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 Berangere 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. Berangere 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, Berangere 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. Berangere, 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:
"Berangere! . . . Berangere!"
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 Berangere, 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
Noel 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 Noel 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 Berangere 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.
Berangere'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:
"Berangere!"
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 Berangere 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 Noel 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
Noel 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 Berangere and certainly rid themselves of
Noel 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, Noel Dorgeroux
lay prone, his arms twisted beneath him.
A cursory inspection showed me that he had been murdered with a
pick-axe.