THE attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate.
Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of
the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his
impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been
committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the
throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the
established rules.
"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."
"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force--a
strong blow--can produce exactly what science can."
More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation
between the Agent of Surete and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood
at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at
the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him,
but at those eyes,--those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had
yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger,
menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance,
gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.
It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to
him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision:
the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one--who? If the
picture of some one was graven there, was it not the last image
reflected on the little mirror of the retina? What if a face was
reflected there! What if it was still retained in the depths of those
wide-open eyes! That strange creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused
with new ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical brains,
troubled him--Ginory, a man of statistics and of facts.
But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to speak, to designate some
one. What more eloquent, what more terrible witness could there be than
the dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to speak; if that
organ of life should contain, shut up within it, preserved, the secret
of death? Bernardet, whose eyes never left the magistrate's face, ought
to have been content, for it plainly expressed doubt, a hesitation, and
the police officer heard him cursing under his breath.
"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"
Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the Examining Magistrate,
was, moreover, convinced that, for the present, and the sooner the
better, the corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only, could a
thorough and scientific examination be made. The reporter listened
intently to the conversation, and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands, more
and more agonized by that word Morgue, which, among the people, produces
the same terror that that other word, which means, however, careful
attendance, scientific treatment and safety,--hospital, does.
Nothing was now to be done except to question some of the neighbors and
to take a sketch of the salon. Bernardet said to the Magistrate: "My
photograph will give you that!" While some one went out to get a hearse,
the Magistrates went away, the police officer placed a guard in front of
the house. The crowd was constantly increasing and becoming more and
more curious, violently excited and eager to see the spectacle--the
murdered man borne from his home.
Bernardet did not allow M. Ginory to go away without asking respectfully
if he would be allowed to photograph the dead man's eye. Without giving
him a formal answer, M. Ginory simply told him to be present at the
autopsy at the Morgue. Evidently if the Magistrate had not been already
full of doubt his reply would have been different. Why did that inferior
officer have the audacity to give his opinion on the subject of
conducting a judicial investigation? M. Ginory would long before this
have sent him about his business if he had not become suddenly
interested in him. In his quality of Judge he had come to know
Bernardet's history and his exploits in the service. No more capable
man, in his line, could be found. He was perfectly and utterly devoted
to his profession. Some strange tales were told of his methods. It was
he who once passed an entire night on a bench, pretending intoxication,
in order to gain sufficient information to enable him to arrest a
murderer in the morning in a wretched hovel at La Vilette--a murderer
armed to the teeth. It was Bernardet who, without arms--as all those
agents--caught the famous bandit, the noted Taureau de la Glaciere, a
foreign Hercules, who had strangled his mistress. Bernardet arrested him
by holding to his temple the cold neck of a bottle and saying, "Hands up
or I fire!" Now what the bandit took for the cold muzzle of a pistol was
a vial containing some medicine which Bernardet had purchased of a
pharmacist for his liver.
Deeds of valor against thieves, malefactors and insurrectionists
abounded in Bernardet's life; and M. Ginory had just discovered in this
man, whom he believed simply endowed with the activity and keenness of a
hunting dog, an intelligence singularly watchful, deep and complicated.
Bernardet, who had nothing more to do until the body should be taken to
the Morgue, left the house directly after the Magistrates.
"Where are you going?" asked Paul Rodier, the reporter.
"Home. A few steps from here."
"May I go along with you?" asked the journalist.
"To find an occasion to make me speak? But I know nothing! I suspect
nothing; I shall say nothing!"
"Do you believe that it is the work of a thief, or revenge?"
"I am certain that it was no thief. Nothing in the apartment was
touched. As for the rest, who knows?"
"M. Bernardet," laughingly said the reporter, as he walked along by the
officer's side, "you do not wish to speak."
"What good will that do?" Bernardet replied, also laughingly; "it will
not prevent you from publishing an interview."
"You think so. _Au revoir!_ I must hurry and make my copy. And you?"
"I? A photograph."
They separated, and Bernardet entered his house. His daughters had
grieved over his sudden departure on Sunday on his fete day. They met
him with joyous shouts when he appeared, and threw themselves upon him.
"Papa! Here is papa!"
Mme. Bernardet was also happy. They could go then to the garden and
finish the picture. But their joy subsided, night had fallen, and
Bernardet, preoccupied, wished to shut himself up so that he might
reflect on all that had happened, and perhaps to work a little, even
to-day.
"It is thy fete day, Bernardet. Wilt thou not rest to-day?"
"I can rest at dinner, dear. Until then, I must use the time reading
over a mass of evidence."
"Then thou wilt need a lamp?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
"Yes, my dear; light the lamp."
Next to their bedchamber M. Bernardet had fitted up a little room for
his private use. It was a tiny den, in which was a mahogany table loaded
with books and papers, and at which he worked when he had time, reading,
annotating, copying from the papers, and collecting extracts for hours
at a time. No one was allowed to enter this room, filled with old
papers. Mme. Bernardet well called it "a nest of microbes." Bernardet
found pleasure in this sporadic place, which in Summer was stifling. In
Winter he worked without a fire.
Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that their holiday was spoiled.
But she very well knew that when her husband was devoured with
curiosity, carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle, there was
nothing to be said. He listened to no remonstrances, and the daughters
knew that when they asked if their father was not coming to renew his
games with them they were obliged to content themselves with the excuse
which they knew so well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying
out a crime!"
Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes, the verification of his
hopes, of those so-called certainties of to-day. That is why he wished
to be alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once, from among
the enormous piles of dust-laden books and files of old newspapers, with
the unerring instinct of the habitual searcher who rummages through book
stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in which he had read, with
feverish astonishment, the experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon
the application of photography in criminal researches. He quickly seated
himself, and with trembling fingers eagerly turned over the leaves of
the book so often read and studied, and came to the report of the member
of the Academy of Medicine; he compared it with the proof submitted by
Dr. Bourion, of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that the
most learned savants had seen nothing.
"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!" he murmured.
The light fell upon the photograph which had been sent, a long time
before, to the Society, and Bernardet set himself to study out the old
crime with the most careful attention; with the passion of a
paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor devil of a police
officer, in his ardent desire to solve the vexing problem, brought to it
the same ardor and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over and
over with the method of an Examining Magistrate all that old forgotten
affair, and in the solitude and silence of his little room the last
reflections of the setting sun falling on his papers and making pale the
light of his lamp, he set himself the task of solving, like a
mathematical problem, that question which he had studied, but which he
wished to know from the very beginning, without any doubts, before
seeing M. Ginory again at the Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovere. He
took his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to the Society of
Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of
a woman who had been murdered the 14th of June, 1868, represents the
moment when the assassin, after having struck the mother, kills the
infant, and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward the unfortunate
little victim to save it."
Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph yellowed by time, and the
article which described it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the
history by heart.
M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society, after having carefully
hidden the back part of the photograph, had circulated it about among
the members with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence." And no
one had solved the tragic enigma. Even when he had explained, no one
could see in the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some were able
on examining that strange picture to see in the black and white haze
some figures as singular and dissimilar as those which the amiable
Polonius perceived in the clouds under the suggestion of Hamlet.
Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr. Bourion's communication,
asked him then how the operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had
given him these details, which Bernardet was now reading and studying:
The assassination had taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock;
the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had not been made until the
following day at 6 o'clock in the evening.
The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing eyes of this dead
man, could be made twenty-four hours earlier than that other experiment.
The image--if there was any image--ought to be, in consequence, more
clearly defined than in Dr. Bourion's experiment.
"About 6 o'clock in the evening," thought Bernardet, "and the
photographic light was sufficient."
Dr. Bourion had taken pictures of both of the child's eyes as well as
both of the mother's eyes. The child's eyes showed nothing but hazy
clouds. But the mother's eyes were different. Upon the left eye, next to
a circular section back of the iris, a delicately marked image of a
dog's head appeared. On the same section of the right eye, another
picture; one could see the assassin raising his arm to strike and the
dog leaping to protect his little charge.
"With much good will, it must be confessed," thought Bernardet, looking
again and again at the photograph, "and with much imagination, too. But
it was between fifty and fifty-two hours after the murder that the proof
was taken, while this time it will be while the body is still warm that
the experiment will be tried."
Seventeen times already had Dr. Vernois experimented on animals;
sometimes just after he had strangled them, again when they had died
from Prussic acid. He had held in front of their eyes a simple object
which could be easily recognized. He had taken out the eyes and hurried
with them to the photographer. He had, in order to better expose the
retina to photographic action, made a sort of Maltese cross, by making
four incisions on the edge of the sclerotic. He removed the vitreous
humor, fixed it on a piece of card with four pins and submitted the
retina as quickly as possible to the camera.
In re-reading the learned man's report, Bernardet studied, pored over,
carefully scrutinized the text, investigated the dozen proofs submitted
to the Society of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Vernois:
Retina of a cat's eye killed by Prussic acid; Vernois had held the
animal in front of the bars of the cage in which it was confined. No
result!
Retina of a strangled dog's eye. A watch was held in front of its eyes.
No result!
Retina of a dog killed by a strangulation. A bunch of shining keys was
held in front of his eyes. No result!
Retina of the eye of a strangled dog. An eyeglass held in front of its
eyes. Photograph made two hours after death. Nothing! In all Dr.
Vernois's experiments--nothing! Nothing!
Bernardet repeated the word angrily. Still he kept on; he read page
after page. But all this was twenty-six years ago--photography has made
great strides since then. What wonderful results have been obtained! The
skeleton of the human body seen through the flesh! The instantaneous
photograph! The kinetoscopic views! Man's voice registered for eternity
in the phonograph! The mysterious dragged forth into the light of day!
Many hitherto unknown secrets become common property! The invisible,
even the invisible, the occult, placed before our eyes, as a spectacle!
"One does not know all that may be done with a kodak," murmured
Bernardet.
As he ascertained, in re-reading Dr. Vernois's report on "The
Application of Photography to Medical Jurisprudence," the savant
himself, even while denying the results of which Dr. Bourion spoke in
his communication, devoted himself to the general consideration upon the
role which photography ought to play in medical jurisprudence. Yes, in
1869, he asked that in the researches on poisonous substances, where the
microscope alone had been used, photography should be applied. He
advocated what in our day is so common, the photographing of the
features of criminals, their deformities, their scars, their tattooings.
He demanded that pictures should be taken of an accused person in many
ways, without wigs and with them, with and without beards, in diverse
costumes.
"These propositions," thought Bernardet, "seem hardly new; it is
twenty-six years since they were discovered, and now they seem as
natural as that two and two make four. In twenty-six years from now, who
knows what science will have done?
"Vernois demanded that wounds be reproduced, their size, the instruments
with which the crime was committed, the leaves of plants in certain
cases of poisoning, the shape of the victim's garments, the prints of
their hands and feet, the interior view of their rooms, the signature
of certain accused affected with nervous disorders, parts of bodies and
of bones, and, in fact, everything in any way connected with the crime.
It was said that he asked too much. Did he expect judges to make
photographs? To-day, everything that Vernois demanded in 1869, has been
done, and, in truth, the instantaneous photograph has almost superseded
the minutes of an investigation.
"We photograph a spurious bank note. It is magnified, and, by the
absence of a tiny dot the proof of the alteration is found. On account
of the lack of a dot the forger is detected. The savant, Helmholtz, was
the discoverer of this method of detecting these faults. Two bank notes,
one authentic, the other a forgery, were placed side by side in a
stereoscope of strong magnifying power, when the faults were at once
detected. Helmholtz's experiment probably seemed fantastic to the forger
condemned by a stereoscope. Oh, well, to-day ought not a like experiment
on the retina of a dead man's eye give a like result?
"Instruments have been highly perfected since the time when Dr. Bourion
made his experiments, and if the law of human physiology has not changed
the seekers of invisible causes must have rapidly advanced in their
mysterious pursuits. Who knows whether, at the instant of the last
agony, that the dying person does not put all the intensity of life
into the retina, giving a hundredfold power to that last supreme look?"
At this point of his reflections Bernardet experienced some hesitation.
While he was not thoroughly acquainted with physiology and philosophy,
yet he had seen so much, so many things; had known so many strange
occurrences, and had studied many men. He knew--for he had closely
questioned wretches who had been saved from drowning at the very last
possible moment, some of whom had attempted suicide, others who had been
almost drowned through accident, and each one had told him that his
whole life, from his earliest recollection, had flashed through his mind
in the instant of mortal agony. Yes, a whole lifetime in one instant of
cerebral excitement!
Had savants been able to solve this wonderful mystery? The _resume_ of
an existence in one vibration! Was it possible? Yet--Bernardet still
used the word.
And why, in an analogous sensation, could not the look of a dying man be
seized in an intensity lasting an instant, as memory brought in a single
flash so many diverse remembrances?
"I know, since it is the imagination, and that the dead cannot see,
while the image on the retina is a fact, a fact contradicted by wiser
men than I." Bernardet thought on these mysteries until his head began
to ache.
"I shall make myself ill over it," he thought. "And there is something
to be done."
Then in his dusty little room, his brain overexcited, he became enthused
with one idea. His surroundings fell away from him, he saw
nothing--everything disappeared--the books, the papers, the walls, the
visible objects, as did also the objections, the denials, the
demonstrative impossibilities. And absolute conviction seized him to the
exclusion of all extraneous surroundings. This conviction was absolute,
instinctive, irresistible, powerful, filling him with entire faith.
"This unknown thing I will find. What is to be done I will do," he
declared to himself.
He threw the pamphlet on the table, arose from his chair and descended
to the dining-room, where his wife and children were waiting for him. He
rubbed his hands with glee, and his face looked joyous.
"Didst thou discover the trail?" Mme. Bernardet asked very simply, as a
working woman would ask her husband if he had had a good day. The eldest
of the little girls rushed toward him.
"Papa, my dear little papa!"
"My darling!"
The child asked her father in a sweet voice: "Art thou satisfied with
thy crime, papa?"
"We will not talk about that," Bernardet replied. "To table! After
dinner I will develop the pictures which I have taken with my kodak, but
let us amuse ourselves now; it is my fete day; I wish to forget all
about business. Let us dine now and be as happy as possible."