"SOME ONE WILL EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS"
Notwithstanding Noel 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 Noel 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 Berangere 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 Noel 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 Berangere? 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 Berangere 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, Noel 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 Noel 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
Noel 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 Berangere. 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.
Berangere accused by my uncle! Berangere 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 Berangere
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, Berangere 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 Noel 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
Noel 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 Berangere 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 Noel 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 Noel
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 Noel 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 Noel 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 Noel 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 Noel 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 Noel 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 Noel Dorgeroux,
while naming me as his residuary legatee, gave and bequeathed to his
god-daughter, Berangere 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
Noel 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. Noel 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 Noel 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. Noel 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 Noel Dorgeroux."
I was a little taken aback and, after a moment's thought, rejoined:
"Do you mean to say that Noel 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, Noel 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 Berangere."
"Quite so, quite so," replied the man, without changing countenance.
"But nobody knows what has become of Berangere 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:
"Theodore 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
Berangere'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 Noel 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."