
experiencing the contagion of what seemed to me in him to be a
diseased condition; and I vainly strove to subject it in myself to the
control of my reason. I was taking the impossible and the incredible
for granted beforehand.
And yet I saw nothing at first; and there was, in fact, nothing. This
part of the wall was bare. The only detail worthy of remark was that
it was not vertical and that the whole base of the wall had been
thickened so as to form a slightly inclined plane which sloped upwards
to a height of nine feet. What was the reason for this work, when the
wall did not need strengthening?
A coating of dark grey plaster, about half an inch thick, covered the
whole panel. When closely examined, however, it was not painted over,
but was rather a layer of some substance uniformly spread and showing
no trace of a brush. Certain gleams proved that this layer was quite
recent, like a varnish newly applied. I observed nothing else; and
Heaven knows that I did my utmost to discover any peculiarity!
"Well, uncle?" I asked.
"Wait," he said, in an agonized voice, "wait! . . . The first
indication is beginning."
"What indication?"
"In the middle . . . like a diffused light. Do you see it?"
"Yes, yes, I think I do."
It was as when a little daylight is striving to mingle with the waning
darkness. A lighter disk became marked in the middle of the panel; and
this lighter shade spread towards the edges, while remaining more
intense at its centre. So far there was no very decided manifestation
of anything out of the way; the chemical reaction of a substance
lately hidden by the curtain and now exposed to the daylight and the
sun was quite enough to explain this sort of inner illumination. Yet
something gave one the haunting though perhaps unreasonable impression
that an extraordinary phenomenon was about to take place. For that was
what I expected, as did my uncle Dorgeroux.
And all at once he, who knew the premonitory symptoms and the course
of the phenomenon, started, as though he had received a shock.
At the same moment, the thing happened.
It was sudden, instantaneous. It leapt in a flash from the depths of
the wall. Yes, I know, a spectacle cannot flash out of a wall, any
more than it can out of a layer of dark-grey substance only half an
inch thick. But I am setting down the sensation which I experienced,
which is the same that hundreds and hundreds of people experienced
afterwards, with a like clearness and a like certainty. It is no use
carping at the undeniable fact: the thing shot out of the depths of
the ocean of matter and it appeared violently, like the rays of a
lighthouse flashing from the very womb of the darkness. After all,
when we step towards a mirror, does our image not appear to us from
the depth of that horizon suddenly unveiled?
Only, you see, it was not our image, my uncle Dorgeroux's or mine.
Nothing was reflected, because there was nothing to reflect and no
reflecting screen. What I saw was . . .
On the panel were "three geometrical figures which might equally well
have been badly described circles or triangles composed of curved
circles. In the centre of these figures was drawn a regular circle,
marked in the middle with a blacker point, as the iris is marked by
the pupil."
I am deliberately using the terminology which I employed to describe
the images which my uncle had drawn in red chalk on the plaster of my
room, for I had no doubt that he was then trying to reproduce those
same figures, the appearance of which had already upset him.
"That's what you saw, isn't it, uncle?" I asked.
"Oh," he replied, in a low voice, "I saw much more than that, very
much more! . . . Wait and look right into them."
I stared wildly at the three "triangular circles," as I have called
them. One of them was set above the two others; and these two, which
were smaller and less regular but exactly alike, seemed, instead of
looking straight before them, to turn a little to the right and to the
left. Where did they come from? And what did they mean?
"Look," repeated my uncle. "Do you see?"
"Yes, yes," I replied, with a shudder. "_The thing's moving._"
It was in fact moving. Or rather, no, it was not: the outlines of the
geometrical figures remained stationary; and not a line shifted its
place within. And yet from all this immobility something emerged which
was nothing else than motion.
I now remembered my uncle's words:
"They're alive, aren't they? You can see them opening and showing
alarm! They're alive!"
They were alive! The three triangles were alive! And, as soon as I
experienced this precise and undeniable feeling that they were alive,
I ceased to regard them as an assemblage of lifeless lines and began
to see in them things which were like a sort of eyes, misshapen eyes,
eyes different from ours, but eyes furnished with irises and pupils
and throbbing in an abysmal darkness.
"They are looking at us!" I cried, quite beside myself and as feverish
and unnerved as my uncle.
He nodded his head and whispered:
"Yes, that's what they're doing."
The three eyes were looking at us. We were conscious of the scrutiny
of those three eyes, without lids or lashes, but full of an intense
life which was due to the expression that animated them, a changing
expression, by turns serious, proud, noble, enthusiastic and, above
all, sad, grievously sad.
I feel how improbable these observations must appear. Nevertheless
they correspond most strictly with the reality as it was beheld at a
later date by the crowds that thronged to Haut-Meudon Lodge. Like my
uncle, like myself, those crowds shuddered before three combinations
of motionless lines which had the most heart-rending expression, just
as at other moments they laughed at the comical or gayer expression
which they were compelled to read into those same lines.
And on each occasion the spectacle which I am now describing was
repeated in exactly the same order. A brief pause, followed by a
series of vibrations. Then, suddenly, three eclipses, after which the
combination of three triangles began to turn upon itself, as a whole,
slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity, which gradually
became transformed into so swift a rotation that one distinguished
nothing but a motionless rose-pattern.
After that, nothing. The panel was empty.
CHAPTER III
AN EXECUTION
It must be understood that, notwithstanding the explanations which I
must needs offer, the development of all these events took but very
little time: exactly eighteen seconds, as I had the opportunity of
calculating afterwards. But, during these eighteen seconds--and this
again I observed on many an occasion--the spectator received the
illusion of watching a complete drama, with its preliminary
expositions, its plot and its culmination. And when this obscure,
illogical drama was over, you questioned what you had seen, just as
you question the nightmare which wakes you from your sleep.
Nevertheless it must be said that none of all this partook in any way
of those absurd optical illusions which are so easily contrived or of
those arbitrary ideas on which a whole pseudo-scientific novel is
sometimes built up. There is no question of a novel, but of a physical
phenomenon, an _absolutely natural_ phenomenon, the explanation of
which, when it comes to be known, is also _absolutely natural_.
And I beg those who are not acquainted with this explanation not to
try to guess it. Let them not worry themselves with suppositions and
interpretations. Let them forget, one by one, the theories over which
I myself am lingering: all that has to do with B-rays, materializations,
or the effect of solar heat. These are so many roads that lead
nowhere. The best plan is to be guided by events, to have faith and to
wait.
"It's finished, uncle, isn't it?" I asked.
"It's the beginning," he replied.
"How do you mean? The beginning of what? What's going to happen?"
"I don't know."
I was astounded:
"You don't know? But you knew just now, about this, about those
strange eyes! . . ."
"It all starts with that. But other things come afterwards, things
which vary and which I know nothing about!"
"But how can that be possible?" I asked. "Do you mean to say that you
don't know anything about them, you who prepared everything for them?"
"I prepared them, but I do not control them. As I told you, I have
opened a door which leads into the darkness; and from that darkness
unforeseen images emerge."
"But is the thing that's coming of the same nature as those eyes?"
"No."
"Then what is it, uncle?"
"The thing that's coming will be a representation of images in
conformity with what we are accustomed to see."
"Things which we shall understand, therefore?"
"Yes, we shall understand them; and yet they will be all the more
incomprehensible."
I often wondered, during the weeks that followed, if my uncle's words
were to be fully relied upon and if he had not uttered them in order
to mislead me as to the origin and meaning of his discoveries. How
indeed was it possible to think that the key to the riddle remained
unknown to him? But at that moment I was wholly under his influence,
steeped in the great mystery that surrounded us; and, with a
constricted feeling at my heart, with all my overstimulated senses, I
thought of nothing but gazing into the miraculous panel.
A movement on my uncle's part warned me. I gave a start. The dawn was
rising over the grey surface.
I saw, first of all, a cloudy radiance whirling around a central
point, towards which all the luminous spirals rushed and in which
they were swallowed up while whirling upon themselves. Next, this
point expanded into an ever wider circle, covered with a light, hazy
veil which gradually dispersed, revealing a vague, floating image,
like the apparitions raised by spiritualists and mediums at their
sittings.
Then followed as it were a certain hesitation. The phantom image was
striving with the diffuse shadow and seeking to attain life and light.
Certain features became more pronounced. Outlines and separate planes
took shape; and at last a flood of light issued from the phantom image
and turned it into a dazzling picture, which seemed to be bathed in
sunlight.
It was a woman's face.
I remember that at that moment my mental confusion was such that I
felt like darting forward to feel the marvellous wall and lay my hands
upon the living material in which the incredible phenomenon was
vibrating. But my uncle dug his fingers into my arm:
"I won't have you move!" he growled. "If you budge an inch, the whole
thing will fade away. Look!"
I did not move; indeed, I doubt whether I could have done so. My legs
were giving way beneath me. Both of us, my uncle and I, dropped into
a sitting posture on the fallen trunk of a tree.
"Look, look!" he commanded.
The woman's face had approached in our direction until it was twice
the size of life. The first thing that struck us was the cap, which
was that of a nurse, with the head-band tightly drawn over the
forehead and the veil around the head. The features, handsome and
regular and still young, wore that look of almost divine dignity which
the primitive painters used to give to the saints who are suffering or
about to suffer martyrdom, a nobility compounded of pain and ecstasy,
of resignation and hope, of smiles and tears. Bathed in that light
which really seemed to be an inward flame, the woman opened, upon a
scene invisible to us, a pair of large dark eyes which, though filled
with nameless terror, _nevertheless were not afraid_. The contrast was
remarkable: her resignation was defiant; her fear was full of pride.
"Oh," stammered my uncle, "I seem to observe the same expression as in
the Three Eyes which were there just now. Do you see: the same
dignity, the same gentleness . . . and also the same dread?"
"Yes," I replied, "it's the same expression, the same sequence of
expressions."
And, while I spoke and while the woman still remained in the
foreground, outside the frame of the picture, I felt certain
recollections arise within me, as at the sight of the portrait of a
person whose features are not entirely unfamiliar. My uncle received
the same impression, for he said:
"I seem to remember . . ."
But at that moment the strange face withdrew to the plane which it
occupied at first. The mists that created a halo round it, drifted
away. The shoulders came into view, followed by the whole body. We now
saw a woman standing, fastened by bonds that gripped her bust and
waist to a post the upper end of which rose a trifle above her head.
Then all this, which hitherto had given the impression of fixed
outlines, like the outlines of a photograph, for instance, suddenly
became alive, like a picture developing into a reality, a statue
stepping straight into life. The bust moved. The arms, tied behind,
and the imprisoned shoulders were struggling against the cords that
were hurting them. The head turned slightly. The lips spoke. It was no
longer an image presented for us to gaze at: it was life, moving and
living life. It was a scene taking place in space and time. A whole
background came into being, filled with people moving to and fro.
Other figures were writhing, bound to posts. I counted eight of them.
A squad of soldiers marched up, with shouldered rifles. They wore
spiked helmets.
My uncle observed:
"Edith Cavell."
"Yes," I said, with a start, "I recognize her: Edith Cavell; the
execution of Edith Cavell."
Once more and not for the last time, in setting down such phrases as
these, I realize how ridiculous they must sound to any one who does
not know to begin with what they signify and what is the exact truth
that lies hidden in them. Nevertheless, I declare that this idea of
something absurd and impossible did not occur to the mind when it was
confronted with the phenomenon. Even when no theory had as yet
suggested the smallest element of a logical explanation, people
accepted as irrefutable the evidence of their own eyes. All those who
saw the thing and whom I questioned gave me the same answer.
_Afterwards_, they would correct themselves and protest. _Afterwards_,
they would plead the excuse of hallucinations or visions received by
suggestion. But, at the time, even though their reason was up in arms
and though they, so to speak, "kicked" against facts which had no
visible cause, they were compelled to bow before them and to follow
their development as they would the representation of a succession of
real events.
A theatrical representation, if you like, or rather a cinematographic
representation, for, on the whole, this was the impression that
emerged most clearly from all the impressions received. The moment
Miss Cavell's image had assumed the animation of life, I turned round
to look for the apparatus, standing in some corner of the Yard, which
was projecting that animated picture; and, though I saw nothing,
though I at once understood that in any case no projection could be
effected in broad daylight and without omitting shafts of light, yet I
received and retained that justifiable impression. There was no
projector, no, but there was a screen: an astonishing screen which
received nothing from without, since nothing was transmitted, but
which received everything from within. And that was really the
sensation experienced. The images did not come from the outside. They
sprang to the surface from within. The horizon opened out on the
farther side of a solid material. The darkness gave forth light.
Words, words, I know! Words which I heap upon words before I venture
to write those which express what I saw issuing from the abyss in
which Miss Cavell was about to undergo the death-penalty. The
execution of Miss Cavell! Of course I said to myself, if it was a
cinematographic representation, if it was a film--and how could one
doubt it?--at any rate it was a film like ever so many others, faked,
fictitious, based upon tradition, in a conventional setting, with paid
performers and a heroine who had thoroughly studied the part. I knew
that. But, all the same, I watched as though I did not know it. The
miracle of the spectacle was so great that one was constrained to
believe in the whole miracle, that is to say, in the reality of the
representation. No fake was here. No make-believe. No part learned by
heart. No performers and no setting. It was the actual scene. The
actual victims. The horror which thrilled me during those few minutes
was that which I should have felt had I beheld the murderous dawn of
the 8th of October, 1915, rise across the thrice-accursed
drill-ground.
It was soon over. The firing-platoon was drawn up in double file, on
the right and a little aslant, so that we saw the men's faces between
the rifle-barrels. There were a good many of them: thirty, forty
perhaps, forty butchers, booted, belted, helmeted, with their straps
under their chins. Above them hung a pale sky, streaked with thin red
clouds. Opposite them . . . opposite them were the eight doomed
victims.
There were six men and two women, all belonging to the people or the
lower middle-class. They were now standing erect, throwing forward
their chests as they tugged at their bonds.
An officer advanced, followed by four _Feldwebel_ carrying unfurled
handkerchiefs. Not any of the people condemned to death consented to
have their eyes bandaged. Nevertheless, their faces were wrung with
anguish; and all, with an impulse of their whole being, seemed to rush
forward to their doom.
The officer raised his sword. The soldiers took aim.
A supreme effort of emotion seemed to add to the stature of the
victims: and a cry issued from their lips. Oh, I _saw_ and _heard_
that cry, a fanatical and desperate cry in which the martyrs shouted
forth their triumphant faith.
The officer's arm fell smartly. The intervening space appeared to
tremble as with the rumbling of thunder. I had not the courage to
look; and my eyes fixed themselves on the distracted countenance of
Edith Cavell.
She also was not looking. Her eyelids were closed. But how she was
listening! How her features contracted under the clash of the
atrocious sounds, words of command, detonations, cries of the victims,
death-rattles, moans of agony. By what refinement of cruelty had her
own end been delayed? Why was she condemned to that double torture of
seeing others die before dying herself?
Still, everything must be over yonder. One party of the butchers
attended to the corpses, while the others formed into line and,
pivoting upon the officer, marched towards Miss Cavell. They thus
stepped out of the frame within which we were able to follow their
movements; but I was able to perceive, by the gestures of the officer,
that they were forming up opposite Nurse Cavell, between her and us.
The officer stepped towards her, accompanied by a military chaplain,
who placed a crucifix to her lips. She kissed it fervently and
tenderly. The chaplain then gave her his blessing; and she was left
alone. A mist once more shrouded the scene, leaving her whole figure
full in the light. Her eyelids were still closed, her head erect and
her body rigid.
She was at that moment wearing a very sweet and very tranquil
expression. Not a trace of fear distorted her noble countenance. She
stood awaiting death with saintly serenity.
And this death, as it was revealed to us, was neither very cruel nor
very odious. The upper part of the body fell forward. The head drooped
a little to one side. But the shame of it lay in what followed. The
officer stood close to the victim, revolver in hand. And he was
pressing the barrel to his victim's temple, when, suddenly, the mist
broke into dense waves and the whole picture disappeared. . . .
CHAPTER IV
NOËL DORGEROUX'S SON
The spectator who has just been watching the most tragic of films
finds it easy to escape from the sort of dark prison-house in which he
was suffocating and, with the return of the light, recovers his
equilibrium and his self-possession. I, on the other hand, remained
for a long time numb and speechless, with my eyes riveted to the empty
panel, as though I expected something else to emerge from it. Even
when it was over, the tragedy terrified me, like a nightmare prolonged
after waking, and, even more than the tragedy, the absolutely
extraordinary manner in which it had been unfolded before my eyes. I
did not understand. My disordered brain vouchsafed me none but the
most grotesque and incoherent ideas.
A movement on the part of Noël Dorgeroux drew me from my stupor: he
had drawn the curtain across the screen.
At this I vehemently seized my uncle by his two hands and cried:
"What does all this mean? It's maddening! What explanation are you
able to give?"
"None," he said, simply.
"But still . . . you brought me here."
"Yes, that you might also see and to make sure that my eyes had not
deceived me."
"Therefore you have already witnessed other scenes in that same
setting?"
"Yes, other sights . . . three times before."
"What, uncle? Can you specify them?"
"Certainly: what I saw yesterday, for instance."
"What was that, uncle?"
He pushed me a little and gazed at me, at first without replying.
Then, speaking in a very low tone, with deliberate conviction, he
said:
"The battle of Trafalgar."
I wondered if he was making fun of me. But Noël Dorgeroux was little
addicted to banter at any time; and he would not have selected such a
moment as this to depart from his customary gravity. No, he was
speaking seriously; and what he said suddenly struck me as so humorous
that I burst out laughing:
"Trafalgar! Don't be offended, uncle; but it's really too quaint! The
battle of Trafalgar, which was fought in 1805?"
He once more looked at me attentively:
"Why do you laugh?" he asked.
"Good heavens, I laugh, I laugh . . . because . . . well, confess
. . ."
He interrupted me:
"You're laughing for very simple reasons, Victorien, which I will
explain to you in a few words. To begin with, you are nervous and ill
at ease; and your merriment is first and foremost a reaction. But, in
addition, the spectacle of that horrible scene was so--what shall I
say?--so convincing that you looked upon it, in spite of yourself, not
as a reconstruction of the murder, but as the actual murder of Miss
Cavell. Is that true?"
"Perhaps it is, uncle."
"In other words, the murder and all the infamous details which
accompanied it must have been--don't let us hesitate to use the
word--must have been cinematographed by some unseen witness from whom
I obtained that precious film: and my invention consists solely in
reproducing the film in the thickness of a gelatinous layer of some
kind or other. A wonderful, but a credible discovery. Are we still
agreed?"
"Yes, uncle, quite."
"Very well. But now I am claiming something very different. I am
claiming to have witnessed an evocation of the battle of Trafalgar!
If so, the French and English frigates must have foundered before my
eyes! I must have seen Nelson die, struck down at the foot of his
mainmast! That's quite another matter, is it not? In 1805 there were
no cinematographic films. Therefore this can be only an absurd parody.
Thereupon all your emotion vanishes. My reputation fades into thin
air. And you laugh! I am to you nothing more than an old impostor,
who, instead of humbly showing you his curious discovery, tries in
addition to persuade you that the moon is made of green cheese! A
humbug, what?"
We had left the wall and were walking towards the door of the garden.
The sun was setting behind the distant hills. I stopped and said to
Noël Dorgeroux:
"Forgive me, uncle, and please don't think that I am over lacking in
the respect I owe you. There is nothing in my amusement that need
annoy you, nothing to make you suppose that I suspect your absolute
sincerity."
"Then what do you think? What is your conclusion?"
"I don't think anything, uncle. I have arrived at no conclusion and I
am not even trying to do so, at present. I am out of my depth,
perplexed, at the same time dazed and dissatisfied, as though I felt
that the riddle was even more wonderful than it is and that it would
always remain insoluble."
We were entering the garden. It was his turn to stop me:
"Insoluble! That is really your opinion?"
"Yes, for the moment."
"You can't imagine any theory?"
"No."
"Still, you saw? You have no doubts?"
"I certainly saw. I saw first three strange eyes that looked at us;
then I witnessed a scene which was the murder of Miss Cavell. That is
what I saw, just as you did, uncle; and I do not for a moment doubt
the undeniable evidence of my own eyes."
He held out his hand to me:
"That's what I wanted to know, my boy. And thank you."
* * * * *
I have given a faithful account of what happened that afternoon. In
the evening we dined together by ourselves, Bérangère having sent word
to say that she was indisposed and would not leave her room. My uncle
was deeply absorbed in thought and did not say a word on what had
happened in the Yard.
I slept hardly at all, haunted by the recollection of what I had seen
and tormented by a score of theories, which I need not mention here,
for not one of them was of the slightest value.
Next day, Bérangère did not come downstairs. At luncheon, my uncle
preserved the same silence. I tried many times to make him talk, but
received no reply.
My curiosity was too intense to allow my uncle to get rid of me in
this way. I took up my position in the garden before he left the
house. Not until five o'clock did he go up to the Yard.
"Shall I come with you, uncle?" I suggested, boldly.
He grunted, neither granting my request nor refusing it. I followed
him. He walked across the Yard, locked himself into his principal
workshop and did not leave it until an hour later:
"Ah, there you are!" he said, as though he had been unaware of any
presence.
He went to the wall and briskly drew the curtain. Just then he asked
me to go back to the workshop and to fetch something or other which he
had forgotten. When I returned, he said, excitedly:
"It's finished, it's finished!"
"What is, uncle?"
"The Eyes, the Three Eyes."
"Oh, have you seen them?"
"Yes; and I refuse to believe . . . no, of course, it's an illusion on
my part. . . . How could it be possible, when you come to think of it?
Imagine, the eyes wore the expression of my dead son's eyes, yes, the
very expression of my poor Dominique. It's madness, isn't it? And yet
I declare, yes, I declare that Dominique was gazing at me . . . at
first with a sad and sorrowful gaze, which suddenly became the
terrified gaze of a man who is staring death in the face. And then the
Three Eyes began to revolve upon themselves. That was the end."
I made Noël Dorgeroux sit down:
"It's as you suppose, uncle, an illusion, an hallucination. Just
think, Dominique has been dead so many years! It is therefore
incredible . . ."
"Everything is incredible and nothing is," he said. "There is no room
for human logic in front of that wall."
I tried to reason with him, though my mind was becoming as bewildered
as his own. But he silenced me:
"That'll do," he said. "Here's the other thing beginning."
He pointed to the screen, which was showing signs of life and
preparing to reveal a new picture.
"But, uncle," I said, already overcome by excitement, "where does that
come from?"
"Don't speak," said Noël Dorgeroux. "Not a word."
I at once observed that this other thing bore no relation to what I
had witnessed the day before; and I concluded that the scenes
presented must occur without any prearranged order, without any
chronological or serial connection, in short, like the different films
displayed in the course of a performance.
It was the picture of a small town as seen from a neighbouring height.
A castle and a church-steeple stood out above it. The town was built
on the slope of several hills and at the intersection of the valleys,
which met among clumps of tall, leafy trees.
Suddenly, it came nearer and was seen on a larger scale. The hills
surrounding the town disappeared; and the whole screen was filled with
a crowd swarming with lively gestures around an open space above which
hung a balloon, held captive by ropes. Suspended from the balloon was
a receptacle serving probably for the production of hot air. Men were
issuing from the crowd on every hand. Two of them climbed a ladder
the top of which was leaning against the side of a car. And all this,
the appearance of the balloon, the shape of the appliances employed,
the use of hot air instead of gas, the dress of the people; all this
struck me as possessing an old-world aspect.
"The brothers Montgolfier," whispered my uncle.
These few words enlightened me. I remembered those old prints
recording man's first ascent towards the sky, which was accomplished
in June, 1783. It was this wonderful event which we were witnessing,
or, at least, I should say, a reconstruction of the event, a
reconstruction accurately based upon those old prints, with a balloon
copied from the original, with costumes of the period and no doubt, in
addition, the actual setting of the little town of Annonay.
But then how was it that there was so great a multitude of townsfolk
and peasants? There was no comparison possible between the usual
number of actors in a cinema scene and the incredibly tight-packed
crowd which I saw moving before my eyes. A crowd like that is found
only in pictures which the camera has secured direct, on a public
holiday, at a march-past of troops or a royal procession.
However, the wavelike eddying of the crowd suddenly subsided. I
received the impression of a great silence and an anxious period of
waiting. Some men quickly severed the ropes with hatchets. Etienne and
Joseph Montgolfier lifted their hats.
And the balloon rose in space. The people in the crowd raised their
arms and filled the air with an immense clamour.
For a moment, the screen showed us the two brothers, by themselves and
enlarged. With the upper part of their bodies leaning from the car,
each with one arm round the other's waist and one hand clasping the
other's, they seemed to be praying with an air of unspeakable ecstasy
and solemn joy.
Slowly the ascent continued. And it was then that something utterly
inexplicable occurred: the balloon, as it rose above the little town
and the surrounding hills, did not appear to my uncle and me as an
object which we were watching from an increasing depth below. No, it
was the little town and the hills which were sinking and which, by
sinking, proved to us that the balloon was ascending. But there was
also this absolutely illogical phenomenon, that we remained on the
same level as the balloon, that it retained the same dimensions and
that the two brothers stood facing us, _exactly as though the
photograph had been taken from the car of a second balloon, rising at
the same time as the first with an exactly and mathematically
identical movement_!
The scene was not completed. Or rather it was transformed in
accordance with the method of the cinematograph, which substitutes one
picture for another by first blending them together. Imperceptibly,
when it was perhaps some fifteen hundred feet from the ground, the
Montgolfier balloon became less distinct and its vague and softened
outlines gradually mingled with the more and more powerful outlines of
another shape which soon occupied the whole space and which proved to
be that of a military aeroplane.
Several times since then the mysterious screen has shown me two
successive scenes of which the second completed the first, thus
forming a diptych which displayed the evident wish to convey a lesson
by connecting, across space and time, two events which in this way
acquired their full significance. This time the moral was clear: the
peaceable balloon had culminated in the murderous aeroplane. First the
ascent at Annonay. Then a fight in mid-air, a fight between the
monoplane which I had seen develop from the old-fashioned balloon and
the biplane upon which I beheld it swooping like a bird of prey.
Was it an illusion or a "faked representation?" For here again we saw
the two aeroplanes not in the normal fashion, from below, _but as if
we were at the same height and moving at the same rate of speed_. In
that case, were we to admit that an operator, perched on a third
machine, was calmly engaged in "filming" the shifting fortunes of the
terrible battle? That was impossible, surely!
But there was no good purpose to be served by renewing these perpetual
suppositions over and over again. Why should I doubt the unimpeachable
evidence of my eyes and deny the undeniable? _Real_ aeroplanes were
manoeuvring before my eyes. A _real_ fight was taking place in the
thickness of that old wall.
It did not last long. The man who was alone was attacking boldly. Time
after time his machine-gun flashed forth flames. Then, to avoid the
enemy's bullets, he looped the loop twice, each time throwing his
aeroplane in such a position that I was able to distinguish on the
canvas the three concentric circles that denote the Allied machines.
Then, coming nearer and attacking his adversaries from behind, he
returned to his gun.
The Hun biplane--I observed the iron cross--dived straight for the
ground and recovered itself. The two men seemed to be sitting tight
under their furs and masks. There was a third machine-gun attack. The
pilot threw up his hands. The biplane capsized and fell.
I saw this fall in the most inexplicable fashion. At first, of course,
it seemed swift as lightning. And then it became infinitely slow and
even ceased, with the machine overturned and the two bodies
_motionless, head downwards and arms outstretched_.
Then the ground shot up with a dizzy speed, devastated, shell-holed
fields, swarming with thousands of French _poilus_.
The biplane came down beside a river. From the shapeless fuselage and
the shattered wings two legs appeared.
And the French plane landed almost immediately, a short way off. The
victor stepped out, pushed back the soldiers who had run up from every
side and, moving a few yards towards his motionless prey, took off his
mask and made the sign of the cross.
"Oh," I whispered, "this is dreadful! And how mysterious! . . ."
Then I saw that Noël Dorgeroux was on his knees, his face distorted
with emotion:
"What is it, uncle?" I asked.
Stretching towards the wall his trembling hands, which were clasped
together, he stammered:
"Dominique! I recognize my son! It's he! Oh, I'm terrified!"
I also, as I gazed at the victor, recovered in my memory the
time-effaced image of my poor cousin.
"It's he!" continued my uncle. "I was right . . . the expression of
the Three Eyes. . . . Oh! I can't look! . . . I'm afraid!"
"Afraid of what, uncle?"
"They are going to kill him . . . to kill him before my eyes . . . to
kill him as they actually did kill him . . . Dominique! Dominique!
Take care!" he shouted.
I did not shout: what warning cry could reach the man about to die?
But the same terror brought me to my knees and made me wring my hands.
In front of us, from underneath the shapeless mass, among the
heaped-up wreckage, something rose up, the swaying body of one of the
victims. An arm was extended, aiming a revolver. The victor sprang to
one side. It was too late. Shot through the head, he spun round upon
his heels and fell beside the dead body of his murderer.
The tragedy was over.
My uncle, bent double, was sobbing pitifully a few paces from my
side. He had witnessed the actual death of his son, foully murdered in
the great war by a German airman!
CHAPTER V
THE KISS
Bérangère next day resumed her place at meals, looking a little pale
and wearing a more serious face than usual. My uncle, who had not
troubled about her during the last two days, kissed her
absent-mindedly. We lunched without a word. Not until we had nearly
ended did Noël Dorgeroux speak to his god-child:
"Well, dear, are you none the worse for your fall?"
"Not a bit, god-father; and I'm only sorry that I didn't see . . .
what you saw up there, yesterday and the day before. Are you going
there presently, god-father?"
"Yes, but I'm going alone."
This was said in a peremptory tone which allowed of no reply. My uncle
was looking at me. I did not stir a muscle.
Lunch finished in an awkward silence. As he was about to leave the
room, Noël Dorgeroux turned back to me and asked:
"Do you happen to have lost anything in the Yard?"
"No, uncle. Why do you ask?"
"Because," he answered, with a slight hesitation, "because I found
this on the ground, just in front of the wall."
He showed me a lens from an eye-glass.
"But you know, uncle," I said, laughing, "that I don't wear spectacles
or glasses of any kind."
"No more do I!" Bérangère declared.
"That's so, that's so," Noël Dorgeroux replied, in a thoughtful tone.
"But, still, somebody has been there. And you can understand my
uneasiness."
In the hope of making him speak, I pursued the subject:
"What are you uneasy about, uncle? At the worst, some one may have
seen the pictures produced on the screen, which would not be enough,
so it seems to me, to enable the secret of your discovery to be
stolen. Remember that I myself, who was with you, am hardly any wiser
than I was before."
I felt that he did not intend to answer and that he resented my
insistence. This irritated me.
"Listen, uncle," I said. "Whatever the reasons for your conduct may
be, you have no right to suspect me; and I ask and entreat you to
give me an explanation. Yes, I entreat you, for I cannot remain in
this uncertainty. Tell me, uncle, was it really your son whom you saw
die, or were we shown a fabricated picture of his death? Then again,
what is the unseen and omnipotent entity which causes these phantoms
to follow one another in that incredible magic lantern? Never was
there such a problem, never so many irreconcilable questions. Look
here, last night, while I was trying for hours to get to sleep, I
imagined--it's an absurd theory, I know, but, all the same, one has to
cast about--well, I remembered that you had spoken to Bérangère of a
certain inner force which radiated from us and emitted what you have
named the B-rays, after your god-daughter. If so, might one not
suppose that, in the circumstances, this force, emanating, uncle, from
your own brain, which was haunted by a vague resemblance between the
expression of the Three Eyes and the expression of your own, might we
not suppose that this force projected on the receptive material of the
wall the scene which was conjured up in your mind? Don't you think
that the screen which you have covered with a special substance
registered your thoughts just as a sensitive plate, acted upon by the
sunlight, registers forms and outlines? In that case . . ."
I broke off. As I spoke, the words which I was using seemed to me
devoid of meaning. My uncle, however, appeared to be listening to them
with a certain willingness and even to be waiting for what I would say
next. But I did not know what to say. I had suddenly come to the end
of my tether; and, though I made every effort to detain Noël Dorgeroux
by fresh arguments, I felt that there was not a word more to be said
between us on that subject.
Indeed, my uncle went away without answering one of my questions. I
saw him, through the window, crossing the garden.
I gave way to a movement of anger and exclaimed to Bérangère:
"I've had enough of this! After all, why should I worry myself to
death trying to understand a discovery which, when you think of it, is
not a discovery at all? For what does it consist of? No one can
respect Noël Dorgeroux more than I do; but there's no doubt that this,
instead of a real discovery, is rather a stupefying way of deluding
one's self, of mixing up things that exist with things that do not
exist and of giving an appearance of reality to what has none. Unless
. . . But who knows anything about it? It is not even possible to
express an opinion. The whole thing is an ocean of mystery, overhung
by mountainous clouds which descend upon one and stifle one!"
My ill-humour suddenly turned against Bérangère. She had listened to
me with a look of disapproval, feeling angry perhaps at my blaming her
god-father; and she was now slipping towards the door. I stopped her
as she was passing; and, in a fit of rancour which was foreign to my
nature, I let fly:
"Why are you leaving the room? Why do you always avoid me as you do?
Speak, can't you? What have you against me? Yes, I know, my
thoughtless conduct, the other day. But do you think I would have
acted like that if you weren't always keeping up that sulky reserve
with me? Hang it all, I've known you as quite a little girl! I've held
your skipping-rope for you when you were just a slip of a child! Then
why should I now be made to look on you as a woman and to feel that
you are indeed a woman . . . a woman who stirs me to the very depths
of my heart?"
She was standing against the door and gazing at me with an undefinable
smile, which contained a gleam of mockery, but nothing provocative and
not a shade of coquetry. I noticed for the first time that her eyes,
which I thought to be grey, were streaked with green and, as it were,
flecked with specks of gold. And, at the same time, the expression of
those great eyes, bright and limpid though they were, struck me as the
most unfathomable thing in the world. What was passing in those limpid
depths? And why did my mind connect the riddle of those eyes with the
terrible riddle which the three geometrical eyes had set me?
However, the recollection of the stolen kiss diverted my glance to her
red lips. Her face turned crimson. This was a last, exasperating
insult.
"Let me be! Go away!" she commanded, quivering with anger and shame.
Helpless and a prisoner, she lowered her head and bit her lips to
prevent my seeing them. Then, when I tried to take her hands, she
thrust her outstretched arms against my chest, pushed me back with all
her might and cried:
"You're a mean coward! Go away! I loathe and hate you!"
Her outburst restored my composure. I was ashamed of what I had done
and, making way for her to pass, I opened the door for her and said:
"I beg your pardon, Bérangère. Don't be angrier with me than you can
help. I promise you it shan't occur again."
* * * * *
Once more, the story of the Three Eyes is closely bound up with all
the details of my love, not only in my recollection of it, but also in
actual fact. While the riddle itself is alien to it and may be
regarded solely in its aspect of a scientific phenomenon, it is
impossible to describe how humanity came to know of it and was brought
into immediate contact with it, without at the same time revealing all
the vicissitudes of my sentimental adventure. The riddle and this
adventure, from the point of view with which we are concerned, are
integral parts of the same whole. The two must be described
simultaneously.
At the moment, being somewhat disillusionized in both respects, I
decided to tear myself away from this twofold preoccupation and to
leave my uncle to his inventions and Bérangère to her sullen mood.
I had not much difficulty in carrying out my resolve in so far as Noël
Dorgeroux was concerned. We had a long succession of wet days. The
rain kept him to his room or his laboratories; and the pictures on the
screen faded from my mind like diabolical visions which the brain
refuses to accept. I did not wish to think of them; and I thought of
them hardly at all.
But Bérangère's charm pervaded me, notwithstanding the good faith in
which I waged this daily battle. Unaccustomed to the snares of love, I
fell an easy prey, incapable of defence. Bérangère's voice, her laugh,
her silence, her day-dreams, her way of holding herself, the fragrance
of her personality, the colour of her hair served me as so many
excuses for exaltation, rejoicing, suffering or despair. Through the
breach now opened in my professorial soul, which hitherto had known
few joys save those of study, came surging all the feelings that make
up the delights and also the pangs of love, all the emotions of
longing, hatred, fondness, fear, hope . . . and jealousy.
It was one bright and peaceful morning, as I was strolling in the
Meudon woods, that I caught sight of Bérangère in the company of a
man. They were standing at a corner where two roads met and were
talking with some vivacity. The man faced me. I saw a type of what
would be described as a coxcomb, with regular features, a dark,
fan-shaped beard and a broad smile which displayed his teeth. He wore
a double eye-glass.
Bérangère heard the sound of my footsteps, as I approached, and turned
round. Her attitude denoted hesitation and confusion. But she at once
pointed down one of the two roads, as though giving a direction. The
fellow raised his hat and walked away. Bérangère joined me and,
without much restraint, explained:
"It was somebody asking his way."
"But you know him, Bérangère?" I objected.
"I never saw him before in my life," she declared.
"Oh, come, come! Why, from the manner you were speaking to him . . .
Look here, Bérangère, will you take your oath on it?"
She started:
"What do you mean? Why should I take an oath to you? I am not
accountable to you for my actions."
"In that case, why did you tell me that he was enquiring his way of
you? I asked you no question."
"I do as I please," she replied, curtly.
Nevertheless, when we reached the Lodge, she thought better of it and
said:
"After all, if it gives you any pleasure, I can swear that I was
seeing that gentleman for the first time and that I had never heard of
him. I don't even know his name."
We parted.
"One word more," I said. "Did you notice that the man wore glasses?"
"So he did!" she said, with some surprise. "Well, what does that
prove?"
"Remember, your uncle found a spectacle-lens in front of the wall in
the Yard."
She stopped to think and then shrugged her shoulders:
"A mere coincidence! Why should you connect the two things?"
Bérangère was right and I did not insist. Nevertheless and though she
had answered me in a tone of undeniable candour, the incident left me
uneasy and suspicious. I would not admit that so animated a
conversation could take place between her and a perfect stranger who
was simply asking her the way. The man was well set-up and
good-looking. I suffered tortures.
That evening Bérangère was silent. It struck me that she had been
crying. My uncle, on the contrary, on returning from the Yard, was
talkative and cheerful; and I more than once felt that he was on the
point of telling me something. Had anything thrown fresh light on his
invention?
Next day, he was just as lively:
"Life is very pleasant, at times," he said.
And he left us, rubbing his hands.
Bérangère spent all the early part of the afternoon on a bench in the
garden, where I could see her from my room. She sat motionless and
thoughtful.
At four o'clock, she came in, walked across the hall of the Lodge and
went out by the front door.
I went out too, half a minute later.
The street which skirted the house turned and likewise skirted, on the
left, the garden and the Yard, whereas on the right the property was
bordered by a narrow lane which led to some fields and abandoned
quarries. Bérangère often went this way; and I at once saw, by her
slow gait, that her only intention was to stroll wherever her dreams
might lead her.
She had not put on a hat. The sunlight gleamed in her hair. She picked
the stones on which to place her feet, so as not to dirty her shoes
with the mud in the road.
Against the stout plank fence which at this point replaced the wall
enclosing the Yard stood an old street-lamp, now no longer used, which
was fastened to the fence with iron clamps. Bérangère stopped here,
all of a sudden, evidently in obedience to a thought which, I
confess, had often occurred to myself and which I had had the courage
to resist, perhaps because I had not perceived the means of putting it
into execution.
Bérangère saw the means. It was only necessary to climb the fence by
using the lamp, in order to make her way into the Yard without her
uncle's knowledge and steal a glimpse of one of those sights which he
guarded so jealously for himself.
She made up her mind without hesitation; and, when she was on the
other side, I too had not the least hesitation in following her
example. I was in that state of mind when one is not unduly troubled
by idle scruples; and there was no more indelicacy in satisfying my
legitimate curiosity than in spying upon Bérangère's actions. I
therefore climbed over also.
My scruples returned when I found myself on the other side, face to
face with Bérangère, who had experienced some difficulty in getting
down. I said, a little sheepishly:
"This is not a very nice thing we're doing, Bérangère; and I presume
you mean to give it up."
She began to laugh:
"You can give it up. I intend to go on. If god-father chooses to
distrust us, it's his look-out."
I did not try to restrain her. She slipped softly between the nearest
two sheds. I followed close upon her heels.
In this way we stole to the end of the open ground which occupied the
middle of the Yard and we saw Noël Dorgeroux standing by the screen.
He had not yet drawn the black-serge curtain.
"Look," Bérangère whispered, "over there: you see a stack of wood with
a tarpaulin over it? We shall be all right behind that."
"But suppose my uncle looks round while we're crossing?"
"He won't."
She was the first to venture across; and I joined her without any
mishap. We were not more than a dozen yards from the screen.
"My heart's beating so!" said Bérangère. "I've seen nothing, you know:
only those--sort of eyes. And there's a lot more, isn't there?"
Our refuge consisted of two stacks of small short planks, with bags of
sand between the stacks. We sat down here, in a position which brought
us close together. Nevertheless Bérangère maintained the same distant
attitude as before; and I now thought of nothing but what my uncle
was doing.
He was holding his watch in his hand and consulting it at intervals,
as though waiting for a time which he had fixed beforehand. And that
time arrived. The curtain grated on its metal rod. The screen was
uncovered.
From where we sat we could see the bare surface as well as my uncle
could, for the intervening space fell very far short of the length of
an ordinary picture-palace. The first outlines to appear were
therefore absolutely plain to us. They were the lines of the three
geometrical figures which I knew so well: the same proportions, the
same arrangement, the same impassiveness, followed by that same
palpitation, coming entirely from within, which animated them and made
them live.
"Yes, yes," whispered Bérangère, "my god-father said so one day: they
are alive, the Three Eyes."
"They are alive," I declared, "and they gaze at you. Look at the two
lower eyes by themselves; think of them as actual eyes; and you will
see that they really have an expression. There, they're smiling now."
"You're right, they're smiling."
"And see what a soft and gentle look they have now . . . a little
serious also. . . . Oh, Bérangère, it's impossible!"
"What?"
"They have your expression, Bérangère, your expression."
"What nonsense! It's ridiculous!"
"The very expression of your eyes. You don't know it yourself. But I
do. They have never looked at me like that; but, all the same, they
are your eyes, it's their expression, their charm. I know, because
these make me feel . . . eh, as yours do, Bérangère!"
But the end was approaching. The three geometrical figures began to
revolve upon themselves with the same dizzy motion which reduced them
to a confused disk which soon vanished.
"They're your eyes, Bérangère," I stammered; "there's not a doubt
about it; it was as though you were looking at me."
Yes, she had the same look; and I could not but remember then that
Edith Cavell had also looked in that way at Noël Dorgeroux and me,
through the three strange eyes, and that Noël Dorgeroux similarly had
recognized the look in his son's eyes before his son himself appeared
to him. That being so, was I to assume that each of the films--there
is no other word for them--was preceded _by the fabulous vision of
three geometrical figures containing, captive and alive, the very
expression in the eyes of one of the persons about to come to life
upon the screen_?
It was a lunatic assumption, as were all those which I was making! I
blush to write it down. But, in that case, what were the three
geometrical figures? A cinema trade-mark? The trade-mark of the Three
Eyes? What an absurdity! What madness! And yet . . .
"Oh," said Bérangère, making as if to rise, "I oughtn't to have come!
It's suffocating me. Can you explain?"
"No, Bérangère, I can't. It's suffocating me too. Do you want to go?"
"No," she said, leaning forward. "No, I want to see."
And we saw. And, at the very moment when a muffled cry escaped our
lips, we saw Noël Dorgeroux slowly making a great sign of the cross.
Opposite him, in the middle of the magic space on the wall, was he
himself this time, standing not like a frail and shifting phantom, but
like a human being full of movement and life. Yes, Noël Dorgeroux went
to and fro before us and before himself, wearing his usual skull-cap,
dressed in his long frock-coat. And the setting in which he moved was
none other than the Yard, the Yard with its shed, its workshops, its
disorder, its heaps of scrap-iron, its stacks of wood, its rows of
barrels and its wall, with the rectangle of the serge curtain!
I at once noticed one detail: the serge curtain covered the magic
space completely. It was therefore impossible to imagine that this
scene, at any rate, had been recorded, absorbed by the screen, which,
at that actual moment, must have drawn it from its own substance in
order to present that sight to us! It was impossible, because Noël
Dorgeroux had his back turned to the wall. It was impossible, because
we saw the wall itself and the door of the garden, because the gate
was open and because I, in my turn, entered the Yard.
"You! It's you!" gasped Bérangère.
"It's I on the day when your uncle told me to come here," I said,
astounded, "the day when I first saw a vision on the screen."
At that moment, on the screen, Noël Dorgeroux beckoned to me from the
door of his workshop. We went in together. The Yard remained empty;
and then, after an eclipse which lasted only a second or two, the same
scene reappeared, the little garden-door opened again and Bérangère,
all smiles, put her head through. She seemed to be saying:
"Nobody here. They're in the office. Upon my word, I'll risk it!"
And she crept along the wall, towards the serge curtain.
All this happened quickly, without any of the vibration seen in the
picture-theatres, and so clearly and plainly that I followed our two
images not as the phases of an incident buried in the depths of time,
but as the reflection in a mirror of a scene in which we were the
immediate actors. To tell the truth, I was confused at seeing myself
over there and feeling myself to be where I was. This doubling of my
personality made my brain reel.
"Victorien," said Bérangère, in an almost inaudible voice, "you're
going to come out of your uncle's workshop as you did the other day,
aren't you?"
"Yes," I said, "the details of the other day are beginning all over
again."
And they did. Here were my uncle and I coming out of the workshop.
Here was Bérangère, surprised, running away and laughing. Here she
was, climbing a plank lying across two barrels and dancing, ever so
gracefully and lightly! And then, as before, she fell. I darted
forward, picked her up, carried her and laid her on the bench. She
put her arms round me; our faces almost touched. And, as before,
gently at first and then roughly and violently, I kissed her on the
lips. And, as on that occasion, she rose to her feet, while I crouched
before her.
Oh, how well I remember it all! I remember and I still see myself. I
see myself yonder, bending very low not daring to lift my head, and I
see Bérangère, standing up, covered with shame, trembling with
indignation.
Indignation? Did she really seem indignant? But then why did her dear
face, the face on the screen, display such indulgence and gentleness?
Why did she smile with that expression of unspeakable gladness? Yes, I
swear it was gladness. Yonder, in the magic space where that exciting
minute was being reenacted, there stood over me a happy creature who
was gazing at me with joy and affection, who was gazing at me thus
because she knew that I could not see her and because she could not
know that one day I should see her.
"Bérangère! . . . Bérangère! . . ."
But suddenly, while the adorable vision yonder continued, my eyes were
covered as with a veil. Bérangère had turned towards me and put her
two hands over my eyes, whispering:
"Don't look. I won't have you look. Besides, it's not true. That
woman's lying, it's not me at all. . . . No, no, I never looked at you
like that."
Her voice grew fainter. Her hands dropped to her sides. And, with all
the strength gone out of her, she let herself fall against my
shoulder, gently and silently.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, I went back alone. Bérangère had left me without a
word, after her unexpected movement of surrender.
Next morning I received a telegram from the rector of the university,
calling me to Grenoble. Bérangère did not appear as I was leaving.
But, when my uncle brought me to the station, I saw her, not far from
the Lodge, talking with that confounded coxcomb whom she pretended not
to know.
CHAPTER VI
ANXIETIES
"You seem very happy, uncle!" said I to Noël Dorgeroux, who walked
briskly on the way to the station, whistling one gay tune after
another.
"Yes," he replied, "I am happy as a man is who has come to a
decision."
"You've come to a decision, uncle?"
"And a very serious one at that. It has cost me a sleepless night; but
it's worth it."
"May I ask . . . ?"
"Certainly. In two words, it's this: I'm going to pull down the sheds
in the Yard and build an amphitheatre there."
"What for?"
"To exploit the thing . . . the thing you know of."
"How do you mean, to exploit it?"
"Why, it's a tremendously important discovery; and, if properly
worked, it will give me the money which I have always been trying for,
not for its own sake, but because of the resources which it will
bring me, money with the aid of which I shall be able to continue my
labours without being checked by secondary considerations. There are
millions to be made, Victorien, millions! And what shall I not
accomplish with millions! This brain of mine," he went on, tapping his
forehead, "is simply crammed with ideas, with theories which need
verifying. And it all takes money. . . . Money! Money! You know how
little I care about money! But I want millions, if I am to carry
through my work. And those millions I shall have!"
Mastering his enthusiasm, he took my arm and explained:
"First of all, the Yard cleared of its rubbish and levelled. After
that, the amphitheatre, with five stages of benches facing the wall.
For of course the wall remains: it is the essential point, the reason
for the whole thing. But I shall heighten and widen it; and, when it
is quite unobstructed, there will be a clear view of it from every
seat. You follow me, don't you?"
"I follow you, uncle. But do you think people will come?"
"Will they come? What! You, who know, ask me that question! Why, they
will pay gold for the worst seat, they'll give a king's ransom to get
in! I'm so sure of it that I shall put all I have left, the last
remnant of my savings, into the business. And within a year I shall
have amassed incalculable wealth."
"The place is quite small, uncle, and you will have only a limited
number of seats."
"A thousand, a thousand seats, comfortably! At two hundred francs a
seat to begin with, at a thousand francs! . . ."
"I say, uncle! Seats in the open air, exposed to the rain, to the
cold, to all sorts of weather!"
"I've foreseen that objection. The Yard will be closed on rainy days.
I want bright daylight, sunshine, the action of the light and other
conditions besides, which will still further decrease the number of
demonstrations. But that doesn't matter: each seat will cost two
thousand francs, five thousand francs, if necessary! I tell you,
there's no limit! No one will be content to die without having been to
Noël Dorgeroux's Yard! Why, Victorien, you know it as well as I do!
When all is said, the reality is more extraordinary than anything that
you can imagine, even after what you have seen with your own eyes."
I could not help asking him:
"Then there are fresh manifestations?"
He replied by nodding his head:
"It's not so much that they're new," he said, "as that, above all,
they have enabled me, with the factors which I already possess, to
probe the truth to the bottom."
"Uncle! Uncle!" I cried. "You mean to say that you know the truth?"
"I know the whole truth, my boy," he declared. "I know how much is my
work and how much has nothing to do with me. What was once darkness is
now dazzling light."
And he added, in a very serious tone:
"It is beyond all imagination, my boy. It is beyond the most
extravagant dreams; and yet it remains within the province of facts
and certainties. Once humanity knows of it, the earth will pass
through a thrill of religious awe; and the people who come here as
pilgrims will fall upon their knees--as I did--fall upon their knees
like children who pray and fold their hands and weep!"
His words, which were obviously exaggerated, seemed to come from an
ill-balanced mind. Yet I felt the force of their exciting and feverish
influence:
"Explain yourself, uncle, I beg you."
"Later on, my boy, when all the points have been cleared up."
"What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing from you."
"From whom then?"
"Nobody. But I have my misgivings . . . quite wrongly, perhaps. Still,
certain facts lead me to think that I am being spied upon and that
some one is trying to discover my secret. It's just a few clues . . .
things that have been moved from their place . . . and, above all, a
vague intuition."
"This is all very indefinite, uncle."
"Very, I admit," he said, drawing himself up. "And so forgive me if my
precautions are excessive . . . and let's talk of something else: of
yourself, Victorien, of your plans . . ."
"I have no plans, uncle."
"Yes, you have. There's one at least that you're keeping from me."
"How so?"
He stopped in his walk and said:
"You're in love with Bérangère."
I did not think of protesting, knowing that Noël Dorgeroux had been in
the Yard the day before, in front of the screen:
"I am, uncle, I'm in love with Bérangère, but she doesn't care for
me."
"Yes, she does, Victorien."
I displayed some slight impatience:
"Uncle, I must ask you not to insist. Bérangère is a mere child; she
does not know what she wants; she is incapable of any serious
feeling; and I do not intend to think about her any more. On my part,
it was just a fancy of which I shall soon be cured."
Noël Dorgeroux shrugged his shoulders:
"Lovers' quarrels! Now this is what I have to say to you, Victorien.
The work at the Yard will take up all the winter. The amphitheatre
will be open to the public on the fourteenth of May, to the day. The
Easter holidays will fall a month earlier; and you shall marry my
god-daughter during the holidays. Not a word; leave it to me. And
leave both your settlements and your prospects to me as well. You can
understand, my boy, that, when money is pouring in like water--as it
will without a doubt--Victorien Beaugrand will throw up a profession
which does not give him sufficient leisure for his private studies and
that he will live with me, he and his wife. Yes, I said his wife; and
I stick to it. Good-bye, my dear chap, not another word."
I walked on. He called me back:
"Say good-bye to me, Victorien."
He put his arms round me with greater fervour than usual; and I heard
him murmur:
"Who can tell if we shall ever meet again? At my age! And threatened
as I am, too!"
I protested. He embraced me yet again:
"You're right. I am really talking nonsense. You think of your
marriage. Bérangère is a dear, sweet girl. And she loves you. Good-bye
and bless you! I'll write to you. Good-bye."
* * * * *
I confess that Noël Dorgeroux's ambitions, at least in so far as they
related to the turning of his discovery to practical account, did not
strike me as absurd; and what I have said of the things seen at the
Yard will exempt me, I imagine, from stating the reasons for my
confidence. For the moment, therefore, I will leave the question aside
and say no more of those three haunting eyes or the phantasmal scenes
upon the magic screen. But how could I indulge the dreams of the
future which Noël Dorgeroux suggested? How could I forget Bérangère's
hostile attitude, her ambiguous conduct?
True, during the months that followed, I often sought to cling to the
delightful memory of the vision which I had surprised and the charming
picture of Bérangère bending over me with that soft look in her eyes.
But I very soon pulled myself up and cried:
"I saw the thing all wrong! What I took for affection and, God forgive
me, for love was only the expression of a woman triumphing over a
man's abasement! Bérangère does not care for me. The movement that
threw her against my shoulder was due to a sort of nervous crisis; and
she felt so much ashamed of it that she at once pushed me away and ran
indoors. Besides, she had an appointment with that man the very next
day and, in order to keep it, let me go without saying good-bye to
me."
My months of exile therefore were painful months. I wrote to Bérangère
in vain. I received no reply.
My uncle in his letters spoke of nothing but the Yard. The works were
making quick progress. The amphitheatre was growing taller and taller.
The wall was quite transformed. The last news, about the middle of
March, told me that nothing remained to be done but to fix the
thousand seats, which had long been on order, and to hang the iron
curtain which was to protect the screen.
It was at this period that Noël Dorgeroux's misgivings revived, or at
least it was then that he mentioned them when writing to me. Two books
which he bought in Paris and which he used to read in private, lest
his choice of a subject should enable anyone to learn the secret of
his discovery, had been removed, taken away and then restored to their
place. A sheet of paper, covered with notes and chemical formulae,
disappeared. There were footprints in the garden. The writing-desk had
been broken open, in the room where he worked at the Lodge since the
demolition of the sheds.
This last incident, I confess, caused me a certain alarm. My uncle's
fears were shown to be based upon a serious fact. There was evidently
some one prowling around the Lodge and forcing an entrance in
pursuance of a scheme whose nature was easy to guess. Involuntarily I
thought of the man with the glasses and his relations with Bérangère.
There was no knowing. . . .
I made a fresh attempt to persuade the girl to communicate with me:
* * * * *
"You know what's happening at the Lodge, don't you?" I wrote. "How do
you explain those facts, which to me seem pretty significant? Be sure
to send me word if you feel the least uneasiness. And keep a close
watch in the meantime."
I followed up this letter with two telegrams dispatched in quick
succession. But Bérangère's stubborn silence, instead of distressing
me, served rather to allay my apprehensions. She would not have failed
to send for me had there been any danger. No, my uncle was mistaken.
He was a victim to the feverish condition into which his discovery was
throwing him. As the date approached on which he had decided to make
it public, he felt anxious. But there was nothing to justify his
apprehensions.
I allowed a few more days to elapse. Then I wrote Bérangère a letter
of twenty pages, filled with reproaches, which I did not post. Her
behaviour exasperated me. I suffered from a bitter fit of jealousy.
At last, on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, I received from my
uncle a registered bundle of papers and a very explicit letter, which
I kept and which I am copying _verbatim_:
"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 always refused 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 qualifications or
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 rather clumsily, 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.
CHAPTER VII
THE FIERCE-EYED MAN
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.' He left 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."
"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 a quarter 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 plaster had 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, tiled dome.
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 to me 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 had perturbed 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, whose plaster, 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.
CHAPTER VIII
"SOME ONE WILL EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS"
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 myself was 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 with
tenants. 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 Noël Dorgeroux'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 the
phantasmal 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 absolute
_bona 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 formula that
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 a
place 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 farther across 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
is certain, 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
possession of 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."
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WHO EMERGED 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 I had 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 means which 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, or Bérangère'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 listened and 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:
"Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from
the manuscript sent to my nephew."
And next forty or fifty very closely-written lines, in a hand too
small to allow me to decipher them.
Besides, I had not the time. Bérangère merely glanced at the paper.
Having found the object of her search and obtained possession of an
additional document which my uncle had provided in case the manuscript
should be lost, she folded it up, slipped it into her bodice, replaced
the cardboard and hung the engraving where she had found it.
Was she going away? If so, she was bound to return as she had come,
that is to say, evidently, through Noël Dorgeroux's dressing-room, on
the other side of the bedroom, of which she had left the
communicating-door ajar. I was about to prevent her and had already
taken hold of the door-handle, when suddenly she moved a few steps
towards my uncle's bed and fell on her knees, stretching out her hands
in despair.
Her sobs rose in the silence. She stammered words which I was able to
catch:
"God-father! . . . My poor god-father!"
And she passionately kissed the coverlet of the bed beside which she
must often have sat up watching my uncle when he was ill.
Her fit of crying lasted a long time and did not cease until just as I
entered. Then she turned her head, saw me and stood up slowly, without
taking her eyes from my face:
"You!" she murmured. "It's you!"
Seeing her make for the door, I said:
"Don't go, Bérangère."
She stopped, looking paler than ever, with drawn features.
"Give me that sheet of paper," I said, in a voice of command.
She handed it to me, with a quick movement. After a brief pause, I
continued:
"Why did you come to fetch it? My uncle told you of its existence,
didn't he? And you . . . you were taking it to my uncle's murderers,
so that they might have nothing more to fear and be the only persons
to know the secret? . . . Speak, Bérangère, will you?"
I had raised my voice and was advancing towards her. She took another
step back.
"You shan't move, do you hear? Stay where you are. Listen to me and
answer me!"
She made no further attempt to move. Her eyes were filled with such
distress that I adopted a calmer demeanour:
"Answer me," I said, very gently. "You know that, whatever you may
have done, I am your friend, your indulgent friend, and that I mean to
help you . . . and advise you. There are feelings which are proof
against everything. Mine for you is of that sort. It is more than
affection: you know it is, don't you, Bérangère? You know that I love
you?"
Her lips quivered, she tried to speak, but could not. I repeated again
and again:
"I love you! . . . I love you!"
And, each time, she shuddered, as though these words, which I spoke
with infinite emotion, which I had never spoken so seriously or so
sincerely, as if these words wounded her in the very depths of her
soul. What a strange creature she was!
I tried to put my hand on her shoulder. She avoided my friendly touch.
"What can you see to fear in me," I asked, "when I love you? Why not
confess everything? You are not a free agent, are you? You are being
forced to act as you do and you hate it all?"
Once more, anger was overmastering me. I was exasperated by her
silence. I saw no way of compelling her to reply, of overcoming that
incomprehensible obstinacy except by clasping her in my arms and
yielding to the instinct of violence which urged me towards some
brutal action.
I went boldly forward. But I had not taken a step before she spun
round on her heel, so swiftly that I thought that she would drop to
the floor in the doorway. I followed her into the other room. She
uttered a terrible scream. At the same moment I was knocked down by a
sudden blow. The man Massignac, who had been hiding in the
dressing-room and watching us, had leapt at me and was attacking me
furiously, while Bérangère fled to the staircase.
"Your daughter," I spluttered, defending myself, "your daughter! . . .
Stop her! . . ."
The words were senseless, seeing that Massignac, beyond a doubt, was
Bérangère's accomplice, or rather an inspiring force behind her, as
indeed he proved by his determination to put me out of action, in
order to protect his daughter against my pursuit.
We had rolled over the carpet and each of us was trying to master his
adversary. The man Massignac was no longer laughing. He was striking
harder blows than ever, but without using any weapon and without any
murderous intent. I hit back as lustily and soon discovered that I
was getting the better of him.
This gave me additional strength. I succeeded in flattening him
beneath me. He stiffened every muscle to no purpose. We lay clutching
each other, face to face, eye to eye. I took him by the throat and
snarled:
"Ah, I shall get it out of you now, you wretch, and learn at last
. . ."
And suddenly I ceased. My words broke off in a cry of horror and I
clapped my hand to his face in such a way as to hide the lower part of
it, leaving only the eyes visible. Oh, those eyes riveted on mine!
Why, I knew them! Not with their customary expression of smug and
hypocritical cheerfulness, but with the other expression which I was
slowly beginning to remember. Yes, I remember them now, those two
fierce, implacable eyes, filled with hatred and cruelty, those eyes
which I had seen on the wall of the chapel, those eyes which had
looked at me on that same day, when I lay gasping in the murderer's
grip in the woods near the Yard.
And again, as on that occasion, suddenly my strength forsook me. Those
savage eyes, those atrocious eyes, the man Massignac's real eyes,
alarmed me.
He released himself with a laugh of triumph and, speaking in calm and
deliberate accents, said:
"You're no match for me, young fellow! Don't you come meddling in my
affairs again!"
Then, pushing me away, he ran off in the same direction as Bérangère.
A few minutes later, I perceived that the sheet of paper which the
daughter had found behind the old engraving had been taken from me by
the father; and then, but not till then, I understood the exact
meaning of the attack.
The amphitheatre was duly inaugurated on the afternoon of that same
day. Seated in the box-office was the manager of the establishment,
the possessor of the great secret, Théodore Massignac, Noël
Dorgeroux's murderer.
CHAPTER X
THE CROWD SEES
Théodore Massignac was installed at the box-office! Théodore
Massignac, when a dispute of any kind occurred, left his desk and
hastened to settle it! Théodore Massignac walked up and down,
examining the tickets, showing people to their places, speaking a
pleasant word here, giving a masterful order there and doing all these
things with his everlasting smile and his obsequious graciousness.
Of embarrassment not the slightest sign. Everybody knew that Théodore
Massignac was the fellow with the broad face and the wide-cleft mouth
who was attracting the general attention. And everybody was fully
aware that Théodore Massignac was the man of straw who had carried out
the whole business and made away with Noël Dorgeroux. But nothing
interfered with Théodore Massignac's jovial mood: not the sneers, nor
the apparent hostility of the public, nor the more or less discreet
supervision of the detectives attached to his person.
He had even had the effrontery to paste on boardings, to the right and
left of the entrance, a pair of great posters representing Noël
Dorgeroux's handsome face, with its grave and candid features!
These posters gave rise to a brief altercation between us. It was
pretty lively, though it passed unnoticed by others. Scandalized by
the sight of them, I went up to him, a little while before the time
fixed for the opening; and, in a voice trembling with anger, said:
"Remove those at once. I will not have them displayed. The rest I
don't care about. But this is too much of a good thing: it's a
disgrace and an outrage."
He feigned an air of amazement:
"An outrage? You call it an outrage to honour your uncle's memory and
to display the portrait of the talented inventor whose discovery is on
the point of revolutionizing the world? I thought I was doing homage
to him."
I was beside myself with rage:
"You shan't do it," I spluttered. "I will not consent, I will not
consent to be an accomplice in your infamy."
"Oh, yes, you will!" he said, with a laugh. "You'll consent to this as
you do to all the rest. It's all part of the game, young fellow.
You've got to swallow it. You've got to swallow it because Uncle
Dorgeroux's fame must be made to soar above all these paltry trifles.
Of course, I know, a word from you and I'm jugged. And then? What will
become of the great invention? In the soup, that's where it'll be, my
lad, because I am the sole possessor of all the secrets and all the
formulae. The sole possessor, do you understand? Friend Velmot, the
man with the glasses, is only a super, a tool. So is Bérangère.
Therefore, with Théodore Massignac put away, there's an end of the
astounding pictures signed 'Dorgeroux.' No more glory, no more
immortality. Is that what you want, young man?"
Without waiting for any reply, he added:
"And then there's something else; a word or two which I overheard last
night. Ha, ha, my dear sir, so we're in love with Bérangère! We're
prepared to defend her against all dangers! Well, in that case--do be
logical--what have I to fear? If you betray me, you betray your
sweetheart. Come, am I right or wrong? Daddy and his little girl . . .
hand and glove, you might say. If you cut off one, what becomes of the
other? . . . Ah, you're beginning to understand! You'll be good now,
won't you? There, that's much better! We shall see a happy ending yet,
you'll have heaps of children crowding round your knee and who will
thank me then for getting him a nice little settlement? Why,
Victorien!"
He stopped and watched me, with a jeering air. Clenching my fists, I
shouted, furiously:
"You villain! . . . Oh, what a villain you make yourself appear!"
But some people were coming up and he turned his back on me, after
whispering:
"Hush, Victorien! Don't insult your father-in-law elect."
I restrained myself. The horrible brute was right. I was condemned to
silence by motives so powerful that Théodore Massignac would soon be
able to fulfil his task without having to fear the least revolt of
conscience on my part. Noël Dorgeroux and Bérangère were watching over
him.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the amphitheatre was filling; and the motorcars continued
to arrive in swift succession, pouring forth the torrent of privileged
people who, because of their wealth or their position, had paid from
ten to twenty louis for a seat. Financiers, millionaires, famous
actresses, newspaper-proprietors, artistic and literary celebrities,
Anglo-Saxon commercial magnates, secretaries of great labour unions,
all flocked with a sort of fever towards that unknown spectacle, of
which no detailed programme was obtainable and which they were not
even certain of beholding, since it was impossible to say whether Noël
Dorgeroux's processes had really been recovered and employed in the
right way. Indeed, no one, among those who believed the story, was in
a position to declare that Théodore Massignac had not taken advantage
of the whole business in order to arrange the most elaborate hoax. The
very tickets and posters contained the anything but reassuring words:
"In the event of unfavourable weather, the tickets
will be available for the following day. _Should the
exhibition be prevented by any other cause, the money
paid for the seats will not be refunded; and no claims
to that effect can be entertained._"
Yet nothing had restrained the tremendous outburst of curiosity.
Whether confident or suspicious, people insisted on being there.
Besides, the weather was fine. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky.
Why not indulge in the somewhat anxious gaiety that filled the hearts
of the crowd?
Everything was ready. Thanks to his wonderful activity and his
remarkable powers of organization, Théodore Massignac, assisted by
architects and contractors and acting on the plans worked out, had
completed and revised Noël Dorgeroux's work. He had recruited a
numerous staff, especially a large and stalwart body of men, who, as I
heard, were lavishly paid and who were charged with the duty of
keeping order.
As for the amphitheatre, built of reinforced concrete, it was
completely filled up, well laid out and very comfortable. Twelve rows
of elbowed seats, supplied with movable cushions, surrounded a floor
which rose in a gentle slope, divided into twelve tiers arranged in a
wide semicircle. Behind these was a series of spacious private boxes,
and, at the back of all, a lounge, the floor of which, nevertheless,
was not more than ten or twelve feet above the level of the ground.
Opposite was the wall.
It stood well away from the seats, being built on a foundation of
masonry and separated from the spectators by an empty orchestra.
Furthermore, a grating, six feet high, prevented access to the wall,
at least as regards its central portion; and, when I say a grating, I
mean a businesslike grating, with spiked rails and cross-bars forming
too close a mesh to allow of the passage of a man's arm.
The central part was the screen, which was raised to about the level
of the fourth or fifth tier of seats. Two pilasters, standing at eight
or ten yards' distance from each other, marked its boundaries and
supported an overhanging canopy. For the moment, all this space was
masked by an iron curtain, roughly daubed with gaudy landscapes and
ill-drawn views.
At half-past three there was not a vacant seat nor an unoccupied
corner. The police had ordered the doors to be closed. The crowd was
beginning to grow impatient and to give signs of a certain
irritability, which betrayed itself in the hum of a thousand voices,
in nervous laughter and in jests which were becoming more and more
caustic.
"If the thing goes wrong," said a man by my side, "we shall see a
shindy."
I had taken up my stand, with some journalists of my acquaintance, in
the lounge, amid a noisy multitude which was all the more peevish
inasmuch as it was not comfortably seated like the audience in the
stalls.
Another journalist, who was invariably well-informed and of whom I had
seen a good deal lately, replied:
"Yes, there will be a shindy; but that is not the worthy Massignac's
principal danger. He is risking something besides."
"What?" I asked.
"Arrest."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do. If the universal curiosity, which has helped him to preserve
his liberty so far, is satisfied, he's all right. If not, if he fails,
he'll be locked up. The warrant is out."
I shuddered. Massignac's arrest implied the gravest possible peril to
Bérangère.
"And you may be sure," my acquaintance continued, "that he is fully
alive to what is hanging over his head and that he is feeling anything
but chirpy at heart."
"At heart, perhaps," replied one of the others. "But he doesn't allow
it to appear on the surface. There, look at him: did you ever see such
swank?"
A louder din had come from the crowd. Below us, Théodore Massignac was
walking along the pit and crossing the empty space of the orchestra.
He was accompanied by a dozen of those sturdy fellows who composed the
male staff of the amphitheatre. He made them sit down on two benches
which were evidently reserved for them and, with the most natural air,
gave them his instructions. And his gestures so clearly denoted the
sense of the orders imparted and expressed so clearly what they would
have to do if any one attempted to approach the wall that a loud
clamour of protest arose.
Massignac turned towards the audience, without appearing in the least
put out, and, with a smiling face, gave a careless shrug of the
shoulders, as though to say:
"What's the trouble? I'm taking precautions. Surely I'm entitled to do
that!"
And, retaining his bantering geniality, he took a key from his
waist-coat pocket, opened a little gate in the railing and entered the
last enclosure before the wall.
This manner of playing the lion-tamer who takes refuge behind the bars
of his cage made so comic an impression that the hisses became mingled
with bursts of laughter.
"The worthy Massignac is right," said my friend the journalist, in a
tone of approval. "In this way he avoids either of two things: if he
fails, the malcontents won't be able to break his head; and, if he
succeeds, the enthusiasts can't make a rush for the wall and learn the
secret of the hoax. He's a knowing one. He has prepared for
everything."
There was a stool in the fortified enclosure. Théodore Massignac sat
down on it half facing the spectators, some four paces in front of the
wall, and, holding his watch towards us, tapped it with his other hand
to explain that the decisive hour was about to strike.
The extension of time which he thus obtained lasted for some minutes.
But then the uproar began anew and became deafening. People suddenly
lost all confidence. The idea of a hoax took possession of every mind,
all the more as people were unable to grasp why the spectacle should
begin at any particular time rather than another, since it all
depended solely on Théodore Massignac.
"Curtain! Curtain!" they cried.
After a moment, not so much in obedience to this order as because the
hands of his watch seemed to command it, he rose, went to the wall,
slipped back a wooden slab which covered two electric pushes and
pressed one of them with his finger.
The iron curtain descended slowly and sank into the ground.
The screen appeared in its entirety, in broad daylight and of larger
proportions than the ordinary.
I shuddered before this flat surface, over which the mysterious
coating was spread in a dark-grey layer. And the same tremor ran
through the crowd, which was also seized with the recollection of my
depositions. Was it possible that we were about to behold one of those
extraordinary spectacles the story of which had given rise to so much
controversial discussion? How ardently I longed for it! At this solemn
minute, I forget all the phases of the drama, all the loathing that I
felt for Massignac, all that had to do with Bérangère, the madness of
her actions, the anguish of my love, and thought only of the great
game that was being played around my uncle's discovery. Would what I
had seen vanish in the darkness of the past which I myself, the sole
witness of the miracles, was beginning to doubt? Or would the
incredible vision arise once again and yet again, to teach the future
the name of Noël Dorgeroux? Had I been right in sacrificing to the
victim's glory the vengeance called for by his death? Or had I made
myself the accomplice of the murderer in not denouncing his abominable
crime?
Yes, I was becoming his accomplice and even, deep down in my
consciousness, his collaborator and his ally. Had I imagined that
Massignac had need of me, I would have hastened to his side. I would
have encouraged him with all my confidence and assisted him to the
full extent of my ability. First and foremost I wished him to emerge
victoriously from the struggle which he had undertaken. I wanted my
uncle's secret to come to life again. I wanted light to spring from
the shadow. I did not wish twenty years of study and the supreme idea
of that most noble genius to be flung back into the abyss.
Now not a sound broke the profound silence. The people's faces were
set. Their eyes pierced the wall like so many gimlets. They
experienced in their turn the anxiety of my own waiting for that which
was yet invisible and which was preparing in the depths of the
mysterious substance. And the implacable will of a thousand spectators
united with that of Massignac, who stood there below, with his back
bent and his head thrust forward; wildly questioning the impassive
horizon of the wall.
He was the first to see the first premonitory gleam. A cry escaped his
lips, while his two hands frantically beat the air. And, almost at the
same second, like sparks crackling on every side, other cries were
scattered in the silence, which was instantly restored, heavier and
denser than before.
The Three Eyes were there.
The Three Eyes marked their three curved triangles on the wall.
The onlookers had not, in the presence of this inconceivable
phenomenon, to submit to the sort of initiation through which I had
passed. To them, from the outset, three geometrical figures, dismal
and lifeless though they were, represented three eyes; to them also
they were living eyes even before they became animated. And the
excitement was intense when those lidless eyes, consisting of hard,
symmetrical lines, suddenly became filled with an expression which
made them as intelligible to us as the eyes of a human person.
It was a harsh, proud expression, containing flashes of malignant joy.
And I knew--and we all knew--that this was not just a random
expression, with which the Three Eyes had been arbitrarily endowed,
but that of a being who looked upon real life with that same look and
who was about to appear to us in real life.
Then, as always, the three figures began to revolve dizzily. The disk
turned upon itself. And everything was interrupted. . . .
CHAPTER XI
THE CATHEDRAL
The crowd could not recover from its stupefaction. It sat and waited.
It had heard through me of the Three Eyes, of their significance as a
message, a preliminary illustration, something like the title or
picture-poster of the coming spectacle. It remembered Edith Cavell's
eyes, Philippe Dorgeroux's eyes, Bérangère's eyes, all those eyes
which I had seen again _afterwards_; and it sat as though cramped in
obstinate silence, as though it feared lest a word or a movement
should scare away the invisible god who lay hidden within the wall. It
was now filled with absolute certainty. This first proof of my
sincerity and perspicacity was enough; there was not a single
unbeliever left. The spectators stepped straight into regions which I
had reached only by painful stages. Not a shadow of protest impaired
their sensibility. Not a doubt interfered with their faith. Really, I
saw around me nothing but serious attention, restrained enthusiasm,
suppressed exaltation.
And all this suddenly found vent in an immense shout that rose to the
skies. Before us, on the screen which had but now been empty and bare
as a stretch of sand, there had come into being, spontaneously, in a
flash, hundreds and thousands of men, swarming in unspeakable
confusion.
It was obviously the suddenness and complexity of the sight which so
profoundly stirred the crowd. The sudden emergence of life innumerable
out of nothingness convulsed it like an electric shock. In front of
it, where there had been nothing, there now swarmed another crowd,
dense as itself, a crowd whose excitement mingled with its own and
whose uproar, which it was able to divine, was added to its own! For a
few seconds I had the impression that it was losing its mental balance
and swaying to and fro in an access of delirium.
However, the crowd once more regained its self-control. The need, not
of understanding--it seemed not to care about that at first--but of
seeing and grasping the entire manifestation of the phenomena mastered
the force let loose in its midst. It became silent again. It gazed.
And it _listened_.
Yonder--I dare not say on the screen, for, in truth, so abnormal were
its dimensions that the picture overflowed the frame and was
propelled into the space outside--yonder, that which had impressed us
as being disorder and chaos became organized in accordance with a
certain rhythm which at length grew perceptible to us. The movement to
and fro was that of artisans performing a well-regulated task; and the
task was accomplished about an immense fabric in the course of
erection.
How all these artisans were clad in a fashion absolutely different
from our own; and, on the other hand, the tools which they employed,
the appearance of their ladders, the shape of their scaffoldings,
their manner of carrying loads and of hoisting the necessary materials
in wicker baskets to the upper floors, all these things, together with
a multitude of further details, brought us into the heart of a period
which must have been the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
There were numbers of monks supervising the works, calling out orders
from one end of the vast site to the other, setting out measurements
and not disdaining themselves to mix the mortar, to push a
wheel-barrow or to saw a stone. Women of the people, uttering their
cries at the top of their voices, walked about bearing jars of wine
with which they filled cups that were at once emptied by the thirsty
labourers. A beggar went by. Two tattered singers began to roar a
ditty, accompanying themselves on a sort of guitar. And a troop of
acrobats, all lacking an arm, or a leg, or both legs, were preparing
to give their show, when the scene changed without any transition,
like a stage setting which is altered by the mere pressure of a
button.
What we now saw was the same picture of a building in process of
construction. But this time we clearly distinguished the plan of the
edifice, the whole base of a Gothic cathedral displaying its huge
proportions. And on these courses of masonry, which had reached the
lower level of the towers, and along the fronts and before the niches
and on the steps of the porch, everywhere, in fact, swarmed
stone-hewers, masons, sculptors, carpenters, apprentices and monks.
And the costumes were no longer the same. A century or two had passed.
Next came a series of pictures which succeeded one another without our
being able to separate the one from the other or to ascribe a
beginning or an end to any one of them. By a method no doubt similar
to that which, on the cinematograph, shows us the growth of a plant,
we saw the cathedral rising imperceptibly, blossoming like a flower
whose exquisitely-moulded petals open one by one and, lastly, being
completed before our eyes, all of itself, without any human
intervention. Thus came a moment when it stood out against the sky in
all its glory and harmonious strength. It was Rheims Cathedral, with
its three recessed doorways, its host of statues, its magnificent
rose-windows, its wonderful towers flanked by airy turrets, its flying
buttresses and the lacework of its carvings and balconies, Rheims
Cathedral such as the centuries had beheld it, before its mutilation
by the Huns.
A long shudder passed through the crowd. It understood what those who
were not present cannot easily be made to understand now, by means of
insignificant words: it understood that in front of it there stood
something other than the photographic presentment of a building; and,
as it possessed the profound and accurate intuition that it was not
the victim of an unthinkable hoax, it became imbued and overwhelmed by
an utterly disturbing sense of witnessing a most prodigious spectacle:
the _actual_ erection of a church in the Middle Ages, the _actual_
work of a thirteenth-century building-yard, the _actual_ life of the
monks and artists who built Rheims Cathedral. Enlightened by its
subtle instinct, not for a second did it doubt the evidence of its
eyes. What I had denied, or at least what I had admitted only as an
illusion, with reservations and flashes of incredulity, the crowd
accepted with a certainty against which it would have been madness to
rebel. It had faith. It believed with religious fervour. What it saw
was not an artificial evocation of the past but that past itself,
revived in all its living reality.
Equally real was the gradual transformation which continued to take
place, no longer in the actual lines of the building, but as one might
say in its substance and which was revealed by progressive changes
that could not be attributed to any other cause than that of time. The
great white mass grew darker. The grain of the stones became worn and
weathered and they assumed that appearance of rugged bark which the
patient gnawing of the years is apt to give them. It is true, the
cathedral did not grow old, yet lived, for age is the beauty and the
youth of the stones by means of which man gives shape to his dreams.
It lived and breathed through the centuries, seeming all the fresher
as it faded and the more ornate as its legions of saints and angels
became mutilated. It chanted its solemn hymn into the open sky over
the houses which had gradually concealed its doorways and aisles,
over the town above whose crowded roofs it towered, over the plains
and hills which formed the dim horizon.
At different times people came and leant against the balustrade of
some lofty balcony or appeared in the frame of the tall windows; and
the costume of these people enabled us to note their successive
periods. Thus we saw pre-Revolutionary citizens, followed by soldiers
of the Empire, who in turn were followed by other nineteenth-century
civilians and by labourers building scaffoldings and by yet more
labourers engaged in the work of restoration.
Then a final vision appeared before our eyes: a group of French
officers in service uniform. They hurriedly reached the top of the
tower, looked through their field-glasses and went down again. Here
and there, over the town and the country, hovered those small, woolly
clouds which mark the bursting of a shell.
The silence of the crowd became anguished. Their eyes stared
apprehensively. We all felt what was coming and we were all judging as
a whole a spectacle which had shown us the gradual birth and
marvellous growth of the cathedral only by way of leading up to the
dramatic climax. We expected this climax. It followed from the
dominant idea which gave the film its unity and its _raison d'être_.
It was as logical as the last act of a Greek tragedy. But how could we
forsee all the savage grandeur and all the horror contained in that
climax? How could we forsee that the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral
itself formed part of the climax only as a preparation and that,
beyond the violent and sensational scene which was about to rack our
nerves and shock our minds, there would follow yet another scene of
the most terrible nature, a scene which was strictly accurate in every
detail?
The first shell fell on the north-east part of the cathedral at a spot
which we could not see, because the building, though we were looking
down upon it from a slight elevation, presented only its west front to
our eyes. But a flame shot up, like a flash of lightning, and a pillar
of smoke whirled into the cloudless sky.
And, almost simultaneously, three more shells followed, three more
explosives, mingling their puffs of smoke. A fifth fell a little more
forward, in the middle of the roof. A mighty flame arose. Rheims
Cathedral was on fire.
Then followed phenomena which are really inexplicable in the present
state of our cinematographic resources. I say cinematographic,
although the term is not perhaps strictly accurate; but I do not know
how else to describe the miraculous visions of the Yard. Nor do I
know of any comparison to employ when speaking of the visible parabola
of the sixth shell, which we followed with our eyes through space and
which even stopped for a moment, to resume its leisurely course and to
stop again at a few inches from the statue which it was about to
strike. This was a charming and ingenuous statue of a saint lifting
her arms to God, with the sweetest, happiest and most trusting
expression on her face; a masterpiece of grace and beauty; a divine
creature who had stood for centuries, cloistered in her shelter, among
the nests of the swallows, living her humble life of prayer and
adoration, and who now smiled at the death that threatened her. A
flash, a puff of smoke . . . and, in the place of the little saint and
her daintily-carved niche, a yawning gap!
It was at this moment that I felt that anger and hatred were awakening
all around me. The murder of the little saint had roused the
indignation of the crowd; and it so happened that this indignation
found an occasion to express itself. Before us, the cathedral grew
smaller, while at the same time it approached us. It seemed to be
leaving its frame, while the distant landscape came nearer and nearer.
A hill, bristling with barbed wire, dug with trenches and strewn with
corpses, rose and fell away; and we saw its top, which was fortified
with bastions and cupolas of reinforced concrete.
Enormous guns displayed their long barrels. A multitude of German
soldiers were moving swiftly to and fro. It was the battery which was
shelling Rheims Cathedral.
In the centre stood a group of general officers, field-glasses in
hand, with sword-belts unbuckled. At each shot, they watched the
effect through their glasses and then nodded their heads with an air
of satisfaction.
But a great commotion now took place among them. They drew up in
single rank, assuming a stiff and automatic attitude, while the
soldiers continued to serve the guns. And suddenly, from behind the
fortress, a motor-car appeared, accompanied by an escort of cavalry.
It stopped on the emplacement and from it there alighted a man wearing
a helmet and a long fur-cloak, which was lifted at the side by the
scabbard of a sword of which he held the hilt. He stepped briskly to
the foreground. We recognised the Kaiser.
He shook hands with one of the generals. The others saluted more
stiffly than ever and then, at a sign from their master, extended and
formed a semicircle around him and the general whose hand he had
shaken.
A conversation ensued. The general, after an explanation accompanied
by gestures that pointed towards the town, called for a telescope and
had it correctly pointed. The Kaiser put his eye to it.
One of the guns was ready. The order to fire was given.
Two pictures followed each other on the screen in quick succession:
that of a carved stone balustrade smashed to pieces by the shell and
that of the emperor drawing himself up immediately afterwards. He had
seen! He had seen; and his face, which appeared to us suddenly
enlarged and alone upon the screen, beamed with intense delight!
He began to talk volubly. His sensual lips, his upturned moustache,
his wrinkled and fleshy cheeks were all moving at the same time. But,
when another gun was obviously on the point of firing, he held his
peace and looked in the direction of the town. Just then he raised his
hand to a level just below his eyes, so that we saw them by
themselves, between the hand and the peak of the helmet. They were
hard, evil, proud, implacable. They wore the expression of the
miraculous Three Eyes that had throbbed before us on the screen.
They lit up, glittering with an evil smile. They saw what we saw at
the same time, a whole block of capitals and cornices falling to the
ground and more flames rising in angry pillars of fire. Then the
emperor burst out laughing. One picture showed him doubled up in two
and holding his sides amid the group of generals all seized with the
same uncontrollable laughter. He was laughing! He was laughing! It was
so amusing! Rheims Cathedral was ablaze! The venerable fabric to which
the kings of France used to come for their coronation was falling into
ruins! The might of Germany was striking the enemy in his very heart!
The German heavy guns were things that were noble and beautiful! And
it was he who had ordained it, he, the emperor, the King of Prussia,
master of the world, William of Hohenzollern! . . . . Oh, the joy of
laughing his fill, laughing to his heart's content, laughing the
frank, honest laughter of a jolly German!
A storm of hoots and hisses broke loose in the amphitheatre. The crowd
had risen in a body, shaking their fists and bellowing forth insults.
The attendants had to struggle with a troop of angry men who had
invaded the orchestra.
Théodore Massignac, behind the bars of his cage, stooped and pressed
the button.
The iron curtain rose.
CHAPTER XII
THE "SHAPES"
On the morning of the day following this memorable spectacle, I woke
late, after a feverish night during which I twice seemed to hear the
sound of a shot.
"Nightmare!" I thought, when I got up. "I was haunted by the pictures
of the bombardment; and what I heard was the bursting of the shells."
The explanation was plausible enough: the powerful emotions of the
amphitheatre, coming after my meeting with Bérangère in the course of
that other night and my struggle with Théodore Massignac, had thrown
me into a state of nervous excitement. But, when I entered the room in
which my coffee was served, Théodore Massignac came running in,
carrying a heap of newspapers which he threw on the table; and I saw
under his hat a bandage which hid his forehead. Had he been wounded?
And was I to believe that there had really been shots fired in the
Yard?
"Pay no attention," he said; "a mere scratch. I've bruised myself."
And, pointing to the newspapers: "Read that, rather. It's all about
the master's triumph."
I made no protest against the loathsome brute's intrusion. The
Master's triumph, as he said, and Bérangère's safety compelled me to
observe a silence by which he was to benefit until the completion of
his plans. He had made himself at home in Noël Dorgeroux's house; and
his attitude showed that he was alive to his own rights and to my
helplessness. Nevertheless, despite his arrogance, he seemed to me to
be anxious and absorbed. He no longer laughed; and, without his cheery
laugh, Théodore Massignac disconcerted me more than ever.
"Yes," he continued, drawing himself up, "it's a victory, a victory
accepted by everybody. Not one of all these articles strikes a false
note. Bewilderment and enthusiasm, stupefaction and high-flown
praises, all running riot together. They're everyone of them alike;
and, on the other hand, there is no attempt at a plausible
explanation. Those fellows are all astounded. They're like blind men
walking without a stick. Well, well, it's a thick-headed world!"
He came and stood in front of me and, bluntly:
"What then?" he said. "Can't you guess? It's really too funny! Now
that I understand the affair, I'm petrified by the idea that people
don't see through it. An unprecedented discovery, I agree, and yet so
simple! And, even then, you can hardly call it a discovery. For, when
all is said and done . . . Look here, the whole story is so completely
within the capacity of the first-comer that it won't take long to
clear it up. To-morrow or the next day, some one will say, 'The trick
of the Yard?' I've got it! And that's that. You don't want to be a man
of learning for that, believe me. On the contrary!"
He shrugged his shoulders:
"And besides, I don't care. Let them find out what they like: they'll
still need the formula; and that's hidden in my cellar and nowhere
else. Nobody knows it, not even our friend Velmot. Noël Dorgeroux's
steel plate? Melted down. The instructions which he left at the back
of D'Alembert's portrait? Burnt to ashes. So there's no danger of any
competition. And, as the seats in the amphitheatre are selling like
hot cakes, I shall have pocketed a million in less than a fortnight,
two millions in less than three weeks. And then good-bye, gentlemen
all, I'm off. By Jove! It won't do to tempt Providence or the
gendarmes."
He took me by the lapels of my jacket and, standing straight in front
of me, with his eyes on mine, said, in a more serious voice:
"There's only one thing that would ruffle me, which is to think that
all these beautiful pictures can no longer appear upon the screen when
I am gone. It seems impossible, what? No more miraculous sights? No
more fairy-tales to make people talk till Doomsday? That would never
do, would it? Noël Dorgeroux's secret must not be lost. So I thought
of you. Hang it, you're his nephew! Besides, you love my dear
Bérangère. Some day or other you'll be married to her. And then, as
I'm working for her, it doesn't matter whether the money comes to her
through you or through me, does it? Listen to me, Victorien Beaugrand,
and remember every word I say. Listen to me. You've observed that the
base of the wall below the screen stands out a good way. Noël
Dorgeroux contrived a sort of recess there, containing several
carboys, filled with different substances, and a copper vat. In this
vat we mix certain quantities of those ingredients in fixed
proportions, adding a fluid from a little phial prepared on the
morning of the performances, according to your uncle's formula. Then,
an hour or two before sunset, we dip a big brush in the wash thus
obtained and daub the surface of the screen very evenly with it. You
do that for each performance, if you want the pictures to be clear,
and of course only on days when there are no clouds between the sun
and the screen. As for the formula, it is not very long: fifteen
letters and twelve figures in all, like this . . ."
Massignac repeated slowly, in a less decided tone:
"Fifteen letters and twelve figures. Once you know them by heart, you
can be easy. And I too. Yes, what do I risk in speaking to you? You
swear that you won't tell, eh? And then I hold you through Bérangère.
Well, those fifteen letters. . . ."
He was obviously hesitating. His words seemed to cost him an
increasing effort; and suddenly he pushed me back, struck the table
angrily with his fist and cried:
"Well, no, then, no, no, no! I shall not speak. It would be too silly!
No, I shall keep this thing in my own hands, yes! Is it likely that I
should let the business go for two millions? Not for ten millions! Not
for twenty! I shall mount guard for months, if necessary, as I did
last night, with my gun on my shoulder . . . and if any one enters the
Yard I'll shoot him as I would a dog. The wall belongs to me, Théodore
Massignac. Hands off! Let no one dare to touch it! Let no one try to
rob me of the least scrap of it! It's my secret! It's my formula! I
bought the goods and risked my neck in doing it. I'll defend them to
my last breath; and, if I kick the bucket, it can't be helped; I'll
carry them with me to the grave!"
He shook his fist at invisible enemies. Then suddenly, he caught hold
of me again: "That's what things have come to. My arrest, the
gendarmes . . . I don't care a hang. They'll never dare. But the thief
lurking in the darkness, the murderer who fires at me, as he did last
night, while I was mounting guard. . . . For you must have heard,
Victorien Beaugrand? Oh, a mere scratch! And I missed him too. But,
next time, the swine will give himself time to take aim at me. Oh, the
filthy swine!"
He began to shake me violently to and fro.
"But you too, Victorien, he's your enemy too! Don't you understand?
The man with the eye-glass? That scoundrel Velmot? He wants to steal
my secret, but he also wants to rob you of the girl you love. Sooner
or later, you'll have your hands full with him, just as I have. Won't
you defend yourself, you damned milksop, and attack him when you get
the chance? Suppose I told you that Bérangère's in love with him? Aha,
that makes you jump! You're not blind surely? Can't you see for
yourself that it was for him she was working all the winter and that,
if I hadn't put a stop to it, I should have been diddled? She's in
love with him, Victorien. She is the handsome Velmot's obedient slave.
Why don't you smash his swanking mug for him? He's here. He's prowling
about in the village. I saw him last night. Blast it, if I could only
put a bullet through the beast's skin!"
Massignac spat out a few more oaths, mingled with offensive epithets
which were aimed at myself as much as at Velmot. He described his
daughter as a jade and a dangerous madwoman, threatened to kill me if
I committed the least indiscretion and at length, with his mouth full
of insults and his fists clenched, walked out backwards, like a man
who fears a final desperate assault from his adversary.
He had nothing to be afraid of. I remained impassive under the storm
of abuse. The only things that had roused me were his accusation
against Bérangère and his blunt declaration of her love for the man
Velmot. But I had long since resolved not to take my feelings for her
into account, to ignore them entirely, not even to defend her or
condemn her or judge her and to refuse to accept my suffering until
events had afforded me undeniable proofs. I knew her to be guilty of
acts which I did not know of. Was I therefore to believe her guilty of
those of which she was accused?
At heart, the feeling that seemed to persist was a profound pity. The
horrible tragedy in which Bérangère was submerged was increasing in
violence. Théodore Massignac and his accomplice were now antagonists.
Once again Noël Dorgeroux's secret was about to cause an outburst of
passion; and everything seemed to foretell that Bérangère would be
swept away in the storm.
What I read in the newspapers confirmed what Massignac had told me.
The articles lie before me as I write. They all express the same, more
or less pugnacious, enthusiasm; and none of them gives a forecast of
the truth which nevertheless was on the point of being discovered.
While the ignorant and superficial journalists go wildly to work,
heaping up the most preposterous suppositions, the really cultivated
writers maintain a great reserve and appear to be mainly concerned in
resisting any idea of a miracle to which a section of the public might
be inclined to give ear:
"There is no miracle about it!" they exclaim. "We are
in the presence of a scientific riddle which will be
solved by purely scientific means. In the meantime
let us confess our total incompetence."
In any case, the comments of the press could not fail to increase the
public excitement to the highest degree. At six o'clock in the evening
the amphitheatre was taken by assault. The wholly inadequate staff
vainly attempted to stop the invasion of the crowd. Numbers of seats
were occupied by main force by people who had no right to be there;
and the performance began in tumult and confusion, amid the hostile
clamour and mad applause that greeted the man Massignac when he passed
through the bars of his cage.
True, the crowd lapsed into silence as soon as the Three Eyes
appeared, but it remained nervous and irritable; and the spectacle
that followed was not one to alleviate those symptoms. It was a
strange spectacle, the most difficult to understand of all those which
I saw. In the case of the others, those which preceded and those which
followed, the mystery lay solely in the fact of their presentment. We
beheld normal, natural scenes. But this one showed us _things that are
contrary to the things that are_, things that might happen in the
nightmare of a madman or in the hallucinations of a man dying in
delirium.
I hardly know how to speak of it without myself appearing to have lost
my reason; and I really should not dare to do so if a thousand others
had not witnessed the same grotesque phantasmagoria and above all if
this crazy vision--it is the only possible adjective--had not happened
to be precisely the determining cause which set the public in the
track of truth.
A thousand witnesses, I said, but I admit, a thousand witnesses who
subsequently differed in their evidence, thanks to the inconsistency
of the impressions received and also to the rapidity with which they
succeeded one another.
And I myself, what did I see, after all? Animated shapes. Yes, that
and nothing more. Living shapes. Every visible thing has a shape. A
rock, a pyramid, a scaffolding round a house has a shape; but you
cannot say that they are alive. Now _this_ thing was alive. _This_
thing bore perhaps no closer relation to the shape of a live being
than to the shape of a rock, a pyramid or a scaffolding. Nevertheless
there was no doubt that _this_ thing acted in the manner of a being
which lives, moves, follows this or that direction, obeys individual
motives and attains a chosen goal.
I will not attempt to describe these shapes. How indeed could I do
so, considering that they all differed from one another _and that they
even differed from themselves_ within the space of a second! Imagine a
sack of coal (the comparison is forced upon one by the black and lumpy
appearance of the Shapes), imagine a sack of coal swelling into the
body of an ox, only to shrink at once to the proportions of the body
of a dog, and next to grow thicker or to draw itself out lengthwise.
Imagine this mass, which has no more consistency than a jellyfish, now
again putting forth three little tentacles, resembling hands. Lastly,
imagine the picture of a town, a town which is not horizontal but
perpendicular, with streets standing up like ladders and, along these
arteries, the Shapes rising like balloons. This is the first vision;
and, right at the top of the town, the Shapes come crowding from every
side, gathering upon a vast horizontal space, where they swarm like
ants.
I receive the impression--and it is the general impression--that the
space is a public square. A mound marks its centre. Shapes are
standing there motionless. Others approach by means of successive
dilations and contractions, which appear to constitute their method of
advancing. And in this way, on the passage of a group of no great
dimensions, which seems to be carrying a lifeless Shape, the multitude
of the living Shapes falls back.
What happens next? However clear my sensations may be, however precise
the memory which I have retained of them, I hesitate to write them
down in so many words. I repeat, the vision transcends the limits of
absurdity, while provoking a shudder of horror of which you are
conscious without understanding it. For, after all what does it mean?
Two powerful Shapes protrude their three tentacles, which wind
themselves round the lifeless Shape that has been brought up, crush
it, rend it, compress it and, rising in the air, wave to and fro a
small mass which they have separated, like a severed head, from the
original Shape and which contains the geometrical Three Eyes, staring,
void of eyelids, void of expression.
No, it means nothing. It is a series of unconnected, unreal visions.
And yet our hearts are wrung with anguish, as though we had been
present at a murder or an execution. And yet those incoherent visions
were perhaps what contributed most to the discovery of the truth.
Their absence of logic brought about a logical explanation of the
phenomena. The excessive darkness kindled a first glimmer of light.
To-day those things which, in looking up the past, I describe as
incoherent and dark seem to me quite orderly and absolutely clear. But
on that late afternoon, with a storm brewing in the distant sky, the
crowd, recovering from its painful emotion, became more noisy and more
aggressive. The exhibition had disappointed the spectators. They had
not found what they expected and they manifested their dissatisfaction
by threatening cries aimed at Théodore Massignac. The incidents that
were to mark the sudden close of the performance were preparing.
"Mas-si-gnac! Mas-si-gnac!" they shouted, in chorus.
Standing in the middle of his cage, with his head turned towards the
screen, he was watching for possible premonitory signs of a fresh
picture. And, as a matter of fact, if you looked carefully, the signs
were there. One might say that, rather than pictures, there were
reflections of pictures skimming over the surface of the wall like
faint clouds.
Suddenly Massignac extended one arm. The faint clouds were assuming
definite outlines; and we saw that, under this mist, the spectacle had
begun anew and was continuing.
But it continued as though under difficulties, with intervals of total
suspension and others of semi-darkness during which the visions were
covered by a mist. At such moments we saw almost deserted streets in
which most of the shops were closed. There was no one at the doors or
windows.
A cart, of which we caught sight now and again, moved along these
streets. It contained, in front, two gendarmes dressed as in the days
of the Revolution and, at the back, a priest and a man in a
full-skirted coat, dark breeches and white stockings.
An isolated picture showed us the man's head and shoulders. I
recognised and, generally speaking, the whole audience in the
amphitheatre recognised the heavy-jowled face of King Louis XVI. This
expression was hard and proud.
We saw him again, after a few interruptions, in a great square
surrounded by artillery and black with soldiers. He climbed the steep
steps of a scaffold. His coat and neck-tie had been removed. The
priest was supporting him. Four executioners tried to lay hold of him.
I am obliged to interrupt my narrative, which I am deliberately
wording as drily as possible, of these fleeting apparitions, in order
to make it quite clear that they did not at the moment produce the
effect of terror which my readers might suppose. They were too short,
too desultory, let me say, and so bad from the strictly
cinematographic point of view which the audience adopted, in spite of
itself, that they excited irritation and annoyance rather than dread.
The spectators had suddenly lost all confidence. They laughed, they
sang. They hooted Massignac. And the storm of invective increased
when, on the screen, one of the executioners held up the head of the
king and faded away in the mist, together with the scaffold, the
soldiers and the guns.
There were a few more timid attempts at pictures, attempts on the part
of the film, in which several persons say that they recognized Queen
Marie Antoinette, attempts which sustained the patience of the
onlookers who were anxious to see the end of a spectacle which they
had paid so heavily to attend. But the violence could no longer be
restrained.
Who started it? Who was the first to rush forward and provoke the
disorder and the resultant panic? The subsequent enquiries failed to
show. There seems no doubt that the whole crowd obeyed its impulse to
give full expression to its dissatisfaction and that the more
turbulent of its members seized the opportunity of belabouring
Théodore Massignac and even of trying to take the fabulous screen by
storm. This last attempt, at any rate, failed before the impenetrable
rampart formed by the attendants, who, armed with knuckledusters or
truncheons, repelled the flood of the invaders. As for Massignac, who,
after raising the curtain, had the unfortunate idea of leaving his
cage and running to one of the exits, he was struck as he passed and
swallowed up in the angry swirl of rioters.
After that everybody attacked his neighbour, with a frantic desire for
strife and violence which brought into conflict not only the enemies
of Massignac and the partisans of order, but also those who were
exasperated and those who had no thought but of escaping from the
turmoil. Sticks and umbrellas were brandished on high. Women seized
one another by the hair. Blood flowed. People fell to the ground,
wounded.
I myself did my best to get out and shouldered my way through this
indescribable fray. It was no easy work, for numbers of policemen and
many people who had not been able to obtain entrance were thronging
towards the exit-doors of the amphitheatre. At last I succeeded in
reaching the gate through an opening that was made amid the crowd.
"Room for the wounded man!" a tall, clean-shaven fellow was shouting,
in a stentorian voice.
Two others followed, carrying in their arms an individual covered
with rugs and overcoats.
The crowd fell back. The little procession moved out. I seized my
opportunity.
The tall fellow pointed to a private motor-car waiting outside:
"Chauffeur, I'm requisitioning you. Orders of the prefect of police.
Come along, the two of you, and get a move on!"
The two men put the victim into the car and took their places inside.
The tall fellow sat down beside the chauffeur; and the car drove off.
It was not until the very second when it turned the corner that I
conceived in a flash and without any reason whatever the exact idea of
what this little scene meant. Suddenly I guessed the identity of the
wounded man who was hidden so attentively and carried off so
assiduously. And suddenly also, notwithstanding the change of face,
though he wore neither beard nor glasses, I gave a name to the tall,
clean-shaven fellow. It was the man Velmot.
I rushed back to the Yard and informed the commissary of police who
had hitherto had charge of the Dorgeroux case. He whistled up his men.
They leapt into taxi-cabs and cars. It was too late. The roads were
already filled with such a block of traffic that the commissary's car
was unable to move.
And thus, in the very midst of the crowd, by means of the most daring
stratagem, taking advantage of a crush which he himself doubtless had
his share in bringing about, the man Velmot had carried off his
confederate and implacable enemy, Théodore Massignac.
CHAPTER XIII
THE VEIL IS LIFTED
I will not linger over the two films of this second performance and
the evident connection between them. At the present moment we are too
near the close of this extraordinary story to waste time over minute,
tedious, unimportant details. We must remember that, on the following
morning, a newspaper printed the first part, and, a few hours later,
the second part of the famous Prévotelle report, in which the problem
was attacked in so masterly a fashion and solved with so profoundly
impressive a display of method and logic. I shall never forget it. I
shall never forget that, during that night, while I sat in my bedroom
reflecting upon the manner in which Massignac had been spirited away,
during that night when the long-expected thunderstorm burst over the
Paris district, Benjamin Prévotelle was writing the opening pages of
his report. And I shall never forget that I was on the point of
hearing of all this from Benjamin Prévotelle himself!
At ten o'clock, in fact, one of the neighbours living nearest to the
lodge, from whose house my uncle or Bérangère had been in the habit of
telephoning, sent word to say that he was connected with Paris and
that I was asked to come to the telephone without losing a minute.
I went round in a very bad temper. I was worn out with fatigue. It was
raining cats and dogs; and the night was so dark that I knocked
against the trees and houses as I walked.
The moment I arrived, I took up the receiver. Some one at the other
end addressed me in a trembling voice:
"M. Beaugrand . . . M. Beaugrand . . . Excuse me . . . I have
discovered . . ."
I did not understand at first and asked who was speaking.
"My name will convey nothing to you," was the answer. "Benjamin
Prévotelle. I'm not a person of any particular importance. I am an
engineer by profession; I left the Central School two years ago."
I interrupted him:
"One moment, please, one moment. . . . Hullo! . . . Are you there?
. . . Benjamin Prévotelle? But I know your name! . . . Yes, I
remember, I've seen it in my uncle's papers."
"Do you mean that? You've seen my name in Noël Dorgeroux's papers?"
"Yes, in the middle of a paper, without comment of any kind."
The speaker's excitement increased:
"Oh," he said, "can it be possible? If Noël Dorgeroux made a note of
my name, it proves that he read a pamphlet of mine, a year ago, and
that he believed in the explanation of which I am beginning to catch a
glimpse to-day."
"What explanation?" I asked, somewhat impatiently.
"You'll understand, monsieur, you'll understand when you read my
report."
"Your report?"
"A report which I am writing now, to-night. . . . Listen: I was
present at both the exhibitions in the Yard and I have discovered.
. . ."
"Discovered what, hang it all?"
"The problem, monsieur, the solution of the problem."
"What!" I exclaimed. "You've discovered it?"
"Yes, monsieur. I may tell you it's a very simple problem, so simple
that I am anxious to be first in the field. Imagine, if any one else
were to publish the truth before me! So I rang up Meudon on the chance
of getting you called to the telephone. . . . Oh, do listen to me,
monsieur: you must believe me and help me. . . ."
"Of course, of course," I replied, "but I don't quite see . . ."
"Yes, yes," Benjamin Prévotelle implored, appealing to me, clinging to
me, so to speak, in a despairing tone of voice. "You can do a great
deal. I only want a few particulars. . . ."
I confess that Benjamin Prévotelle's statements left me a little
doubtful. However, I answered:
"If a few particulars can be of any use to you . . ."
"Perhaps one alone will do," he said. "It's this. The wall with the
screen was entirely rebuilt by your uncle, Noël Dorgeroux, was it
not?"
"Yes."
"And this wall, as you have said and as every one had observed, forms
a given angle with its lower part."
"Yes."
"On the other hand, according to your depositions, Noël Dorgeroux
intended to have a second amphitheatre built in his garden and to use
the back of the same wall as a screen. That's so, is it not?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is the particular which I want you to give me. Have you
noticed whether the back of the wall forms the same angle with its
lower part?"
"Yes, I've noticed that."
"In that case," said Benjamin Prévotelle, with a note of increasing
triumph in his voice, "the evidence is complete. Noël Dorgeroux and I
are agreed. The pictures do not come from the wall itself. The cause
lies elsewhere. I will prove it; and, if M. Massignac would show a
little willingness to help . . ."
"Théodore Massignac was kidnapped this evening," I remarked.
"Kidnapped? What do you mean?"
I repeated:
"Yes, kidnapped; and I presume that the amphitheatre will be closed
until further notice."
"But this is terrible, it's awful!" gasped Benjamin Prévotelle. "Why,
in that case they couldn't verify my theory! There would never be any
more pictures! No, look here, it's impossible. Just think, I don't
know the indispensable formula! Nobody does, except Massignac. Oh, no,
it is absolutely necessary . . . Hullo, hullo! Don't cut me off,
mademoiselle! . . . One moment more, monsieur. I'll tell you the whole
truth about the pictures. Three or four words will be enough. . . .
Hullo, hullo! . . ."
Benjamin Prévotelle's voice suddenly died away. I was clearly aware of
the insuperable distance that separated him from me at the very moment
when I was about to learn the miraculous truth which he in his turn
laid claim to have discovered.
I waited anxiously. A few minutes passed. Twice the telephone-bell
rang without my receiving any call. I decided to go away and had
reached the bottom of the stairs when I was summoned back in a hurry.
Some one was asking for me on the wire.
"Some one!" I said, going upstairs again. "But it must be the same
person."
And I at once took up the receiver:
"Are you there? Is that M. Prévotelle?"
At first I heard only my name, uttered in a very faint, indistinct
voice, a woman's voice:
"Victorien. . . . Victorien. . . ."
"Hullo!" I cried, very excitedly, though I did not yet understand.
"Hullo! . . . Yes, it's I, Victorien Beaugrand. I happened to be at
the telephone. . . . Hullo! . . . Who is it speaking?"
For a few seconds the voice sounded nearer and then seemed to fall
away. After that came perfect silence. But I had caught these few
words:
"Help, Victorien! . . . My father's life is in danger: help! . . .
Come to the Blue Lion at Bougival. . . ."
I stood dumbfounded. I had recognised Bérangère's voice:
"Bérangère," I muttered, "calling on me for help. . . ."
Without even pausing to think, I rushed to the station.
A train took me to Saint-Cloud and another two stations further.
Wading through the mud, under the pelting rain, and losing my way in
the dark, I covered the mile or two to Bougival on foot, arriving in
the middle of the night. The Blue Lion was closed. But a small boy
dozing under the porch asked me if I was M. Victorien Beaugrand. When
I answered that I was, he said that a lady, by the name of Bérangère,
had told him to wait for me and take me to her, at whatever time I
might arrive.
I trudged beside the boy, through the empty streets of the little
town, to the banks of the Seine, which we followed for some distance.
The rain had stopped, but the darkness was still impenetrable.
"The boat is here," said the boy.
"Oh, are we crossing?"
"Yes, the young lady is hiding on the other side. Be very careful not
to make a noise."
We landed soon after. Then a stony path took us to a house where the
boy gave three knocks on the door.
Some one opened the door. Still following my guide, I went up a few
steps, crossed a passage lighted by a candle and was shown into a dark
room with some one waiting in it. Instantly the light of an electric
lamp struck me full in the face.
The barrel of a revolver was pointed at me and a man's voice said:
"Silence, do you understand? The least sound, the least attempt at
escape; and you're done for. Otherwise you have nothing to fear; and
the best thing you can do is to go to sleep."
The door was closed behind me. Two bolts were shot.
I had fallen into the trap which the man Velmot--I did not hesitate to
fix upon him at once--had laid for me through the instrumentality of
Bérangère.
* * * * *
This unaccountable adventure, like all those in which Bérangère was
involved, did not alarm me unduly at the moment. I was no doubt too
weary to seek reasons for the conduct of the girl and of the man under
whose instructions she was acting. Why had she betrayed me? How had I
incurred the man Velmot's ill-will? And what had induced him to
imprison me, if I had nothing to fear from him as he maintained? These
were all idle questions. After groping through the room and finding
that it contained a bed, or rather a mattress and blankets, I took off
my boots and outer clothing, wrapped myself in the blankets and in a
few minutes was fast asleep.
I slept well into the following day. Meanwhile some one must have
entered the room, for I saw on a table a hunk of new bread and a
bottle of water. The cell which I occupied was a small one. Enough
light to enable me to see came through the slats of a wooden shutter,
which was firmly barricaded outside, as I discovered after opening the
narrow window. One of the slats was half broken. Through the gap I
perceived that my prison overlooked from a height of three or four
feet a strip of ground at the edge of which little waves lapped among
the reeds. Finding that, after crossing one river, I was facing
another, I concluded that Velmot had brought me to an island in the
Seine. Was this not the island which I had beheld, in a fleeting
vision, on the chapel in the cemetery? And was it not here that Velmot
and Massignac had established their head-quarters last winter?
Part of the day passed in silence. But, about five o'clock, I heard a
sound of voices and outbursts of argument. This happened under my room
and consequently in a cellar the grating of which opened beneath my
window. On listening attentively, I seemed on several occasions to
recognize Massignac's voice.
The discussion lasted fully an hour. Then some one made his appearance
outside my window and called out:
"Hi, you chaps, come on and get ready! . . . . He's a stubborn beast
and won't speak unless we make him."
It was the tall fellow who, the day before, had forced his way through
the crowd in the Yard by making an outcry about a wounded man. It was
Velmot, a leaner Velmot, without beard or glasses, Velmot, the
coxcomb, the object of Bérangère's affections.
"_I'll_ make him, the brute! Think of it. I've got him here, at my
mercy: is it likely that I shouldn't be able to make him spew up his
secret? No, no, we must finish it and by nightfall. You're still
decided?"
He received two growls in reply. He sneered:
"He's not half badly trussed up, eh? All right. I'll do without you.
Only just lend me a hand to begin with."
He stepped into a boat fastened to a ring on the bank. One of the men
pushed it with a boat-hook between two stakes planted in the mud and
standing out well above the reeds. Velmot knotted one end of a thick
rope to the top of each stake and in the middle fastened an iron hook,
which thus hung four or five feet above the water.
"That's it," he said, on returning. "I shan't want you any more. Take
the other boat and go and wait for me in the garage. I'll join you
there in three or four hours, when Massignac has blabbed his little
story and after I've had a little plain speaking with our new
prisoner. And then we'll be off."
He walked away with his two assistants. When I saw him again, twenty
minutes later, he had a newspaper in his hand. He laid it on a little
table which stood just outside my window. Then he sat down and lit a
cigar. He turned his back to me, hiding the table from my view. But at
one moment he moved and I caught sight of his paper, the _Journal du
Soir_, which was folded across the page and which bore a heading in
capitals running right across the width of the sheet, with this
sensational title:
"THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MEUDON
APPARITIONS REVEALED"
I was shaken to the very depths of my being. So the young student had
not lied! Benjamin Prévotelle had discovered the truth and had
managed, in the space of a few hours, to set it forth in the report of
which he had spoken and to make it public.
Glued to the shutter, how I strove to read the opening lines of the
article! These were the only lines that met my eyes, because of the
manner in which the paper was folded. And how great was my excitement
at each word that I made out!
I have carefully preserved a copy of that paper, by which a part at
least of the great mystery was made known to me. Before reprinting the
famous report, which Benjamin Prévotelle had published that morning,
it said:
"Yes, the fantastic problem is solved. A contemporary
published this morning, in the form of 'An Open Letter
to the Academy of Science,' the most sober, luminous
and convincing report conceivable. We do not know
whether the official experts will agree with the
conclusions of the report, but we doubt if the
objections, which for that matter are frankly stated
by the author, are strong enough, however grave they
may be, to demolish the theory which he propounds. The
arguments seem unanswerable. The proofs are such as to
compel belief. And what doubles the value of this
admirable theory is that it does not merely appear to
be unassailable, but opens up to us the widest and
most marvellous horizons. In fact, Noël Dorgeroux's
discovery is no longer limited to what it is or what
it seems to be. It implies consequences which cannot
be foretold. It is calculated to upset all our ideas
of man's past and all our conceptions of his future.
Not since the beginning of the world has there been an
event to compare with this. It is at the same time the
most incomprehensible event and the most natural, the
most complex and the simplest. A great scientist might
have announced it to the world as the result of
meditation. And he who, thanks both to able intuition
and intelligent observation has achieved this
inestimable glory is little more than a boy in years.
"We subjoin a few particulars gleaned in the course of
an interview which Benjamin Prévotelle was good enough
to grant us. We apologize for being able to give no
more details concerning his personality. How should it
be otherwise: Benjamin Prévotelle is twenty-three
years of age. He . . ."
I had to stop here, as the subsequent lines escaped my eyes. Was I to
learn more?
Velmot had risen from his chair and was walking to and fro. After a
brief disappearance, he returned with a bottle of some liqueur, of
which he drank two glasses in quick succession. Then he unfolded the
newspaper and began to peruse the report or rather to reperuse it, for
I had no doubt that he had read it before.
His chair was right against my shutter. He sat leaning back, so that I
was able to see, not the end of the preliminary article, but the
report itself, which he read rather slowly.
The daylight, proceeding from a sky whose clouds must have hidden the
sun, was meantime diminishing. I read simultaneously with Velmot:
"_An Open Letter to the Academy of Science_
"I will beg you, gentlemen, to regard this memorandum
as only the briefest possible introduction to the more
important essay which I propose to write and to the
innumerable volumes to which it is certain to give
rise in every country, to which volumes also it will
serve as a modest preface.
"I am writing hurriedly, allowing my pen to run away
with me, improvising hastily as I go along. You will
find omissions and defects which I do not attempt to
conceal and which are due in equal proportions to the
restricted number of observations which we were able
to make at Meudon and to the obstinate refusal which
M. Théodore Massignac opposes to every request for
additional information. But the remarkable feeling
aroused by the miraculous pictures makes it my duty to
offer the results, as yet extremely incomplete, of an
investigation in respect of which I have the
legitimate ambition to reserve the right of priority.
I thus hope, by confining my hypotheses to a definite
channel, to assist towards establishing the truth and
relieving the public mind.
"My investigations were commenced immediately after
the first revelations made by M. Victorien Beaugrand.
I collated all his statements. I analysed all his
impressions. I seized upon all that Noël Dorgeroux had
said. I went over the details of all his experiments.
And in consequence of carefully weighing and examining
all these things I did not come to the first
performance at Meudon with my hands in my pockets, as
a lover of sensations and a dabbler in mystery. On the
contrary, I came with a well-considered plan and with
a few working-implements, deliberately selected and
concealed under my own clothing and that of some of my
friends who were good enough to assist me.
"First of all, a camera. This was a matter of some
difficulty. M. Théodore Massignac had his misgivings
and had prohibited the introduction of so much as the
smallest Kodak. Nevertheless I succeeded. I had to. I
had to provide a definite answer to a first question,
which might be called the critical question: are the
Meudon apparitions due to individual or collective
suggestions, possessing no reality outside those who
experience them, or have they a real and external
cause? That answer may certainly be deduced from the
absolute identity of the impressions received by all
the spectators. But to-day I am adducing a direct
proof which I consider to be unassailable. The camera
refuses any sort of suggestion. The camera is not a
brain in which the picture can create itself, in which
an hallucination is formed out of internal data. It is
a witness that does not lie and is not mistaken. Well,
this witness has spoken. The sensitive plate certifies
the phenomena to be real. I hold at the disposal of
the Academy seven negatives of the screen thus
obtained by instantaneous exposures. Two of them,
representing Rheims Cathedral on fire, are remarkably
clear.
"Here then the first point is settled: the screen is
the seat of an emanation of light-rays.
"While I was obtaining the proofs of this emanation, I
submitted it to the means of investigation which
physics places at our disposal. I was not,
unfortunately, able to make as many or as accurate
experiments as I should have wished. The distance of
the wall, the local arrangements and the inadequacy of
the light emitted by the screen were against me.
Nevertheless, by using the spectroscope and the
polarimeter, I ascertained that this light did not
appear to differ perceptibly from the natural light
diffused by a white surface.
"But a more tangible result and one to which I attach
the greatest importance was obtained by examining the
screen by means of a revolving mirror. It is well
known that, if our ordinary cinematographic pictures
projected on a screen be viewed in a mirror to which
we impart a rapid rotary movement, the successive
pictures are dislocated and yield images in the field
of the mirror. A similar effect can be obtained,
though less distinctly, by turning one's head quickly
so as to project the successive pictures upon
different points of the retina. It was therefore
indicated that I should apply this method of analysis
to the animated projections produced at Meudon. I was
thus able to prove positively that these projections,
like those of the ordinary cinematograph, break up
into separate and successive images, but with a
rapidity which is notably greater than in the
operations to which we are accustomed, for I found
that they average 28 to the second. On the other hand,
these images are not emitted at regular intervals. I
observed rhythmical alterations of acceleration and
retardation and I am inclined to believe that the
rhythmical variations are not unconnected with the
extraordinary impression of steroscopic relief which
all the spectators at Meudon received.
"The foregoing observations led up to a scientific
certainty and naturally guided my investigations into
a definite channel: the Meudon pictures are genuine
cinematographic projections thrown upon the screen and
perceived by the spectators in the ordinary manner.
But where is the projecting-apparatus? How does it
work? This is where the gravest difficulty lies, for
hitherto no trace of an apparatus has been discovered,
nor even the least clue to the existence of any
apparatus whatever.
"Is it allowable to suppose, as I did not fail to do,
that the projections may proceed from within the
screen, by means of an underground device which it is
not impossible to imagine? This last theory would
obviously greatly relieve our minds, by attributing
the visions to some clever trick. But it was not
without good reason that first M. Victorien Beaugrand
and afterwards the audience itself refused to accept
it. The visions bear a stamp of authenticity and
unexpectedness which strikes all who see them, without
any exception. Moreover, the specialists in
cinematographic "faking," when questioned, frankly
proclaim that their expert knowledge is at a loss and
their technique at fault. It may even be declared that
the exhibitor of these images possesses no power
beyond that of receiving them on a suitable screen and
that he himself does not know what is about to appear
on the screen. Lastly, it may be added that the
preparation of such films as that would be a long and
complicated operation, necessitating an extensive
equipment and a numerous staff of actors; and it is
really impossible that these preparations can have
been effected in absolute secrecy.
"This is exactly the point to which my enquiries had
led me on the night before the last, after the first
performance. I will not presume to say that I knew
more than any chance member of the public about that
which constitutes the fundamental nature of the
problem. Nevertheless, when I took my seat at the
second performance, I was in a better condition
mentally than any of the other onlookers. I was
standing on solid ground. I was self controlled, free
of feverish excitement or any other factor that might
diminish the intensity of my attention. I was hampered
by no preconceived ideas; and no new idea, no new fact
could come within my grasp without my immediately
perceiving it.
"This was what happened. The new fact was the
bewildering and mystifying spectacle of the grotesque
Shapes. I did not at once draw the conclusion which
this spectacle entailed, or at least I was not aware
of so doing. But my perceptions were aroused. Those
beings equipped with three arms became connected in my
mind with the initial riddle of the Three Eyes. If I
did not yet understand, at least I had a presentiment
of the truth; if I did not know, at least I suspected
that I was about to know. The door was opening. The
light was beginning to dawn.
"A few minutes later, as will be remembered, came the
gruesome picture of a cart conveying two gendarmes, a
priest and a king who was being led to his death. It
was a confused, fragmentary, mutilated picture,
continually broken up and pieced together again. Why?
For, after all, the thing was not normal. Until then,
as we know and as M. Victorien Beaugrand had told us,
until then the pictures were always admirably
distinct. And suddenly we beheld a flickering,
defective image, confused, dim and at moments almost
invisible. Why?
"At that critical instant, this was the only train of
thought permissible. The horror and strangeness of the
spectacle no longer counted. Why was this, technically
speaking, a defective picture? Why was the faultless
mechanism, which until now had worked with perfect
smoothness, suddenly disordered? What was the grain of
sand that had thrown it out of gear?
"Really the problem was proposed to me with a
simplicity that confounded me. The terms of the
problem were familiar to all. We had before us
cinematographic pictures. These cinematographic
pictures did not proceed from the wall itself. They
did not come from any part of the amphitheatre. Then
whence were they projected? And what obstacle was now
preventing their free projection?
"Instinctively, I made the only movement that could be
made, the movement which a child would have made if
that elementary question had been put to it: I raised
my eyes to the sky.
"It was absolutely clear, an immense, empty sky.
"Clear and empty, yes, but in the part which my eyes
were able to interrogate. Was it the same in the part
hidden from my view by the upper wall of the
amphitheatre?
"The mere silent utterance of the words which
propounded the question was enough to make me almost
swoon with anxiety. They bore the tremendous truth
within themselves. I had only to speak them for the
great mystery to vanish utterly.
"With trembling limbs and a heart that almost ceased
to beat, I climbed to the top of the amphitheatre and
gazed at the horizon. Yonder, towards the west, light
clouds were floating. . . ."
CHAPTER XIV
MASSIGNAC AND VELMOT
"Clouds were floating. . . . Clouds were floating. . . ."
These words of the report, which I repeated mechanically while trying to
decipher what followed, were the last that I was able to read. Night was
falling rapidly. My eyes, tired by the strain and difficulty of reading,
strove in vain against the increasing darkness and suddenly refused to
obey any further effort.
Besides, Velmot rose soon after and walked to the bank of the river. The
time had come for action.
What that action was to be I did not ask. Since the beginning of my
captivity, I had entertained no personal fears, even though Velmot had
referred to an interview, accompanied by "a little plain-speaking,"
which he had in store for me. But the great secret of the Yard continued
to possess my thoughts so much that nothing that happened had any effect
upon me except in so far as it was useful or injurious to Noël
Dorgeroux's cause. There was some one now who knew the truth; and the
world was about to learn it. How could I trouble about anything else?
How could anything interest me except Benjamin Prévotelle's accurate
arguments, the ingenuity of his investigations and the important results
which he had achieved?
Oh, how I too longed to know! What could the new theory be? Did it fit
in with all the teaching of reality? And would it fully satisfy me, who,
when all was said, had penetrated farther than any other into the heart
of that reality and reaped the largest harvest of observations?
What astonished me was that I did not understand. And I am even more
astonished now. Though standing on the very threshold of the sanctuary,
the door of which was opened to me, I was unable to see. No light
flashed upon me. What did Benjamin Prévotelle mean to say? What was the
significance of those clouds drifting in a corner of the sky? If they
tempered the light of the sunset and thus exerted an influence over the
pictures of the screen, why did Benjamin Prévotelle ask me on the
telephone about the surface of the wall which faced precisely the
opposite quarter of the heavens, that is the east? And why did he accept
my answer as confirming his theory?
Velmot's voice drew me from my dreams and brought me back to the window
which I had left a few minutes earlier. He was stooping over the grating
and sneering:
"Well, Massignac, are you ready for the operation? I'll get you out this
way: that'll save my dragging you round by the stairs."
Velmot went down the stairs; and I soon heard beneath me the loud
outburst of a renewed argument, ending in howls and then in a sudden
silence which was the most impressive of all. I now received my first
notion of the terrible scene which Velmot was preparing; and, without
wasting my pity on the wretched Massignac, I shuddered at the thought
that my turn might come next.
The thing was done as Velmot had said. Massignac, bandaged like a
swathed mummy, rigid and gagged, rose slowly from the cellar. Velmot
then returned, dragged him by the shoulders to the edge of the river and
tipped him into the boat.
Then, standing on the bank, he addressed him as follows:
"Now, Massignac, my beauty, this is the third time that I'm appealing to
your common sense; and I'll do it again presently, for the fourth time,
if you force me to. But you're going to give in, I fancy. Come, think a
moment. Think what you would do in my place. You'd act yourself as I am
doing, wouldn't you? Then what are you waiting for? Why don't you speak?
Does your gag bother you? Just nod your head and I'll move it. Do you
agree? No? In that case you mustn't be surprised if we start upon the
fourth and last phase of our conversation. All my apologies if it
strikes you as still more unpleasant."
Velmot sat down beside his victim, wielded the boat-hook and pushed the
boat between the two stakes projecting above the water.
These two stakes marked the boundaries of the field of vision which the
gap in the shutter afforded me. The water played around them, spangled
with sparks of light. The moon had appeared from behind the clouds; and
I distinctly saw every detail of the "operation," to use Velmot's
expression.
"Don't resist, Massignac," he said. "It won't help. . . . Eh? What? You
think I'm too rough, do you? My lord's made of glass, is he? Now then!
Yoop! Is that right? Capital!"
He had stood Massignac up against himself and placed his left arm round
him. With his right hand he took hold of the iron hook fastened to the
rope between the two stakes, pulled it down and inserted the point
under the bonds with which Massignac was swathed, at the height of the
shoulders.
"Capital!" he repeated. "You see, I needn't trouble to hold you. You're
standing up all by yourself, my boy, like a monkey on a stick."
He took the boat-hook again, hooked it into the stones on the bank and
made the boat glide from under Massignac's body, which promptly sank.
The rope had sagged. Only half of his body emerged above the water.
And Velmot said to his former confederate, in a low voice, which I could
hear, however, without straining my ears. I have always believed that
Velmot spoke that day with the intention that I should hear--:
"This is what I had in mind, old chap; and we haven't much more to say
to each other. Remember, in an hour from now, possibly sooner, the water
will be above your mouth, which won't make it very easy for you to
speak. And of that hour I ought in decency to give you fifty minutes for
reflection."
He splashed a little water over Massignac's head with the boat-hook.
Then he continued, with a laugh:
"You quite grasp the position, don't you? The rope by which you're
fastened, like an ox in a stall, is fixed to the two stakes by a couple
of slip-knots, nothing more . . . so that, at the least movement, the
knots slip down an inch or so. You will have noticed it just now, when I
let you go. Blinkety blump! You went down a half a head lower! Besides
that, the weight alone of your body is enough. . . . You're slipping,
old fellow, you're slipping all the time; and nothing can stop you . . .
unless, of course, you speak. Are you ready to speak?"
The moonbeams shifted to and fro, casting light or shade upon the
horrible scenes. I could see the black shape of Massignac, who himself
always remained in semidarkness. The water came half-way up his chest.
Velmot continued:
"Logically, old fellow, you're bound to speak. The position is so clear.
We plotted between us a little piece of business which succeeded, thanks
to our joint efforts; but you have pocketed all the profits, thanks to
your trickery. I want my share, that's all. And for this you need do no
more than tell me Noël Dorgeroux's famous formula and supply me with the
means of making the experiment to begin with. After that I'll give you
back your liberty for I shall feel certain that you will allow me my
share of the profits, for fear of competition. Is it a bargain?"
Théodore Massignac must have made a gesture of denial or uttered a grunt
of refusal, for he received a smack across the face which resounded
through the silence.
"I'm sure you'll excuse me, old fellow," said Velmot, "but you'd try the
patience of a plaster saint! Do you really mean to say that you would
rather croak? Or perhaps you think I intend to give in? Or that some one
will come and help you out of your mess? You ass! You chose this place
yourself last winter! No boats come this way. Opposite, nothing but
fields. So there's no question of a rescue. Nor of pity either! Why,
hang it all, don't you realize the positions? And yet I showed you the
article in this morning's paper. With the exception of the formula, it's
all set out there: all Dorgeroux's secret and all yours! So who's to
tell us that they won't quite easily find the formula? Who's to tell us
that, in a fortnight, in a week, the whole thing won't be given away and
that I shall have had my hands on a million of money, like a fool,
without grabbing it? Oh, no, that would never do!"
There was a pause. A ray of light gave me a glimpse of Massignac. The
water had risen above his shoulders.
"I've nothing more to say to you," said Velmot. "We'll make an end of
it. Do you refuse?"
He waited for a moment and continued:
"In that case, since you refuse, I won't insist: what's the good? You
shall decide your own fate and take the final plunge. Good-bye, old man.
I'm going to drink a glass and smoke a pipe to your health."
He bent towards his victim and added:
"Still, it's a chap's duty to provide for everything. If, by chance you
think better of it, if you have an inspiration at the last moment, you
have only to call me, quite softly. . . . There, I'm loosening your gag
a bit. . . . Good-bye, Théodore."
Velmot pushed the boat back and landed, grumbling:
"It's a dog's life! What a fool the brute is!"
As arranged, he sat down again, after bringing the chair and table to
the water's edge, poured himself out a glass of liqueur and lit his
pipe:
"Here's to your good health, Massignac," he said. "At the present rate,
I can see that, in twenty minutes from now, you'll be having a drink
too. Whatever you do, don't forget to call me. I'm listening for all I'm
worth, old chum."
The moon had become veiled with clouds, which must have been very dense,
for the bank grew so dark that I could hardly distinguish Velmot's
figure. As a matter of fact, I was persuaded that the implacable contest
would end in some compromise and that Velmot would give way or Massignac
speak. Nevertheless, ten or perhaps fifteen minutes passed, minutes
which seemed to me interminable. Velmot smoked quietly and Massignac
gave a series of little whimpers, but did not call out. Five minutes
more. Velmot rose angrily:
"It's no use whining, you blasted fool! I've had enough of messing
about. Will you speak? No? Then die, you scamp!"
And I heard him snarling between his teeth:
"Perhaps I shall manage better with the other one."
Whom did he mean by "the other one"? Me?
In point of fact, he turned to the left, that is towards the part of the
house where the door was:
"Damn it!" he swore, almost immediately.
There was an ejaculation. And then I heard nothing more from that
direction.
What had happened? Had Velmot knocked against the wall, in the dark, or
against an open shutter?
I could not see him from where I stood. The table and chair were faintly
outlined in the gloom. Beyond was the pitchy darkness from which came
Massignac's muffled whimper.
"Velmot is on his way," I said to myself. "A few seconds more and he
will be here."
The reason for his coming I did not understand, any more than the reason
for trepanning me. Did he think that I knew the formula and that I had
refrained from denouncing Massignac because of an understanding between
him and myself? In that case, did he mean to compel me to speak, by
employing with me the same methods as with his former accomplice? Or was
it a question of Bérangère between us, of the Bérangère whom we both
loved and whose name, to my surprise, he had not even mentioned to
Massignac? These were so many problems to which he would provide the
reply:
"That is," I thought, "if he comes."
For, after all, he was not there; and there was not a sound in the
house. What was he doing? For some little while I stood with my ear
glued to the door by which he should have entered, ready to defend
myself though unarmed.
He did not come.
I went back to the window. There was no sound on that side either.
And the silence was terrible, that silence which seemed to increase and
to spread all over the river and into space, that silence which was no
longer broken even by Massignac's stifled moaning.
In vain I tried to force my eyes to see. The water of the river remained
invisible. I no longer saw and I no longer heard Théodore Massignac.
I could no longer see him and I could no longer hear him. It was a
terrifying reflection! Had he slipped down? Had the deadly, suffocating
water risen to his mouth and nostrils?
I struck the shutter with a mighty blow of my fist. The thought that
Massignac was dead or about to die, that thought which until then I had
not realised very clearly, filled me with dismay. Massignac's death
meant the definite and irreparable loss of the secret. Massignac's death
meant that Noël Dorgeroux was dying for the second time.
I redoubled my efforts. There was certainly no doubt in my mind that
Velmot was at hand and that he and I would have to fight it out; but I
did not care about that. No consideration could stop me. I had then and
there to hasten to the assistance not of Massignac, but as it appeared
to me, of Noël Dorgeroux, whose wonderful work was about to be
destroyed. All that I had done hitherto, in protecting by my silence,
Théodore Massignac's criminal enterprise, I was bound to continue by
saving from death the man who knew the indispensable formula.
As my fists were not enough, I broke a chair and used it to hammer one
of the bars. Moreover, the shutter was not very strong, as some of the
slats were already partly missing. Another split and yet another. I was
able to slip my arm through and to lift an iron cross-bar hinged to the
outside. The shutter gave way at once. I had only to step over the
window-sill and drop to the ground below.
Velmot was certainly leaving the field clear for me.
Without losing an instant, I passed by the chair, threw over the table
and easily found the boat:
"I'm here!" I shouted to Massignac. "Hold on!"
With a strong push I reached one of the stakes, repeating:
"Hold on! Hold on! I'm here!"
I seized the rope in both hands, at the level of the water, and felt for
the hook, expecting to strike against Massignac's head.
I touched nothing. The rope had slipped down; the hook was in the water
and carried no weight. The body must have gone to the bottom; and the
current had swept it away.
Nevertheless, on the off-chance, I dipped my hand as far as I could into
the water. But a shot suddenly pulled me up short. A bullet had whistled
past my ear. At the same time, Velmot, whom I could just make out
crouching on the bank, like a man dragging himself on all fours,
stuttered, in a choking voice:
"Oh, you scum, you took your opportunity, did you? And you think perhaps
you're going to save Massignac? Just you wait a bit, you blighter!"
He fired two more shots, guessing at my whereabouts, for I was sculling
away rapidly. Neither of them touched me. Soon I was out of range.
CHAPTER XV
THE SPLENDID THEORY
It is not only to-day, when I am relating that tragic scene, that it
appears to me in the light of a subsidiary episode to my story. I
already had that impression at the time when it was being enacted. My
reason for laying no greater stress on my alarm and on the horror of
certain facts is that all this was to me only an interlude. Massignac's
sufferings and his disappearance and Velmot's inexplicable behaviour, in
abandoning for some minutes the conduct of a matter to which he had
until then applied himself with such diabolical eagerness, were just so
many details which became blotted out by the tremendous events
represented by Benjamin Prévotelle's discovery.
And to such an extent was this event the central point of all my
preoccupations that the idea had occurred to me, as I rushed to
Massignac's assistance, of snatching from the chair the newspaper in
which I had read the first half of the essay! To be free meant above all
things--even above saving Massignac and, through him, the formula--the
opportunity of reading the rest of the essay and of learning what the
whole world must already have learnt!
I made the circuit of the island in my boat and, shaping my course by
certain lights, ran her ashore on the main bank. A tram went by. Some of
the shops were open. I was between Bougival and Port-Marly.
At ten o'clock in the evening I was sitting in a bedroom in a Paris
hotel and unfolding a newspaper. But I had not had the patience to wait
so long. On the way, by the feeble lights of the tram-car, I glanced at
a few lines of the article. One word told me everything. I too was
acquainted with Benjamin Prévotelle's marvellous theory. I knew and,
knowing, I believed.
The reader will recall the place which I had reached in my uncomfortable
perusal of the report. Benjamin Prévotelle's studies and experiments had
led him to conclude, first, that the Meudon pictures were real
cinematographic projections and, next, that these projections, since
they came from no part of the amphitheatre, must come from some point
more remote. Now the last picture, that representing the revolutionary
doings of the 21st January, was hampered by some obstacle. What
obstacle? His mental condition being what it was, what could Benjamin
Prévotelle do other than raise his eyes to the sky?
The sky was clear. Was it also clear beyond the part that could be
observed from the lower benches of the amphitheatre? Benjamin Prévotelle
climbed to the top and looked at the horizon.
Yonder, towards the west, clouds were floating.
And Benjamin Prévotelle continued, repeating his phrase:
"Clouds were floating! And, because of the fact that
clouds were floating on the horizon, the pictures on
the screen grew less distinct or even vanished
altogether. It may be said that this was a
coincidence. On three separate occasions, when the
film lost its brilliancy, I turned towards the
horizon: on each occasion clouds were passing. Could
three coincidences of this kind be due to chance? Can
any scientific mind fail to see herein a relation of
cause and effect or to admit that, in this instance,
as in that of many visions previously observed, which
were disturbed by an unknown cause, the interposition
of the clouds acted as a veil _by intercepting the
projection on its way_? I was not able to make a
fourth test. But that did not matter. I had now
advanced so far that I was able to work and reflect
without being stopped by any obstacle. There is no
such thing as being checked mid-way in our pursuit of
certain truths. Once we catch a glimpse of them, they
become revealed in their entirety.
"At first, to be sure, scientific logic, instead of
referring the explanation which I was so eagerly
seeking to the data of human science, flung me, almost
despite myself, into an ever more mysterious region.
And, when, after this second display, I returned
home--this was three hours ago at most--I asked myself
whether it would not be better to confess my ignorance
than to go rushing after theories which suddenly
seemed to me to lie beyond the confines of science.
But how could I have done so? Despite myself I
continued to work at the problem, to imagine.
Induction fitted into deduction. Proofs were
accumulating. Even as I was hesitating to enter upon a
path whose direction confounded me, I reached the goal
and found myself sitting down to a table, pen in hand,
to write a report which was dictated by my reason as
much as by my imagination.
"Thus the first step was taken: in obedience to the
imperious summons of reality, I admitted the theory of
extra-terrestrial communications, or at least of
communications coming from beyond the clouds. Was I
to think that they emanated from some airship hovering
in the sky, beyond that cloud-belt? Leaving aside the
fact that no such airship was ever observed, we must
remark that luminous projections powerful enough to
light the screen at Meudon from a distance of several
miles would leave in the air a trail of diffused light
which could not escape notice. Lastly, in the present
condition of science, we are at liberty to declare
positively that such projections would be quite
incapable of realization.
"What then? Were we to cast our eyes farther, traverse
space at one bound and assume that the projections
have an origin which is not only extraterrestrial but
extrahuman?
"Now the great word is written. The idea is no longer
my property. How will it be received by those to whom
this report will reveal it to-morrow? Will they
welcome it with the same fervour and the same
awe-struck emotion that thrilled me, with the distrust
at the beginning and the same final enthusiasm?
"Let us, if you will, recover our composure. The
examination of the phenomena has led us to a very
definite conclusion. However startling this conclusion
be, let us examine it also, with perfect detachment,
and try to subject it to all the tests which we are
able to impose upon it.
"Extrahuman projections: what does that mean? The
expression seems vague; and our thoughts wander at
random. Let us look into the matter more closely. Let
us first of all establish as an impassable boundary
the frontiers of our solar system and, in this immense
circle, concentrate our gaze upon the more accessible
and consequently the nearer points. For, when all is
said, if there be really projections, they must
necessarily, whether extrahuman or human, emanate from
fixed points, situated in space. They must therefore
emanate from those luminaries within sight of the
earth to which, in the last report, we have some right
to attribute the origin of those projections. I
consider that there are five such fixed points: the
moon, the sun, Jupiter, Mars and Venus.
"If, furthermore, we suppose as the more likely theory
that the projections follow a rectilinear direction,
then the unknown luminary from which the apparitions
emanate will have to satisfy two conditions: first, it
must be in such a position that photographs can be
taken from it; secondly, it must be in such a position
that the images obtained can be transmitted to us. Let
us take as an instance a case in which it is possible
to fix the place and date. The first Montgolfier
balloon, filled with hot air, was sent up from Annonay
at four o'clock in the afternoon on the 5th of June,
1783. It is easy, by referring to the contemporary
calendars, to learn which celestial bodies were at
that moment above the horizon and at what height. We
thus find that Mars, Jupiter and the moon were
invisible, whereas the sun and Venus were at 50 and 23
degrees respectively above the horizon of Annonay and,
of course, towards the west. These two luminaries
alone then were in a position to witness the
experiment of the brothers Montgolfier. But they did
not witness it from the same altitude: a view taken
from the sun would have shown things as seen from
above, whereas, at the same hour, Venus would have
shown then from an angle very nearly approaching the
horizontal.
"This is a first clue. Are we able to check it? Yes,
by turning up the date on which the projections of the
view then secured as observed by Victorien Beaugrand
and by determining whether, on that date, the
projecting luminary was able to light up the screen at
Meudon. Well, on that day, at the hour which Victorien
Beaugrand has given us, Mars and the moon were
invisible, Jupiter was in the east, the sun close to
the horizon and Venus a little way above it.
Projections emanating from the last-named planet
could therefore have fallen upon the screen, which as
we know faced westwards.
"This example shows us that, however frail my theory
may appear, we are now able and shall be even better
able in the future to subject it to a strict control.
I did not fail to resort to this method in respect of
the other pictures, and I will give in a special
table, appended to this essay, a list of the data
which I have verified, a list necessarily drawn up, in
some haste. Well, in all the cases which I examined,
the views were taken and projected under such
conditions that they can logically be referred to the
planet Venus _and to that planet alone_.
"Yet again, two of these views, that which revealed to
Victorien Beaugrand and his uncle the execution of
Miss Cavell and that which enabled us to witness the
bombardment of Rheims, seem to have been taken, the
first in the morning, because Miss Cavell was executed
in the morning, and the second from the east, because
it showed a shell fired at a statue which stood on the
east front of the cathedral. This proves that the
views could be taken indifferently in the morning or
the evening, from the west or the east; and it is
surely a powerful argument in favour of my theory,
because Venus, which is both the Evening and the
Morning Star, faces the earth at daybreak from the
east and at sunset from the west and because Noël
Dorgeroux (as M. Victorien Beaugrand has just
confirmed to me by telephone), because Noël Dorgeroux,
that magnificent visionary, had had his wall
constructed _with two surfaces having an identical
inclination towards the sky, one facing west, the
other east and each in turn exposed to the rays of
Venus the Evening Star and Venus the Morning Star_!
"These are the proofs which I am able to furnish for
the time being. There are others. There is for
instance the time of the apparitions. Venus is sinking
towards the horizon; on the earth twilight reigns; and
the pictures can be formed regardless of the sunlight.
Remark also that Noël Dorgeroux, deferring all his
experiments, last winter altered the whole arrangement
of the Yard and demolished the old garden. Now this
break coincides exactly with a period during which the
position of Venus on the farther side of the sun
prevented it from communicating with the earth. All
these proofs will be reinforced by a more exhaustive
essay and by an analytical examination of the pictures
that have been or will be shown to us.
"But though I have written this report without
stopping to answer the objections and difficulties
which arise at every line, though I have been
contented myself with setting forth the logical and
almost inevitable sequence of the deductions which led
up to my theory. I should be failing in respect to the
academy and to the public if I allowed it to be
believed that I am not fully conscious of the weight
of those objections and difficulties. I did not,
however, consider this a reason for abandoning my
task. Though it be our duty to bow when science utters
a formal veto, on the other hand duty orders us to
persist when science is content merely to confess its
ignorance. This is the twofold principle which I
observed in seeking no longer the source of the
projections, but rather the manner in which they were
able to appear, for that is where the whole problem
lies. It is easy to declare that they emanate from
Venus; it is not easy to explain how they travel
through space and how they exercise their action, at a
distance of many millions of miles, on an
imperceptible screen with a surface of three or four
hundred square feet. I am confronted with physical
laws which I am not entitled to transgress. I am
entitled at most to advance where science is obliged
to be mute.
"Therefore and without any sort of discussion I admit
that we are debarred from supposing that light can be
the agent of the transmissions which have been
observed. The laws of diffraction indeed are
absolutely opposed to the strictly rectilinear
propagation of luminous rays and hence to the
formation and reception of pictures at the exceptional
distances actually under consideration. Not only are
the laws of geometrical optics merely a somewhat rough
approximation, but the complicated refractions which
would inevitably occur in the atmospheres of the earth
and Venus would disturb the optical images. The veto
of science therefore is peremptory in so far as the
possibility of these optical transmissions is
concerned.
"For that matter, I should be quite willing to believe
that the inhabitants of Venus have already tried to
correspond with us through the intermediary of
luminous signals and that, if they abandoned their
endeavours, this was precisely because the
imperfection of our human science made them useless.
We know in fact that Lowell and Schiaparelli saw on
the face of Venus brilliant specks and a transient
gleam which they themselves attributed either to
volcanic eruptions or, as is more probable, to the
attempts at communication of which I have spoken.
"But science does not prevent us from asking ourselves
whether, after the failure of these attempts, the
inhabitants of Venus did not resort to another method
of correspondence. How can we avoid thinking, for
instance, of the X-rays, whose strictly rectilinear
path would allow of the formation of pictures so clear
that one could wish for nothing better? In fact it is
not impossible that these rays are employed for the
emission received on the Meudon screen, though the
quality of the light when analyzed in the spectroscope
makes the supposition highly improbable. But how are
we to explain by means of X-rays _the taking of the
terrestrial views_ of which we saw the moving outline
on the screen? We know, of course, if we go back to
the concrete example to which I referred just now, we
know that neither the brothers Montgolfier nor the
surrounding landscape emitted X-rays. It is not
therefore through the medium of these rays that the
Venusians can have secured the instantaneous
photographs which they afterwards transmitted to us.
"Well, this exhausts all the possibilities of an
explanation which can be referred to the present data
of science. I declare positively that to-day, in this
essay, I should not have dared to venture into the
domain of theory and to suggest a solution in which my
own labours are involved, if Noël Dorgeroux had not in
a manner authorized me to do so. The fact is that,
twelve months ago, I issued a pamphlet, entitled _An
Essay on Universal Gravitation_, which fell flat on
publication, but which must have attracted Noël
Dorgeroux's particular attention, because his nephew,
Victorien Beaugrand, found my name written among his
papers and because Noël Dorgeroux cannot have known my
name except through this pamphlet. Nor would he have
taken the trouble to write it down, if the theory of
the rays of gravitation which I developed in my
pamphlet had not appeared to him to be exactly adapted
to the problem raised by his discovery?
"I will therefore ask the reader to refer to my
pamphlet. He will there find the results, vague but by
no means negligible, which I was able to explain by my
experiments with this radiation. He will see that it
is propagated in a strictly rectilinear direction and
with a speed which is thrice that of light, so that it
would not take more than 46 seconds to reach Venus at
the time when she is nearest to the earth. He will see
lastly that, though the existence of these rays,
_thanks to which universal attraction is exercised
according to the Newtonian laws_, is not yet admitted
and though I have not yet succeeded in making them
visible by means of suitable receivers, I nevertheless
give proofs of their existence which must be taken
into consideration. And Noël Dorgeroux's approval
also is a proof that they must not be neglected.
"On the other hand, we have the right to believe that,
while our poor rudimentary science may, after
centuries and centuries of efforts, have remained
ignorant of the essential factor of the equilibrium of
the planets, the Venusian scientists long since passed
this inferior stage of knowledge and that they possess
photographic receivers which allow films to be taken
by means of the rays of gravitation and this by
methods of truly wonderful perfection. They were
therefore waiting. Looking down upon our planet,
knowing all that happened here, witnessing our
helplessness, they were waiting to communicate with us
by the only means that appeared to them possible. They
were waiting, patiently and persistently, formidably
equipped, sweeping our soil with the invisible sheaves
of rays assembled in their projectors and receivers,
searching and prying into every nook and corner.
"And one day the wonderful thing happened. One day the
shaft of rays struck the layer of substance on the
screen where and where alone the spontaneous work of
chemical decomposition and immediate reconstitution
could be performed. On that day, thanks to Noël
Dorgeroux and thanks to luck, as we must confess, for
Noël Dorgeroux was pursuing an entirely different
series of experiments on that particular day, the
Venusians established the connection between the two
planets. The greatest fact in the history of the world
was accomplished.
"There is evidence even that the Venusians knew of
Noël Dorgeroux's earlier experiments, that they
realized their importance, that they interested
themselves in his labours and that they followed the
events of his life, for it is now many years since
they took the pictures showing how his son Dominique
was killed in the war. But I will not recapitulate in
detail each of the films displayed at Meudon. This is
a work which anybody can now perform in the light of
the theory which I am setting forth. But we must
consider attentively the process by which the
Venusians tried to give those films a sort of
uniformity. It has been rightly said that the sign of
the Three Eyes is a trade-mark, like the mark of any
of our great cinematograph-producers, a trade-mark
also very strikingly proves the superhuman resources
possessed by the Venusians, since they succeed in
giving to those Three Eyes, which have no relation to
our human eyes, not only the expression of our eyes
but something much more impressive, the expression of
the eyes of the person destined to be the principal
character in the film.
"But why was this particular mark chosen? Why eyes and
why three? At the stage which we have now reached,
need we answer this question? The Venusians themselves
have furnished the reply by showing us that apparently
absurd film in which Shapes assuredly lived and moved
in our sight in accordance with the lines and
principle of Venusian life. Were we not the breathless
spectators of a picture taken among them and from
them? Did we not behold, to make a companion picture
to the death of Louis XVI, an incident representing
the martyrdom of some great personage whom the
executioners tore to pieces with their _three_ hands,
severing from his body a sort of shapeless head
provided with _three_ eyes?
"Three Hands! Three Eyes! Dare I, on the strength of
this fragile basis, go beyond what we saw and declare
that the Venusian possesses the complete symmetry of
the triangle, just as man, with his two eyes, his two
ears and his two arms, possesses bilateral symmetry?
Shall I try to explain his method of progressing by
successive distentions and of moving vertically along
_vertical_ streets, in towns built _perpendicularly_?
Shall I have the courage to state, as I believe, that
he is provided with organs which give him a magnetic
sense, a sense of space, an electric sense and so on,
organs numbered by threes? No. These are details with
which the Venusian scientists will supply us on the
day when it pleases them to enter into correspondence
with us.
"And, believe me, they will not fail to do so. All
their efforts for centuries past have been directed
towards this object. 'Let us talk,' they will say to
us soon as they must have said to Noël Dorgeroux and
as they no doubt succeeded in doing with him. It must
have been a stirring conversation, from which the
great seer derived such power and certainty that it is
to him that I will refer, before concluding, in order
to add to the discussion the two positive proofs which
he himself tried to write at the foot of the screen
during the few seconds of his death-struggle, a
twofold declaration made by the man, who in departing
this life, _knew_:
"'B-ray. . . . B E R G E . . .'
"When thus expressing his supreme belief in the
B-rays, Noël Dorgeroux no longer indicated that
unknown radiation which he had once imagined to
explain the phenomena of the screen and which would
have consisted of the materialization of pictures born
within and projected by ourselves. More far-seeing,
better-informed as the result of his experiments,
abandoning moreover his attempt to connect the new
facts with the action of the solar heat which he had
so often utilized, he plainly indicated those rays of
gravitation of whose existence he had learnt through
my pamphlet and also perhaps through his
communications with the Venusians, those rays which
are habitually employed by them in the same manner as
that in which the light-rays are employed by the
humblest photographer.
"And the five letters B E R G E are not the first two
syllables of the word Bergeronnette. That was the
fatal error of which Bérangère Massignac was the
victim. They form the word _Berger_, complete all but
the last letter. At the moment of his death, in his
already overshadowed brain, Noël Dorgeroux, in order
to name Venus, could find no other expression than
_l'Etoile du Berger_, the Shepherd's Star; and his
enfeebled hand was able to write only the first few
letters. The proof therefore is absolute. _The man who
knew_ had time to tell the essential part of what he
knew: _by means of the rays of gravitation, the
Shepherd's Star sends its living messages to the
earth_.
"If we accept the successive deductions stated in this
preliminary essay, which I trust will one day prove to
be in a manner a replica of the report stolen from
Noël Dorgeroux, there still remain any number of
points concerning which we possess not a single
element of truth. What is the form of the recording-
and projecting-apparatus employed by the Venusians? By
what prodigious machinery do they obtain a perfect
fixity in the projections between two stars each
animated with such complicated movements in space (at
present we know of seventeen in the earth alone)? And,
to consider only what is close at hand, what is the
nature of the screen employed for the Meudon
projections? What is that dark-grey substance with
which it is coated? How is that substance composed?
How is it able to reconstruct the pictures? These are
so many questions which our scientific attainments are
incapable of solving. But at least we have no right to
pronounce them insoluble; and I will go farther and
declare that it is our duty to study them by all the
means which the public authorities are bound to place
at our disposal. This M. Massignac is said to have
disappeared from sight. Let the opportunity be seized,
let the Meudon Amphitheatre be declared national
property! It is out of the question that an individual
should, to the detriment of all mankind, remain the
sole possessor of such tremendous secrets and have it
in his power, if he please and in obedience to a mere
whim, to destroy them for all time. The thing cannot
be allowed. Before many days have elapsed we must
enter into unbroken relations with the inhabitants of
Venus. They will tell us the age-old history of our
past, reveal to us the great problems which they have
elucidated and assist us to benefit by the conquests
of a civilization beside which our own as yet seems
nothing but confusion, ignorance, the lisping of babes
and the stammering of savages. . . ."
CHAPTER XVI
WHERE LIPS UNITE
We have but to read the newspapers of the period, to realize that the
excitement caused by the Meudon pictures reached its culminating point
as the result of Benjamin Prévotelle's essay. I have four of those
newspapers, dated the following day, on my table as I write. Not one
of them contains throughout its eight pages a single line that does
not refer to what at once became known as the Splendid Theory.
For the rest, the chorus of approval and enthusiasm was general, or
very nearly so. There were barely a few cries of vehement protest
uttered by experts who felt exasperated by the boldness of the essay
even more than by the gaps occurring in it. The great mass of the
public saw in all this not a theory but a fact and accepted it as such
with the faith of true believers confronted with the divine truth.
Every one contributed his own proof as yet one more stone added to the
edifice. The objections, however strong they might be--and they were
set forth without compromise--seemed temporary and capable of being
removed by closer study and a more careful confirmation of the
phenomena.
And it is with this conclusion, Benjamin Prévotelle's own conclusion,
that all the articles, all the interviews and all the letters that
appeared end. The measures recommended by Benjamin Prévotelle were
loudly called for. Action must be taken without delay and a series of
experiments must be made in the Meudon amphitheatre.
Amid this effervescence, the kidnapping of Massignac went for little.
The man Massignac had disappeared? There was nothing to enable one to
tell who had carried him off or where he was confined? Very well. It
made very little difference. As Benjamin Prévotelle said, the
opportunity was too good to miss. The doors of the Yard had been
sealed on the first morning. What were we waiting for? Why not begin
the experiments at once?
As for me, I did not breathe a word of my Bougival adventure, in the
constant fear of implicating Bérangère, who was directly involved in
it. All the same, I returned to the banks of the Seine. My rough and
ready enquiries showed that Massignac and Velmot had lived on the
island during a part of the winter in the company of a small boy who,
when they were away, looked after the house which one of them had
hired under a false name. I explored the island and the house. No one
was living there now. I found a few pieces of furniture, a few
household implements, nothing more.
On the fourth day, a provisional committee, appointed _ad hoc_, met in
the Yard about the middle of the afternoon. As the sky was cloudy,
they contented themselves with examining the carboys discovered in the
basement of the walls and, after lowering the curtain, with cutting
off strips of the dark-grey substance at different points of the
screen along the edges.
The analysis revealed absolutely nothing out of the way. They found an
amalgam of organic materials and acids which it would be tedious to
enumerate and which, however employed, supplied not the smallest
explanation of the very tiniest phenomena. But, on the sixth day, the
sky became clear and the committee returned, together with a number of
official persons and mere sightseers who had succeeded in joining
them.
The wait in front of the screen was fruitless and just a little
ridiculous. All those people looking out for something that did not
happen, standing with wide-open eyes and distorted faces, in front of
a wall that had nothing on it, wore an air of solemnity which was
delightfully comical.
An hour was spent in anxious expectation. The wall remained impassive.
The disappointment was all the greater inasmuch as the public had been
waiting for this test as the expected climax of this most sensational
tragedy. Were we to give up all hope of knowing the truth and to admit
that Noël Dorgeroux's formula alone was capable of producing the
pictures? I, for one, was convinced of it. In addition to the
substances removed, there was a solution, compounded by Massignac from
Noël Dorgeroux's formula, which solution he kept carefully, as my
uncle used to do, in blue phials or bottles and which was spread over
the screen before each exhibition in order to give it the mysterious
power of evoking the images.
A thorough search was instituted, but no phials, no blue bottles came
to light.
There was no doubt about it: people were beginning to regret the
disappearance, perhaps the death of the man Massignac. Was the great
secret to be lost at the very moment when Benjamin Prévotelle's theory
had proved its incomparable importance?
Well, on the morning of the eleventh day after the date of Benjamin
Prévotelle's essay, that is to say, the 27th of May, the newspapers
printed a note signed by Théodore Massignac in which he announced
that, in the late afternoon of that same day, the third exhibition in
the Yard would take place under his own direction.
He actually appeared at about twelve o'clock in the morning. The doors
were closed and guarded by four detectives and he was unable to obtain
admission. But at three o'clock an official from the Prefecture of
Police arrived, armed with full powers of negotiation.
Massignac laid down his conditions. He was once more to become the
absolute master of the Yard, which was to be surrounded by detectives
and closed between the performances to everybody except himself. None
of the spectators was to carry a camera or any other instrument.
Everything was conceded; everything was overlooked, in order to
continue the interrupted series of miraculous exhibitions and to
resume the communications with Venus. This capitulation on the part of
the authorities before the audacity of a man whose crime was known to
them showed that Benjamin Prévotelle's theory was adopted in
government circles.
The fact is--and there was no one who failed to see it--that those in
power were giving way in the hope of presently turning the tables
and, by some subterfuge, laying hands on the screen at the moment
when it was in working-order. Massignac felt this so clearly that,
when the doors opened, he had the effrontery to distribute a circular
couched in the following terms:
WARNING
"_The audience is hereby warned that any attack on the
management will have as its immediate consequence the
destruction of the screen and the irreparable loss of
Noël Dorgeroux's secret._"
For my part, as I had had no proof of Massignac's death, I was not
surprised at his return. But the alteration in his features and
attitude astounded me. He looked ten years older; his figure was bent;
and the everlasting smile, which used to be his natural expression, no
longer lit up his face, which had become emaciated, yellow and
anxious.
He caught sight of me and drew me to one side:
"I say, that scoundrel has played the very devil with me! First he
beat me black and blue, down in a cellar. Next he lowered me into the
water to make me talk. I was ten days in bed before I got over it!
. . . By Jingo, it's not his fault if I'm not there now, the villain!
. . . However, he's had his share too . . . and he caught it worse
than I did, at least I hope so. The hand that struck him was steady
enough and showed no sign of trembling."
I did not ask him what hand he meant or how the tragedy had ended in
the darkness. There was only one thing that mattered:
"Massignac, have you read Benjamin Prévotelle's report?"
"Yes."
"Does it agree with the facts? Does it agree with my uncle's account,
the one which you've read?"
He shrugged his shoulders:
"What business is that of yours? What business is it of anybody's? Do
I keep the pictures to myself? You know I don't. On the contrary, I'm
trying to show them to everybody and honestly to earn the money which
they pay me. What more do they want?"
"They want to protect a discovery . . ."
"Never! Never!" he exclaimed, angrily. "Tell them to shut up and stop
all that nonsense! I've bought Noël Dorgeroux's secret, yes, bought
and paid for it. Very well, I mean to keep it for myself, for myself
alone, against everybody and in spite of any threat. I shan't talk
now any more than I did when Velmot had me in his grip and I was on
the point of croaking. I tell you, Victorien Beaugrand, Noël
Dorgeroux's secret will perish at my death. If I die, it dies: I've
taken my oath on it."
* * * * *
When Théodore Massignac, a few minutes later, moved towards his seat,
he no longer wore his former air of a lion-tamer entering a cage, but
rather the aspect of a hunted animal which is startled by the least
sound and trembles at the approach of the man with the whip. But the
chuckers-out were there, wearing their ushers' chains and looking as
fierce and aggressive as ever. Their wages had been doubled, I was
told.
There was no need for the precaution. The danger that threatened
Massignac did not come from the crowd, which preserved a religious
silence, as though it were preparing to celebrate some solemn ritual.
Massignac was received with neither applause nor invective. The
spectators waited gravely for what was about to happen, though no one
guessed that _that_ was on the point of happening. Those seated on the
upper tiers, of whom I was one, often turned their heads upwards. In
the clear sky, shimmering with gold, shone Venus, the Evening Star.
What a moment! For the first time in the world's history men felt
certain that they were being contemplated by eyes which were not human
eyes and watched by minds which differed from their own minds. For the
first time they were connected in a tangible fashion with that beyond,
formerly peopled by their dreams and their hopes alone, from which the
friendly gaze of their new brothers now fell upon them. These were not
legends and phantoms projected into the empty heavens by our thirsting
souls, but living beings who were addressing us in the living and
natural language of the pictures, until the hour, now near at hand,
when we should talk together like friends who had lost and found one
another.
Their eyes, their Three Eyes, were infinitely gentle that day, filled
with a tenderness which seemed born of love and which thrilled us with
an equal tenderness, with the same love. What were they presaging,
those women's eyes, those eyes of many women that quivered before us
so attractively and with such smiles and such delightful promise? Of
what happy and charming scenes of our past were we to be the
astonished witnesses?
I watched my neighbours. All, like myself, were leaning towards the
screen. The sight affected their faces before it occurred. I noticed
the pallor of two young men beside me. A woman whose face was hidden
from my eyes by a thick mourning-veil sat with her handkerchief in her
hand, ready to shed tears.
The first scene represented a landscape, full of glaring light, which
appeared to be an Italian landscape, with a dusty road along which
cavalry-men, wearing the uniform of the revolutionary armies, were
galloping around a travelling-carriage drawn by four horses. Then,
immediately afterwards, we saw in a shady garden, at the end of an
avenue of dark cypresses, a house with closed shutters standing on a
flower-decked terrace.
The carriage stopped at the foot of the terrace and drove off again
after setting down an officer who ran up to the door and knocked at it
with the pommel of his sword.
The door was opened almost at once. A tall young woman rushed out of
the house, with her arms outstretched towards the officer. But, at the
moment when they were about to embrace, they both took a few steps
backwards, as though to delay their happiness and in so doing to taste
its delights more fully.
Then the screen showed us the woman's face; and words cannot depict
the expression of joy and headlong love that turned this face, which
was neither very beautiful nor very young, into something more alive
with youth and beauty than anything in this world.
After that, the lovers flung themselves into each others' arms, as
though their lives, too long separated, were striving to make but one.
Their lips united.
We saw nothing more of the French officer and his Italian lover. A new
picture followed, less bright but equally clear, the picture of a
long, battlemented rampart, marked with a series of round,
machicolated towers. Below and in the centre, among the ruins of a
bastion, were trees growing in a semicircle around an ancient
oak-tree.
Gradually, from the shade of the trees, there stepped into the
sunlight a quite young girl, clad in the pointed head-dress of the
fifteenth century and a full-skirted gown trailing along the ground.
She stopped with her hands open and raised on high. She saw something
that we were unable to see. She wore a bewitching smile. Her eyes were
half-closed; and her slender figure seemed to sway as she waited.
What she was awaiting was the arrival of a young page, who came to
her and kissed her lips while she flung herself on his shoulder.
This enamoured couple certainly moved us, as the first couple had
done, by reason of the passion and the languor that possessed them,
but even more by reason of the thought that they were an actual
couple, living, before our eyes and at the present day, their real
life of long ago. Our sensations were no longer such as we experienced
at the earlier exhibitions. They had then been full of hesitation and
ignorance. We now knew. In this late period of the world's existence,
we were beholding the life of human beings of the fifteenth century.
They were not repeating for our entertainment actions which had been
performed before. They were performing them for the first occasion in
time and space. It was their first kiss of love.
This, the feeling that one is seeing _this_, is a feeling which
surpasses everything that can be imagined! To see a fifteenth-century
page and damsel kissing each other on the lips!
To see, as we saw immediately afterwards, a Greek hill! To see the
Acropolis standing against its sky of two thousand years ago, with its
houses and gardens, its palm-trees, its lanes, its vestibules and
temples, the Parthenon, not in ruins, but in all its splendour and
perfection! A host of statues surround it. Men and women climb its
stairways. And these men and women are Athenians of the time of
Pericles or Demosthenes!
They come and go in all directions. They talk together. Then they
drift away. A little empty street runs down between two white walls. A
group passes and moves away, leaving behind it a man and woman who
stop suddenly, glance around them and kiss each other fervently. And
we see, underneath the veil in which the woman's forehead is shrouded,
two great, black eyes whose lids flutter like wings, eyes which open,
close, laugh and weep.
Thus we go back through the ages and we understand that those who,
gazing down upon the earth, have taken these successive pictures wish,
in displaying them to us, to show us the act, for-ever youthful and
eternally renewed, of that universal love of which they proclaim
themselves, like us, to be the slaves and the zealous worshippers.
They too are governed and exalted by the same law, though perhaps not
expressed in them by the intoxication of a like caress. The same
impulse sweeps them along. But do they know the adorable union of the
lips?
Other couples passed. Other periods were reviewed. Other civilizations
appeared to us. We saw the kiss of an Egyptian peasant and a young
girl; and that exchanged high up in a hanging garden of Babylon
between a princess and a priest; and that which transfigured to such a
degree as to make them almost human two unspeakable beings squatting
at the door of a prehistoric cave; and more kisses and yet more.
They were brief visions, some of which were indistinct and faded, like
the colours of an ancient fresco, but yet searching and potent,
because of the meaning which they assumed, full at the same time of
poetry and brutal reality, of violence and serene loveliness.
And always the woman's eyes were the centre, the purpose, as it were
the justification of the pictures. Oh, the smiles and the tears, the
gladness and the despair and the exquisite rapture of all those eyes!
How our friends up aloft must also have felt all the charm of them,
thus to dedicate them to us! How they must have felt and perhaps
regretted all the difference between those eyes of ecstasy and
enchantment and their own eyes, so gloomy and void of all expression!
There was such sweetness in those women's eyes, such grace, such
ingenuousness, such adorable perfidy, such distress and such
seductiveness, such triumphant joy, such grateful humility . . . and
such love, when they offered their submissive lips to the man!
* * * * *
I was unable to see the end of those pictures. There was a movement
round about me in the midst of the crowd, which was beside itself with
painful excitement; and I found myself next to a woman in mourning,
whose face was hidden beneath her veils.
She thrust these aside. I recognized Bérangère. She raised her
passionate eyes to mine, flung her arms round my neck and gave me her
lips, while she stammered words of love. And in this way I learnt,
without any need of explanation, that Massignac's insinuations against
his daughter were false, that she was the terror-stricken victim of
the two scoundrels and that she had never ceased to love me.
CHAPTER XVII
SUPREME VISIONS
The exhibition of the following day was preceded by two important
pieces of news which appeared in the evening papers. A group of
financiers had offered Théodore Massignac the sum of ten million
francs in consideration of Noël Dorgeroux's secret and the right to
work the amphitheatre. Théodore Massignac was to give them his answer
next day.
But, at the last moment, a telegram from the south of France announced
that the maid-of-all-work who had nursed Massignac in his house at
Toulouse, a few weeks before, now declared that her master's illness
was feigned and that Massignac had left the house on several
occasions, each time carefully concealing his absence from all the
neighbours. Now one of these absences synchronized with the murder of
Noël Dorgeroux. The woman's accusation therefore obliged the
authorities to reopen an enquiry which had already elicited so much
presumptive evidence of Théodore Massignac's guilt.
The upshot of these two pieces of news was that my uncle Dorgeroux's
secret depended on chance, that it would be saved by an immediate
purchase or lost for ever by Massignac's arrest. This alternative
added still further to the anxious curiosity of the spectators, many
of whom correctly believed that they were witnessing the last of the
Meudon exhibitions. They discussed the articles in the papers and the
proofs or objections accumulated for or against the theory. They said
that Prévotelle, to whom Massignac was refusing admission to the
amphitheatre, was preparing a whole series of experiments with the
intention of proving the absolute accuracy of his theory, the simplest
of which experiments consisted in erecting a scaffolding outside the
Yard and setting up an intervening obstacle to intercept the rays that
passed from Venus to the screen.
I myself who, since the previous day, had thought of nothing but
Bérangère, whom I had pursued in vain through the crowd amid which she
had succeeded in escaping me, I myself was smitten with the fever and
that day abandoned the attempt to discover upon the close-packed tiers
of seats the mysterious girl whom I had held to me all quivering,
happy to abandon herself for a few moments to a kiss on which she
bestowed all the fervour of her incomprehensible soul. I forgot her.
The screen alone counted, to my mind. The problem of my life was
swallowed up in the great riddle which those solemn minutes in the
history of mankind set before us.
They began, after the most sorrowful and heart-rending look that had
yet animated the miraculous Three Eyes, they began with that singular
phantasmagoria of creatures which Benjamin Prévotelle proposed that we
should regard as the inhabitants of Venus and which, for that matter,
it was impossible that we should not so regard. I will not try to
define them with greater precision nor to describe the setting in
which they moved. One's confusion in the presence of those grotesque
Shapes, those absurd movements and those startling landscapes was so
great that one had hardly time to receive very exact impressions or to
deduce the slightest theory from them. All that I can say is that we
were the observers, as on the first occasion, of a manifestation of
public order. There were numbers of spectators and a connected
sequence of actions tending towards a clearly-defined end, which
seemed to us to be of the same nature as the first execution.
Everything, in fact--the grouping of certain Shapes in the middle of
an empty space and around a motionless Shape, the actions performed,
the cutting up of that isolated Shape--suggested that there was an
execution in progress, the taking of a life. In any case, we were
perfectly well aware, through the corresponding instance, that its
real significance resided only in the second part of the film. Since
nearly all the pictures were twofold, impressing us by antithesis or
analogy, we must wait awhile to catch the general idea which directed
this projection.
This soon became apparent; and the mere narrative of what we saw
showed how right my uncle Dorgeroux's prophecy was when he said:
"Men will come here as pilgrims and will fall upon their knees and
weep like children!"
A winding road, rough with cobbles and cut into steps, climbs a steep,
arid, shadowless hill under a burning sun. We almost seem to see the
eddies rising, like a scorching breath, from the parched soil.
A mob of excited people is scaling the abrupt slope. On their backs
hang tattered robes; their aspect is that of the beggars or artisans
of an eastern populace.
The road disappears and appears again at a higher level, where we see
that this mob is preceding and following a company consisting of
soldiers clad like the Roman legionaires. There are sixty or eighty
of them, perhaps. They are marching slowly, in a ragged body, carrying
their spears over their shoulders, while some are swinging their
helmets in their hands. Now and again one stops to drink.
From time to time we become aware that these soldiers are serving as
escort to a central group, consisting of a few officers and of
civilians clad in long robes, like priests, and, a little apart from
them, four women, the lower half of whose faces is hidden by a long
veil. Then, suddenly at a turn in the road, where the group has become
slightly disorganized, we see a heavy cross outspread, jolting its way
upwards. A man is underneath, as it were crushed by the intolerable
burden which he is condemned to bear to the place of martyrdom. He
stumbles at each step, makes an effort, stands up again, falls again,
drags himself yet a little farther, crawling, clutching at the stones
on the road, and then moves no more. A blow from a staff, administered
by one of the soldiers, makes no difference. His strength is
exhausted.
At that moment, a man comes down the stony path. He is stopped and
ordered to carry the cross. He cannot and quickly makes his escape.
But, as the soldiers with their spears turn back towards the man lying
on the ground, behold, three of the women intervene and offer to
carry the burden. One of them takes the end, the two others take the
two arms and thus they climb the rugged hill, while the fourth woman
raises the condemned man and supports his hesitating steps.
At two further points we are able to follow the painful ascent of him
who is going to his death. And on each occasion his face is shown by
itself upon the screen. We do not recognize it. It is unlike the face
which we expected to see, according to the usual representations. But
how much more fully satisfied the profound conception which it evokes
in us by its actual presence!
It is _He_: we cannot for a moment doubt it. _He_ lives before us.
_He_ is suffering. _He_ is about to die before us. _He_ is about to
die. Each of us would fain avert the menace of that horrible death;
and each of us prays with all his might for some peaceful vision in
which we may see Him surrounded by His Disciples and His gentle
womenfolk. The soldiers, as they reach the place of torture, assume a
harsher aspect. The priests with ritual gestures curse the stones amid
which the tree is to be raised and retire, with hanging heads.
Here comes the cross, with the women bending under it. The condemned
man follows them. There are two of them now supporting Him. He stops.
Nothing can save Him now. When we see Him again, after a short
interruption of the picture, the cross is set up and the agony has
begun.
I do not believe that any assembly of men was ever thrilled by a more
violent and noble emotion than that which held us in its grip at this
hour, which, let it be clearly understood, was the very hour at which
the world's destiny was settled for centuries and centuries. We were
not guessing at it through legends and distorted narratives. We did
not have to reconstruct it after uncertain documents or to conceive it
according to our own feelings and imagination. It was there, that
unparalleled hour. It lived before us, in a setting devoid of
grandeur, a setting which seemed to us very lowly, very
poverty-stricken. The bulk of the sightseers had departed. A dozen
soldiers were dicing on a flat stone and drinking. Four women were
standing in the shadow of a man crucified whose feet they bathed with
their tears. At the summit of two other hillocks hard by, two figures
were writhing on their crosses. That was all.
But what a meaning we read into this gloomy spectacle! What a
frightful tragedy was enacted before our eyes! The beating of our
hearts wrung with love and distress was the very beating of that
Sacred Heart. Those weary eyes looked down upon the same things that
we beheld, the same dry soil, the same savage faces of the soldiers,
the same countenances of the grief-stricken women.
When a last vision showed us His rigid and emaciated body and His
sweet ravaged head in which the dilated eyes seemed to us abnormally
large, the whole crowd rose to its feet, men and women fell upon their
knees and, in a profound silence that quivered with prayer, all arms
were despairingly outstretched towards the dying God.
* * * * *
Such scenes cannot be understood by those who did not witness them.
You will no more find their living presentment in the pages in which I
describe them than I can find it in the newspapers of the time. The
latter pile up adjectives, exclamations and apostrophes which give no
idea of what the vivid reality was. On the other hand, all the
articles lay stress upon the essential truth which emerges from the
two films of that day and, very rightly, declare that the second
explains and completes the first. Yonder also, among our distant
brethren, a God was delivered to the horrors of martyrdom; and, by
connecting the two events, they intended to convey to us that, like
ourselves, they possessed a religious belief and ideal aspirations. In
the same way, they had shown us by the death of one of their rulers
and the death of one of our kings that they had known the same
political upheavals. In the same way, they had shown us by visions of
lovers that, like us, they yielded to the power of love. Therefore,
the same stages of civilizations, the same efforts of belief, the same
instincts, the same sentiments existed in both worlds.
How could messages so positive, so stimulating have failed to increase
our longing to know more about it all and to communicate more closely?
How could we do other than think of the questions which it was
possible to put and of the problems which would be elucidated,
problems of the future and the past, problems of civilization,
problems of destiny?
But the same uncertainty lingered in us, keener than the day before.
What would become of Noël Dorgeroux's secret? The position was this:
Massignac accepted the ten millions which he was offered, but on
condition that he was paid the money immediately after the performance
and that he received a safe-conduct for America. Now, although the
enquiries instituted at Toulouse confirmed the accusations brought
against him by the maid-of-all-work, it was stated that the compact
was on the point of being concluded, so greatly did the importance of
Noël Dorgeroux's secret outweigh all ordinary consideration of justice
and punishment. Finding itself confronted with a state of things which
could not be prolonged, the government was yielding, though
constraining Massignac to sell the secret under penalty of immediate
arrest and posting all around him men who were instructed to lay him
by the heels at the first sign of any trickery. When the iron curtain
fell, twelve policemen took the place of the usual attendants.
And then began an exhibition to which special circumstances imparted
so great a gravity and which was in itself so poignant and so
implacable.
As on the other occasions, we did not at first grasp the significance
which the scenes projected on the screen were intended to convey.
These scenes passed before our eyes as swiftly as the love-scenes
displayed two days before.
There was not the initial vision of the Three Eyes. We plunged
straight into reality. In the middle of a garden sat a woman, young
still and beautiful, dressed in the fashion of 1830. She was working
at a tapestry stretched on a frame and from time to time raised her
eyes to cast a fond look at a little girl playing by her side. The
mother and child smiled at each other. The child left her sand-pies
and came and kissed her mother.
For a few minutes there was merely this placid picture of human life.
Then, a dozen paces behind the mother, a tall, close-trimmed screen of
foliage is gently thrust aside and, with a series of imperceptible
movements, a man comes out of the shadow, a man, like the woman, young
and well-dressed.
His face is hard, his jaws are set. He has a knife in his hand.
He takes three or four steps forward. The woman does not hear him, the
little girl cannot see him. He comes still farther forward, with
infinite precautions, so that the gravel may not creak under his feet
nor any branch touch him.
He stands over the woman. His face displays a terrible cruelty and an
inflexible will. The woman's face is still smiling and happy.
Slowly his arm is raised above that smile, above that happiness. Then
it descends, with equal slowness; and suddenly, beneath the left
shoulder, it strikes a sharp blow at the heart.
There is not a sound; that is certain. At most, a sigh, like the one
sigh emitted, in the awful silence, by the crowd in the Yard.
The man has withdrawn his weapon. He listens for a moment, bends over
the lifeless body that has huddled into the chair, feels the hand and
then steals back with measured steps to the screen of foliage, which
closes behind him.
The child has not ceased playing. She continues to laugh and talk.
The picture fades away.
* * * * *
The next shows us two men walking along a deserted path, beside which
flows a narrow river. They are talking without animation; they might
be discussing the weather.
When they turn round and retrace their steps, we see that one of the
two men, the one who hitherto had been hidden behind his companion,
carries a revolver.
They both stop and continue to talk quietly. But the face of the armed
man becomes distorted and assumes the same criminal expression which
we beheld in the first murderer. And suddenly he makes a movement of
attack and fires; the other falls; and the first flings himself upon
him and snatches a pocket-book from him.
* * * * *
There were four more murders, none of which had as its perpetrator or
its victim any one who was known to us. They were so many sensational
incidents, very short, restricted to the essential factors; the
peaceful representation of a scene in daily life and the sudden
explosion of crime in all its bestial horror.
The sight was dreadful, especially because of the expression of
confidence and serenity maintained by the victim, while we, in the
audience, saw the phantom of death rise over him. The waiting for the
blow which we were unable to avert left us breathless and terrified.
* * * * *
And one last picture of a man appeared to us. A stifled exclamation
rose from the crowd. It was Noël Dorgeroux.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CHÂTEAU DE PRÉ-BONY
The exclamation of the crowd proved to me that, at the sight of the
great old man, who was known to all by his portraits and by the
posters exhibited at the doors of the Yard, the same thought had
instantaneously struck us all. We understood from the first. After the
series of criminal pictures, we knew the meaning of Noël Dorgeroux's
appearance on the screen and knew the inexorable climax of the story
which we were being told. There had been six victims. My uncle would
be the seventh. We were going to witness his death and to see the face
of the murderer.
All this was planned with the most disconcerting skill and with a
logic whose implacable rigour wrung our very souls. We were as though
imprisoned in a horribly painful track which we were bound to follow
to the end, notwithstanding the unspeakable violence of our
sensations. I sometimes ask myself, in all sincerity, whether the
series of miraculous visions could have been continued much longer,
so far did the nervous tension which they demanded exceed our human
strength.
A succession of pictures showed us several episodes of which the first
dated back to a period when Noël Dorgeroux certainly had not
discovered the great secret, for his son was still alive. It was the
time of the war. Dominique, in uniform, was embracing the old fellow,
who was weeping and trying to hold him back; and, when Dominique went,
Noël Dorgeroux watched him go with all the distress of a father who is
not to see his son again.
Next we have him again, once more in the Yard, which is encumbered
with its sheds and workshops, as it used to be. Bérangère, quite a
child, is running to and fro. She is thirteen or fourteen at most.
We now follow their existence in pictures which tell us with what
hourly attention my uncle Dorgeroux's labours were watched _from up
yonder_. He became old and bent. The little one grew up, which did not
deter her from playing and running about.
On the day when we are to see her as I had found her in the previous
summer, we see at the same time Noël Dorgeroux standing on a ladder
and daubing the wall with a long brush which he keeps dipping into a
can. He steps back and looks with a questioning gaze at the wall where
the screen is marked out. There is nothing. Nevertheless something
vague and confused must already have throbbed in the heart of the
substance, because he seems to be waiting and seeking. . . .
A click; and everything is changed. The amphitheatre arises,
unfinished in parts, as it was on the Sunday in March when I
discovered my uncle's dead body. The new wall is there, surrounded by
its canopy. My uncle has opened the recess contained in the basement
and is arranging his carboys.
But, now, beyond the amphitheatre, which grows smaller for an instant,
we see the trees in the woods and the undulations of the adjoining
meadow; and a man comes up on that side and moves towards the path
which skirts the fence. I for my part recognize his figure. It is the
man with whom I was to struggle, half an hour later, in the wood
through which he had just come. It is the murderer. He is wrapped in a
rain-coat whose upturned collar touches the lowered brim of his hat.
He walks uneasily. He goes up to the lamp-post, looks around him,
climbs up slowly and makes his way into the Yard. He follows the road
which I myself took that day after him and thrusts forward his head
as I did.
Noël Dorgeroux is standing before the screen. He has closed the recess
and jotted down some notes in a book. The victim suspects nothing.
Then the man throws off his wrap and his hat. He turns his face in our
direction. It is Massignac.
The crowd was so much expecting to find that it was he that there was
no demonstration of surprise. Besides, the pictures on this day were
of a nature that left no room for alien thoughts or impressions. The
consequences which might ensue from the public proof of Massignac's
guilt were not apparent to us. We were not living through the minutes
which were elapsing _in the past_ but through those which were
elapsing _in the present_; and until the last moment we thought only
of knowing _whether Noël Dorgeroux, whom we knew to be dead, was going
to be murdered_.
The scene did not last long. In reality my uncle was not conscious for
a second of the danger that threatened him; and, contrary to what was
elicited at the enquiry, there was no trace of that struggle of which
the signs appeared to have been discovered. This struggle occurred
_afterwards_, when my uncle had been struck down and was lying on the
ground, motionless. It took place between a murderer seized with
insensate fury and the corpse which he seemed bent upon _killing
anew_.
And in fact it was this act of savage brutality that let loose the
rage of the crowd. Held back until then by a sort of unreasoning hope
and petrified, in its terror, at the sight of the loathsome act
accomplished on the screen, it was stirred with anger and hatred
against the living and visible murderer whose existence suddenly
provoked it beyond endurance. It experienced a sense of revolt and a
need for immediate justice which no considerations were able to stay.
It underwent an immediate change of attitude. It withdrew itself
abruptly from any sort of memory or evocation of the past, to fling
itself into the reality of the present and to play its part in the
necessary action. And, obeying an unanimous impulse, pouring
helter-skelter down the tiers and flowing like a torrent through every
gangway, it rushed to the assault of the iron cage in which Massignac
was sheltering.
I cannot describe exactly the manner in which things took place.
Massignac, who attempted to take flight at the first moment of the
accusation, found in front of him the twelve policemen, who next
turned against the crowd when it came dashing against the rails of
the high grille. But what resistance were those twelve men able to
offer? The grille fell. The police were borne down in the crush. In a
flash I saw Massignac braced against the wall and taking aim with two
revolvers held in his outstretched hands. A number of shots rang out.
Some of the aggressors dropped. Then Massignac, taking advantage of
the hesitation which kept back the others, stooped swiftly towards the
electric battery in the foundation. He pressed a button. Right at the
top of the wall, the canopy overhanging the two pillars opened like a
sluice and sent forth streams of a bluish liquid, which seethed and
bubbled in a cascade over the whole surface of the screen.
I then remembered Massignac's terrible prophecy:
"If I die, it means the death of Noël Dorgeroux's secret. We shall
perish together."
In the anguish of peril, at the very bottom of the abyss, he had
conceived the abominable idea and had the courage to carry out his
threat. My uncle's work was utterly destroyed.
Nevertheless I darted forward, as though I could still avert the
disaster by saving the scoundrel's life. But the crowd had seized upon
its prey and was passing it from hand to hand, like a howling pack
worrying and rending the animal which it had hunted down.
I succeeded in shouldering my way through with the aid of two
policemen and then only because Massignac's body had ended by falling
into the hands of a band of less infuriated assailants, who were
embarrassed by the sight of the dying man. They formed themselves into
a group to protect his death-struggles and one of them even, raising
his voice above the din, called to me:
"Quick, quick!" he said, when I came near. "He is speaking your name."
At the first glance at the mass of bleeding flesh that lay on one of
the tiers, between two rows of seats, I perceived that there was no
hope and that it was a miracle that this corpse was still breathing.
Still it was uttering my name. I caught the syllables as I stooped
over the face mauled beyond recognition and, speaking slowly and
distinctly, I said:
"It's I, Massignac, it's Victorien Beaugrand. What have you to say to
me?"
He managed to lift his eyelids, looked at me with a dim eye which
closed again immediately and stammered:
"A letter . . . a letter . . . sewn in the lining. . . ."
I felt the rags of cloth which remained of his jacket. Massignac had
done well to sew up the letter, for all the other papers had left his
pocket. I at once read my name on the envelope.
"Open it . . . open it," he said, in a whisper.
I tore open the envelope. There were only a few lines scribbled in a
large hand across the sheet of paper, a few lines of which I took the
time to read only the first, which said:
"Bérangère knows the formula."
"Bérangère!" I exclaimed. "But where is she? Do you know?"
I at once understood the imprudence of which I had been guilty in thus
mentioning the girl's name aloud; and, bending lower down, I put my
ear to Massignac's mouth to catch his last words.
He repeated the name of Bérangère time after time, in the effort to
pronounce the answer which I asked for and which his memory perhaps
refused to supply. His lips moved convulsively and he stammered forth
some hoarse sounds which were more like a death-rattle but which yet
enabled me to distinguish the words:
"Bérangère. . . . Château . . . Château de Pré-Bony. . . ."
However great the tension of the mind may be when concentrated on an
idea which entirely absorbs it, we remain more or less subject to the
thousand sensations that assail us. Thus, at the very moment when I
rose and, in a whisper, repeated, "Château de Pré-Bony . . . de
Pré-Bony," the vague impression that another had heard the address
which Massignac had given began to take shape and consistency within
me. Nay more, I perceived, _when it was too late_, that this other
man, thanks to his position at my side, must have been able to read as
I had read, the opening words of Théodore Massignac's letter. And that
other man's able make-up suddenly dropped away before my eyes to
reveal the pallid features of the man Velmot.
I turned my head. The man had just made his way out of the band of
onlookers who stood gathered round us and was slipping through the
shifting masses of the crowd. I called out. I shouted his name. I
dragged detectives in his wake. It was too late.
And so the man Velmot, the implacable enemy who had not hesitated to
torture Massignac in order to extract my uncle Dorgeroux's formula
from him, knew that Bérangère was acquainted with the formula! And he
had at the same time learnt, what he doubtless did not know before,
where Bérangère was concealed.
* * * * *
The Château de Pré-Bony! Where was this country-house? In what corner
of France had Bérangère taken refuge after the murder of her
god-father? It could not be very far from Paris, seeing that she had
once asked for my assistance and that, two days ago, she had come to
the Yard. But, whatever the distance, how was I to find it? There were
a thousand country-houses within a radius of twenty-five miles from
Paris.
"And yet," I said to myself, "the solution of the tragedy lies there,
in that country-house. All is not lost and all may still be saved, but
I have to get there. Though, the miraculous screen is destroyed,
Massignac has given me the means of reconstructing it, but I have to
get there. And I have to get there by day break, or Velmot will have
Bérangère at his mercy."
I spent the whole evening in enquiries. I consulted maps, gazetteers,
directories. I asked everywhere; I telephoned. No one was able to
supply the least hint as to the whereabouts of the Château de
Pré-Bony.
It was not until the morning, after an agitated night, that a more
methodical scrutiny of recent events gave me the idea of beginning my
investigations in the actual district where I knew that Bérangère had
stayed. I hired a motor-car and had myself driven towards Bougival. I
had no great hope. But my fear lest Velmot should discover
Bérangère's retreat before I did caused me such intense suffering that
I never ceased repeating to myself:
"That's it. . . . I'm on the right track. . . . I'm certain to find
Bérangère; and the villain shall not touch a hair of her head."
My love for the girl suddenly became purged of all the doubts and
suspicions that had poisoned it. For the rest, I did not trouble about
these details and troubled myself neither to explain her conduct nor
to establish the least proof for or against her. Even if her kiss had
not already wiped out every disagreeable recollection, the danger
which she was incurring was enough to restore all my faith in her and
all my affection.
My first enquiries at Ville d'Avray, Marnes and Vaucresson told me
nothing. The Château de Pré-Bony was unknown. At La Cello-Saint-Cloud
I encountered a fresh check. But here, in an inn, I seemed to recover,
thanks to the accident of a casual question, the traces of the man
Velmot: a tall, white-faced gentleman, I was told, who often motored
along the Bougival road and who had been seen prowling outside the
village that very morning.
I questioned my informant more closely. It really was Velmot. He had
four hours' start of me. _And he knew where to go! And he was in love
with Bérangère!_ Four hours' start, for that clever and daring
scoundrel, who was staking his all on this last throw of the die! Who
could stop him? What scruples had he? To seize upon Bérangère, to hold
her in his power, to compel her to speak: all this was now mere
child's play. _And he was in love with Bérangère!_
I remember striking the inn-table with my fist and exclaiming,
angrily:
"No, no, it's not possible! . . . The house in question is bound to be
somewhere near here! . . . They must show me the way!"
Thenceforward I did not experience a moment's hesitation. On the one
hand, I was not mistaken in coming to this district. On the other
hand, I knew that Velmot, having heard what Massignac said and knowing
the country by having lived in it, had begun his campaign at dawn.
There was a crowd of people outside the inn. Feverishly I put the
questions which remained unanswered. At last, some one mentioned a
cross-roads which was sometimes known by the name of Pré-Bony and
which was on the Saint-Cucufa road, some two or three miles away. One
of the roads which branched from it led to a new house, of not very
imposing appearance, which was inhabited by a young married couple,
the Comte and Comtesse de Roncherolles.
I really had the impression that it was my sheer will-power that had
brought about this favourable incident and, so to speak, created,
lock, stock and barrel and within my reach, that unknown country-house
which it behoved me to visit that very instant.
I made my way there hurriedly. At the moment when I was walking across
the garden, a young man alighted from horseback at the foot of the
steps.
"Is this the Château de Pré-Bony?" I asked.
He flung the reins of his horse to a groom and replied, with a smile:
"At least that is what they call it, a little pompously, at Bougival."
"Oh," I murmured, as though taken aback by an unhoped for piece of
news, "it's here . . . and I am in time!"
The young man introduced himself. It was the Comte de Roncherolles.
"May I ask to whom I have the honour . . ."
"Victorien Beaugrand," I replied.
And, without further preamble, confiding in the man's looks, which
were frank and friendly, I said:
"I have come about Bérangère. She's here, isn't she? She has found a
shelter here?"
The Comte de Roncherolles flushed slightly and eyed me with a certain
attention. I took his hand:
"If you please, monsieur, the position is very serious. Bérangère is
being hunted down by an extremely dangerous man."
"Who is that?"
"Velmot."
"Velmot?"
The count threw off all further disguise as useless and repeated:
"Velmot! Velmot! The enemy whom she loathes! . . . Yes, she has
everything to fear from the man. Fortunately, he does not know where
she is."
"He does know . . . since yesterday," I exclaimed.
"Granted. But he will need time to make his preparations, to plan his
move."
"He was seen not far from here, yesterday, by people of the village."
I began to tell him what I knew. He did not wait for me to finish.
Evidently as anxious as myself, he drew me towards a lodge, standing
some distance from the house, which Bérangère occupied.
He knocked. There was no answer. But the door was open. He entered and
went upstairs to Bérangère's room. She was not there.
He did not seem greatly surprised.
"She often goes out early," he said.
"Perhaps she is at the house?" I suggested.
"With my wife? No, my wife is not very well and would not be up yet."
"What then?"
"I presume she has gone for her ordinary walk to the ruins of the old
castle. She likes the view there, which embraces Bougival and the
whole river."
"Is it far?"
"No, just at the end of the park."
Nevertheless the park stretched some way back; and it took us four or
five minutes' walk to reach a circular clearing from which we could
see a few lengths of broken wall perched on the top of a ridge among
some fallen heaps of stone-work.
"There," said the count. "Bérangère has been to this bench. She has
left the book which she was reading."
"And a scarf too," I said, anxiously. "Look, a rumpled scarf. . . .
And the grass round about shows signs of having been trampled on.
. . . My God, I hope nothing has happened to the poor child!"
I had not finished speaking when we heard cries from the direction of
the ruins, cries for help or cries of pain, we could not tell which.
We at once darted along the narrow path which ran up the hill, cutting
across the winding forest-road. When we were half-way up, the cries
broke out again; and a woman's figure came into view among the
crumbling stones of the old castle.
"Bérangère!" I cried, increasing my pace.
She did not see me. She was running, as though she had some one in
pursuit of her, and taking advantage of every bit of shelter that the
ruins offered. Presently a man appeared, looking for her and
threatening her with a revolver which he carried in his hand.
"It's he!" I stammered. "It's Velmot!"
One after the other they entered the huddle of ruins, from which we
were now separated by forty yards at most. We covered the distance in
a few seconds and I rushed ahead towards the place through which
Bérangère had slipped.
As I arrived, a shot rang out, some little way off, and I heard moans.
Despite my efforts, I could get no farther forward, because the
passage was blocked by brambles and trails of ivy. My companion and I
struggled desperately against the branches which were cutting our
faces. At length we emerged on a large platform, where at first we saw
no one among the tall grass and the moss-grown rocks. Still, there was
that shot . . . and those cries of pain quite close to where we stood.
. . .
Suddenly the count, who was searching a short distance in front of me,
exclaimed:
"There she is! . . . Bérangère! Are you hurt?"
I leapt towards him. Bérangère lay outstretched in a tangle of leaves
and herbage.
She was so pale that I had not a doubt but that she was dead; and I
felt very clearly that I should not be able to survive her. I even
completed my thought by saying, aloud:
"I will avenge her first. The murderer shall die by my hand, I swear
it."
But the count, after a hurried inspection, declared.
"She's not dead, she's breathing."
And I saw her open her eyes.
I fell on my knees besides her and, lifting her fair and
sorrow-stricken face in my hands, asked her:
"Where are you hurt, Bérangère? Tell me, darling."
"I'm not hurt," she whispered. "It's the exertion, the excitement."
"But surely," I insisted, "he fired at you?"
"No, no," she said, "it was I who fired."
"Do you mean that? You fired?"
"Yes, with his revolver."
"But you missed him. He has made his escape."
"I did not miss him. I saw him fall . . . quite close to this . . . on
the edge of the ravine."
This ravine was a deep cut in the ground, on our right. The count went
to the spot and called to me. When I was standing beside him, he
showed me the body of a man lying head downwards, his face covered
with blood. I approached and recognized Velmot. He was dead.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FORMULA
Velmot dead, Bérangère alive: the joy of it! The sudden sense of
security! This time, the evil adventure was over, since the girl whom
I loved had nothing more to fear. And my thoughts at once harked back
to Noël Dorgeroux: the formula in which the great secret was summed up
was saved. With the clues and the means of action which existed
elsewhere, mankind was now in a position to continue my uncle's work.
Bérangère called me back:
"He's dead, isn't he?"
I felt intuitively that I ought not to tell her a truth which was too
heavy for her to bear and which she was afraid of hearing and I
declared:
"Not at all. . . . We haven't seen him. . . . He must have got away.
. . ."
My answer seemed to relieve her; and she whispered:
"In any case, he is wounded. . . . I know I hit him."
"Rest, my darling," I said, "and don't worry any more about anything."
She did as she was told; and she was so weary that she soon fell
asleep.
Before taking her home, the count and I went back to the body and
lowered it down the slope of the ravine, which we followed to the wall
that surrounded the estate. As there was a breach at this spot, the
count gave it as his opinion that Velmot could not have entered
anywhere but here. And in fact a little lower down, at the entrance to
a lonely forest-road we discovered his car. We lifted the body into
it, placed the revolver on the seat, drove the car to a distance of
half a mile and left it at the entrance to a clearing. We met nobody
on the road. The death would beyond a doubt be ascribed to suicide.
An hour later, Bérangère, now back to the lodge and lying on her bed,
gave me her hand, which I covered with kisses. We were alone, with no
more enemies around us. There was no hideous shape prowling in the
dark. No one was any longer able to thwart our rightful happiness.
"The nightmare has passed," I said. "There is no obstacle left between
you and me. You will no longer try to run away, will you?"
I watched her with an emotion in which still lingered no small
anxiety. Dear little girl, she was still, to me, a creature full of
mystery and the unknown; and there were many secrets hidden in the
shadowy places of that soul into which I had never entered. I told her
as much. She in her turn looked at me for a long time, with her tired
and fevered eyes, so different from the careless, laughing eyes which
I had loved long ago, and she whispered:
"Secrets? My secrets? No. There is only one secret in me; and that one
secret is the cause of everything."
"May I hear it?"
"I love you."
I felt a thrill of joy. Often I had experienced a profound intuition
of this love of hers, but it had been spoilt by so much distrust,
suspicion and resentment. And now Bérangère was confessing it to me,
gravely and frankly.
"You love me," I repeated. "You love me. Why did you not tell me
earlier? How many misfortunes would have been avoided! Why didn't
you?"
"I couldn't."
"And you can now, because there is no longer any obstacle between us?"
"There is the same obstacle as ever."
"Which is that?"
"My father."
I said in a lower voice:
"Yon know that Théodore Massignac is dead?"
"Yes."
"Well, then?"
"I am Théodore Massignac's daughter."
I cried eagerly:
"Bérangère, there is something I want to tell you; and I assure you
beforehand . . ."
She interrupted me:
"_Please_ don't say anything more. There's always _that_ between us.
It is a gulf which we cannot hope to fill with words."
She seemed so much exhausted that I made a movement to leave her. She
stopped me:
"No," she said, "don't go. I am not going to be ill . . . for more
than a day or two, at the outside. First of all, I want everything to
be quite clear between us; I want you to understand every single thing
that I have done. Listen to me. . . ."
"To-morrow, Bérangère."
"No, to-day," she insisted. "I feel a need to tell you at once what I
have to say. Nothing will do more to restore my peace of mind. Listen
to me. . . ."
She did not have to entreat me long. How could I have wearied of
looking at her and listening to her? We had been through such trials
when separated from each other that I was afraid, after all, of being
parted from her now.
She put her arm round my neck. Her beautiful lips were quivering
beneath my eyes. Seeing my gaze fixed upon them, she smiled:
"You remember, in the Yard . . . the first time. . . . From that day,
I hated you . . . and adored you. . . . I was your enemy . . . and
your slave. . . . Yes, all my independent and rather wild nature was
up in arms at not being able to shake off a recollection which gave me
so much pain . . . and so much pleasure! . . . I was mastered. I ran
away from you. I kept on coming back to you . . . and I should have
come back altogether, if that man--you know whom I mean--had not
spoken to me one morning. . . ."
"Velmot! What did he come for? What did he want?"
"He came from my father. What he wanted, as I perceived later, was
through me to enter into Noël Dorgeroux's life and rob him of the
secret of his invention."
"Why did you not warn me?"
"From the first moment, Velmot asked me to be silent. Later, he
commanded it."
"You ought not to have obeyed him. . . ."
"Had I committed the least indiscretion, he would have killed you. I
loved you. I was afraid; and I was all the more afraid because Velmot
persecuted me with a love which my hatred for him merely stimulated.
How could I doubt that his threat was seriously meant? From that time
onward, I was caught in the wheels of the machine. What with one lie
and another, I became his accomplice . . . or rather their accomplice,
for my father joined him in the course of the winter. Oh, the torture
of it! That man who loved me . . . and that contemptible father! . . .
I lived a life of horror . . . always hoping that they would grow
tired because their machinations were leading to nothing."
"And what about my letters from Grenoble? And my uncle's fears?"
"Yes, I know, my uncle often mentioned them to me; and, without
revealing the plot to him, I myself put him on his guard. It was at my
request that he sent you that report which was stolen. Only, he never
anticipated murder. Theft, yes; and, notwithstanding the watch which
I maintained, I could see that I was doing no good, that my father
made his way into the Lodge at night, that he had at his disposal
methods of which I knew nothing. But between that and murder,
assassination! No, no, a daughter cannot believe such things."
"So, on the Sunday, when Velmot came to fetch you at the Lodge while
Noël Dorgeroux was out . . . ?"
"That Sunday, he told me that my father had given up his plan and
wanted to say good-bye to me and that he was waiting for me by the
chapel in the disused cemetery, where the two of them had been
experimenting with the fragments removed from the old wall in the
Yard. As it happened, Velmot had taken advantage of his call at the
Lodge to steal one of the blue phials which my uncle used. I did not
notice this before he had already poured part of the liquid on the
improvised screen of the chapel. I was able to get hold of the phial
and throw it into the well. Just then you called me. Velmot made a
rush at me and carried me to his motor-car, where, after stunning me
with his fist and binding me, he hid me under a rug. When I recovered
from my swoon, I was in the garage at Batignolles. It was in the
evening. I was able to push the car under a window which opened on
the street, and I jumped out. A gentleman and a lady who were passing
picked me up, for I had sprained my ankle as I came to the ground.
They took me home with them. Next morning I read in the papers that
Noël Dorgeroux had been murdered."
Bérangère hid her face in her hands:
"Oh, how I suffered! Was I not responsible for his death? And I should
have given myself up, if M. and Madame de Roncherolles, who were the
kindest of friends to me, had not prevented me. To give myself up
meant ruining my father and, as a consequence, destroying Noël
Dorgeroux's secret. This last consideration decided me. I had to
repair the wrong which I had unwittingly committed and to fight
against those whom I had served. As soon as I was well again, I set to
work. Knowing of the existence of the written instructions which Noël
Dorgeroux had hidden behind the portrait of D'Alembert, I had myself
driven to the Lodge on the evening before, or rather on the morning of
the inauguration. My intention was to see you and tell you everything.
But it so happened that the kitchen-entrance was open and that I was
able to go upstairs without attracting anybody's attention. It was
then that you surprised me, in god-father's bedroom."
"But why did you run away, Bérangère?"
"You had the documents; and that was enough."
"No, you ought to have stayed and explained."
"Then you shouldn't have spoken to me of love," she replied, sadly.
"No one can love Massignac's daughter."
"And the result, my poor darling," I said, with a smile, "was that
Massignac, who was in the house, of which he had a key, and who
overheard our conversation, took the document and, through your fault,
remained the sole possessor of the secret. Not to mention that you
left me face to face with a formidable adversary!"
She shook her head: "You had nothing to fear from my father. Your
danger came from Velmot; and him I watched."
"How?"
"I had accepted an invitation to stay at the Château de Pré-Bony,
because I knew that my father and Velmot had lived in that
neighbourhood during the past winter. Indeed, one day I recognized
Velmot's car coming down the hill at Bougival. After some searching, I
discovered the shed in which he kept his car. Well, on the fifteenth
of May, I was watching there when he went in, accompanied by two men.
From what they said I gathered that they had carried off my father at
the end of the performance, that they had taken him to an island in
the river where Velmot lay in hiding and that next day Velmot was to
resort to every possible method to make him speak. I did not know what
to do. To denounce Velmot to the police meant supplying them with
convincing evidence against my father. On the other hand, my friends
the Roncherolles were not at Pré-Bony. Longing for assistance, I ran
to the Blue Lion and telephoned to you making an appointment with you
there."
"I kept the appointment that same night, Bérangère."
"You came that night?" she asked, surprised.
"Of course I did; and at the door of the inn I was met by a small boy,
sent by you, who took me to the island and to Velmot's house and to a
room in which Velmot locked me up and from which, on the following
day, I witnessed Théodore Massignac's torture and removal. My dear
Bérangère, it wasn't very clever of you!"
She seemed stupefied and said: "I sent no boy. I never left the Blue
Lion and I waited for you that night and all the morning. Somebody
must have given us away: I can't think who."
"It's a simple enough mystery," I said, laughing. "Velmot no doubt had
a crony of some sort in the inn, who told him of your telephone-call.
Then he must have sent that boy, who was in his pay, to pick me up on
my way to you."
"But why lay a trap for you and not for me?"
"Very likely he was waiting till next day to capture you. Very likely
he was more afraid of me and wanted to seize the opportunity to keep
me under lock and key until Massignac had spoken. Also no doubt he was
obeying motives and yielding to necessities of which we shall never
know and which moreover do not really matter. The fact remains,
Bérangère, that, next day . . ."
"Next day," she resumed, "I managed to find a boat and in the evening,
to row round the island to the place where my father was dying. I was
able to save him."
I in my turn was bewildered:
"What, it was you who saved him? You succeeded in landing, in finding
Velmot in the dark, in hitting him just as he was turning on me? It
was you who stopped him? It was you who set Massignac free?"
I took her little hand and kissed it with emotion. The dear girl! She
also had done all she could to protect Noël Dorgeroux's secret; and
with what courage, with what undaunted pluck, risking death twenty
times over and not recoiling, at the great hour of danger, from the
terrible act of taking life!
"You must tell me all this in detail, Bérangère. Go on with your
story. Where did you take your father to?"
"To the river bank; and from there, in a market-gardener's cart, to
the Château de Pré-Bony, where I nursed him."
"And Velmot?"
She gave a shudder:
"I did not see him again for days and days, not until this morning. I
was sitting on the bench by the ruins, reading. Suddenly he stood
before me. I tried to run away. He prevented me and said, 'Your father
is dead. I have come to you from him. Listen!' I distrusted him but he
went on to say, 'I swear I come from him; and, to prove it, he told me
that you knew the formula. He confided it to you during his illness.'
This was true. While I was nursing my father, in this very lodge, he
said to me one day, 'I can't tell what may happen, Bérangère. It is
possible that I shall destroy the screen at Meudon, out of revenge. It
will be a mistake. In any case, I want to undo that act of madness
beforehand.' He then made me learn the formula by heart. And this was
a thing which no one except my father and myself could know, because I
was alone with him and kept the secret. Velmot, consequently, was
speaking the truth."
"What did you say?"
"I just said, 'Well?' Velmot said, 'His last wish was that you should
give me the formula.' 'Never!' I said. 'You lie! My father made me
swear never to reveal it to any one, whatever happened, except to one
person.' He shrugged his shoulders: 'Victorien Beaugrand, I suppose?'
'Yes.' 'Victorien Beaugrand heard Massignac's last words. And he
agrees with me, or at least is on the point of doing so.' 'I refuse to
believe it!' 'Ask him for yourself. He's up there, in the ruins
. . .'"
"I, in the ruins?"
"That's what he said: 'In the ruins, fastened to the foot of a tree.
His life depends on you. I offer it to you in exchange for the
formula. If not, he's a dead man.' I did not suspect the trap which he
was laying for me. I ran towards the ruins as fast as I could. This
was what Velmot wanted. The ruins was a deserted spot, which gave him
the chance to attack me. He took it at once, without even trying to
conceal his falsehood. 'Caught, baby!' he cried, throwing me to the
ground. 'Oh, I knew you'd be sure to come! Only think, it's your
lover, it's the man you love! For you do love him, don't you?'
Evidently his only object was to obtain the secret from me by threats
and blows. But what happened was that his rage against you and my
hatred and loathing for him made him lose his head. First of all he
wanted his revenge. He had me in his arms. Oh, the villain!"
She once more hid her face in her hands. She was very feverish; and I
heard her stammering:
"The villain! . . . I don't know how I got away from him. I was worn
out. For all that, I managed to give him a savage bite and to release
myself. He ran after me, brandishing his revolver; but just as he
caught me up, he fell and let go of it. I picked it up at once. When
he came after me again, I fired. . . ."
She was silent. The painful story had exhausted her. Her face retained
an expression of bewilderment and fright.
"My poor Bérangère," I said, "I have done you a great wrong. I have
often, far too often, accused you in my heart, without guessing what a
wonderful, plucky creature you were."
"You could not be expected to understand me."
"Why not?"
She murmured sadly:
"I am Massignac's daughter."
"No more of that!" I cried. "You are the one who always sacrificed
herself and who always took the risk. And you are also the girl I
love, Bérangère, the girl who gave me all her life and all her soul in
a kiss. Remember Bérangère . . . the other day in the Yard, when I
found you again and when the sight of all those visions of love threw
you in my arms. . . ."
"I have forgotten nothing," she said, "and I never shall forget."
"Then you consent?"
Once again she repeated:
"I am Massignac's daughter."
"Is that the only reason why you refuse me?"
"Can you doubt it?"
I allowed a moment to pass and said:
"So that, if your fate had willed it that you were not Massignac's
daughter, you would have consented to be my wife?"
"Yes," she said, gravely.
The hour had come to speak; and how happy was I to be able to do so. I
repeated my sentence:
"If fate had willed that you were not Massignac's daughter. . . .
Bérangère, did it never occur to you to wonder why there was so
little affection between Massignac and you, why, on the contrary,
there was so much indifference? When you were a child, the thought of
going back to him and living with him used to upset you terribly. All
your life was wrapped up in the Yard. All your love went out to Noël
Dorgeroux. Don't you think, when all is said, that we are entitled to
interpret your girlish feelings and instincts in a special sense?"
She looked at me in surprise:
"I don't understand," she said.
"You don't understand, because you have never thought about these
things. For instance, is it natural that the death of the man whom you
called your father should give you such an impression of deliverance
and relief?"
She seemed dazed:
"Why do you say, the man whom I called my father?"
"Well," I replied, smiling, "I have never seen your birth-certificate.
And, as I have no proof of a fact which seems to me improbable . . ."
"But," she said, in a changed voice, "you have not the least proof
either that it is not so. . . ."
"Perhaps I have," I answered.
"Oh," said Bérangère, "it would be too terrible to say that and not to
let me learn the truth at once!"
"Do you know Massignac's writing?"
I took a letter from my pocket and handed it to her:
"Read this, my darling. It is a letter which Massignac wrote to me and
which he handed to me as he lay dying. I read only the first few words
to begin with and at once went off in search of you. Read it,
Bérangère, and have no doubts: it is the evidence of a dead man."
She took the letter and read aloud:
"Bérangère knows the formula and must not communicate
it to any one except you alone, Victorien. You will
marry her, will you not? She is not my daughter, but
Noël Dorgeroux's. She was born five months after my
marriage, as you can confirm by consulting the public
records. Forgive me, both of you, and pray for me."
A long pause followed. Bérangère was weeping tears of joy. A radiant
light was being thrown on her whole life. The awful weight that had
bowed her down in shame and despair no longer bore upon her shoulders.
She was at last able to breathe and hold her head high and look
straight before her and accept her share of happiness and love. She
whispered:
"Is it possible? Noël Dorgeroux's daughter? Is it possible?"
"It is possible," I said, "and it is certain. After his rightful
struggle with Velmot and after the care which you bestowed upon him
once you had saved him, Massignac repented. Thinking of the day of his
death, he tried to atone for a part of his crimes and wrote you that
letter . . . which evidently possesses no legal value, but which you
and I will accept as the truth. You are the daughter of Noël
Dorgeroux, Bérangère, of the man whom you always loved as a father
. . . and who wanted us to be married. Will you dream of disobeying
his wishes, Bérangère? Do you not think that it is our duty to join
forces and together to complete his enterprise? You know the
indispensable formula. By publishing it, we shall make Noël
Dorgeroux's wonderful life-work endure for ever. Do you consent,
Bérangère?"
She did not reply at once; and, when I again tried to convince her, I
saw that she was listening with an absent expression, in which I was
surprised to find a certain anxiety:
"What is it, darling? You accept, do you not?"
"Yes, yes," she said, "but, before everything I must try to jog my
memory. Only think! How careless of me not to have written the
formula down! Certainly, I know it by heart. But, all the same . . ."
She thought for a long time, screwing up her forehead and moving her
lips. Suddenly she said:
"A paper and pencil . . . quickly. . . ."
I handed her a writing-block. Swiftly, with a trembling hand, she
jotted down a few figures. Then she stopped and looked at me with eyes
full of anguish.
I understood the effort which she had made and, to calm her, said:
"Don't rack your brains now . . . it'll come later. . . . What you
need to-day is rest. Go to sleep, my darling."
"I must find it . . . at all costs. . . . I must. . . ."
"You'll find it some other time. You are tired now and excited. Rest
yourself."
She did as I said and ended by falling asleep. But an hour after, she
woke up, took the sheet of paper again and, in a moment or two,
stammered:
"This is dreadful! My brain refuses to work! Oh, but it hurts, it
hurts! . . ."
The night was spent in these vain attempts. Her fever increased. Next
day she was delirious and kept on muttering letters and figures which
were never the same.
For a week, her life was despaired of. She suffered horribly with her
head and wore herself out scribbling lines on her bed clothes.
When she became convalescent and had recovered her consciousness, we
avoided the subject and did not refer to it for some time. But I felt
that she never ceased to think of it and that she continued to seek
the formula. At last, one day, she said with tears in her eyes:
"I have given up all hopes, dear. I repeated that formula a hundred
times after I had learnt it; and I felt sure of my memory. But not a
single recollection of it remains. It must have been when Velmot was
clutching my throat. Everything grew dark, suddenly. I know now that I
shall never remember."
* * * * *
She never did remember. The exhibitions at the Yard were not resumed.
The miraculous visions did not reappear.
And yet what investigations were pursued! How many companies have been
promoted which attempted to exploit the lost secret! But all in vain:
the screen remained lifeless and empty, like a blind man's eyes.
To Bérangère and me it would have meant a sorrow incessantly renewed,
if love had not brought us peace and consolation in all things. The
authorities, who showed themselves fairly easy-going, I think, in this
case, never found any traces of the woman who bore the name of
Massignac. I was dispatched on a mission to the Far East. I sent out
for her; and we were married without attracting attention.
We often speak of Noël Dorgeroux's great secret; and if Bérangère's
lovely eyes become clouded with sadness:
"Certainly," I say, "the lost secret was a wonderful thing. There was
never anything more thrilling than the Meudon pictures; and those
which we had a right to expect might have opened up horizons which we
are not able to conceive. But are you quite sure that we ought to
regret them? Does a knowledge of the past and the future spell
happiness for mankind? Is it not rather an essential law of our
equilibrium that we should be obliged to live within the narrow
confines of the present and to see before or behind us no more than
lights which are still just glimmering and lights which are being
faintly kindled? Our knowledge is adjusted to our strength; and it is
not good to learn and to decipher too quickly truths to which we have
not had time to adapt our existence and riddles which we do not yet
deserve to know."
Benjamin Prévotelle made no attempt to conceal his disappointment. I
keep up a regular correspondence with him. In every letter that I
receive from this great scientist I anticipate his anxious question:
"Does she remember? May we hope?"
Alas, my answers leave him no illusions:
"Bérangère remembers nothing. You must not hope."
He consoles himself by waging a fierce contest with those who still
deny any value to his theory; and it must be confessed that, now that
the screen has been destroyed and it has become impossible to support
that theory by proofs which are in any way material, the number of his
adversaries has increased and that they propound objections which
Benjamin Prévotelle must find it extremely difficult to refute. But he
has every sincere and unprejudiced person on his side.
* * * * *
He likewise has the great public. We all know, of our reasoned
conviction, and we all believe, out of our impulse of ardent faith,
that, though we now receive no communications from our brothers in
Venus, they, those beings with the Three Eyes, are still interesting
themselves in us with the same fervour, the same watchfulness, the
same impassioned curiosity. Looking down upon us, they follow our
every action, they observe us, study us and pity us, they count our
misfortunes and our wounds and perhaps also they envy us, when they
witness our joys and when, in some secret place, they surprise a man
and a maid, with love-laden eyes, whose lips unite in a kiss.
THE END
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Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors present in the
original edition have been corrected.
On the title page, =Alexander Teixeira deMattos= was changed to =Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos=.
In the table of contents, =Massignac and Velmont= was changed to =Massignac
and Velmot=, and =Cháteau= was changed to =Château=.
In Chapter I, =inpalpable breath= was changed to =impalpable breath=.
In Chapter V, =hesitation," because= was changed to =hesitation, "because=.
In Chapter VI, =Now do you mean= was changed to =How do you mean=.
In Chapter VIII, the consecutive lines =was to see ten minutes later, he
ran away and= and =went off in the car to pick up Noël Dorgeroux's= were
originally printed in the wrong order.
In Chapter IX, =You shan't move, do you hear, Stay where you are.= was
changed to =You shan't move, do you hear? Stay where you are.=
In Chapter X, =So is Bérangère,= was changed to =So is Bérangère.= and =The
ondookers had not= was changed to =The onlookers had not=, and a quotation
mark was added after =Why, Victorien!=
In Chapter XIII, =wooden shutter. which was= was changed to =wooden
shutter, which was=.
In Chapter XIV, =50 and 23 degrees respectfully= was changed to =50 and 23
degrees respectively=.
In Chapter XV, =lower benches of the amphi-theatre= was changed to =lower
benches of the amphitheatre=, and =that such airship was ever observed= was
changed to =that no such airship was ever observed=. Also, the consecutive
lines =taken and projected under such conditions that= and =they can
logically be referred to the planet Venus= were originally printed in the
wrong order.
In Chapter XVI, =however strong they might me= was changed to =however
strong they might be=.
In Chapter XVII, =Roman legionaries= was changed to =Roman legionaires=, and
=His Desciples= was changed to =His Disciples=.
In Chapter XVIII, =struggled desparately= was changed to =struggled
desperately=, and =the murder of her godfather= was changed to =the murder
of her god-father=.
In Chapter XIX, =No. to-day= was changed to =No, to-day=, =You ought to have
obeyed him= was changed to =You ought not to have obeyed him=, =The fact
remians= was changed to =The fact remains=, and =in godfather's bedroom= was
changed to =in god-father's bedroom=.
In the list of advertised books, =Honorè Willsie= was changed to =Honoré
Willsie=.
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