THE murder of M. Rovere, committed in broad daylight, in a quarter of
Paris filled with life and movement, caused a widespread sensation.
There was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What could be ascertained
about the dead man's life was very dramatically written up by Paul
Rodier in a sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged upon,
soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy the interest of a
judicial romance. All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man awoke,
as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.
What was this M. Rovere, former Consul to Buenos Ayres or Havana,
amateur collector of objects of virtu, member of the Society of
Bibliophiles, where he had not been seen for a long time? What enemy had
entered his room for the purpose of cutting his throat? Might he not
have been assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms contained a
collection of works of art? The fete at Montmartre was often in full
blast in front of the house where the murder had been committed, and
among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors who are always
attendant upon foreign kirmesses might not some one of them have
returned and committed the crime? The papers took advantage of the
occasion to moralize upon permitting these fetes to be held in the
outlying boulevards, where vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously
from the soil.
But no one, not one journal--perhaps by order--spoke of that unknown
visitor whom Moniche called _the individual_, and whom the portress had
seen standing beside M. Rovere in front of the open safe. Paul Rodier in
his sketch scarcely referred to the fact that justice had a clew
important enough to penetrate the mystery of the crime, and in the end
arrest the murderer. And the readers while awaiting developments asked
what mystery was hidden in this murder. Moniche at times, wore a
frightened yet important air. He felt that he was an object of curiosity
to many, the centre of prejudices. The porter and his wife possessed a
terrible secret. They were raised in their own estimation.
"We shall appear at the trial," said Moniche, seeing himself already
before the red robes, and holding up his hand to swear that he would
tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
And as they sat together in their little lodge they talked the matter
over and over, and brought up every incident in M. Rovere's life which
might have a bearing on the case.
"Do you remember the young man who came one day and insisted on seeing
Monsieur le Consul?"
"Ah! Very well, indeed," said Moniche. "I had forgotten that one. A felt
hat, his face bronzed, and a droll accent. He had come from away off
somewhere. He was probably a Spaniard."
"Some beggar, likely. A poor devil whom the Consul had known in America,
in the Colonies, one knows not where."
"A bad face!" said Moniche. "M. Rovere received him, however, and gave
him aid, I remember. If the young man had come often, I should think
that he struck the blow. And also, I ought to add, if there was not the
other."
"Yes, but there is the other," his wife replied. "There is the one whom
I saw standing in front of the coupons, and who was looking at those
other papers with flashing eyes, I give my word. There is that one,
Moniche, and I am willing to put my hand into the fire and yours, too,
Moniche, if it is not he."
"If he is the one, he will be found."
"Oh! but if he has disappeared? One disappears very quickly in these
days."
"We shall see! we shall see! Justice reigns, and we are here!" He said
that "we are here!" as a grenadier of the guard before an important
engagement.
They had taken the body to the Morgue. At the hour fixed for the autopsy
Bernardet arrived. He seemed much excited, and asked M. Ginory if,
since their conversation in M. Rovere's library, he had reflected and
decided to permit him to make the experiment--the famous experiment
reported for so many years as useless, absurd, almost ridiculous.
"With any one but M. Ginory I should not dare to hope," thought the
police officer, "but he does not sneer at strange discoveries."
He had brought his photographic apparatus, that kodak which he declared
was more dangerous to the criminal than a loaded weapon. He had
developed the negatives which he had taken, and of the three, two had
come out in good condition. The face of the murdered man appeared with a
clearness which, in the proofs, rendered it formidable as in the
reality; and the eyes, those tragic, living eyes, retained their
terrible, accusing expression which the supreme agony had left in them.
The light had struck full on the eyes--and they spoke. Bernardet showed
the proofs to M. Ginory. They examined them with a magnifying glass, but
they showed only the emotion, the agony, the anger of that last moment.
Bernardet hoped to convince M. Ginory that Bourion's experiment was not
a failure.
Eleven o'clock was the hour named for the autopsy. Twenty minutes
before, Bernardet was at the Morgue. He walked restlessly about outside
among the spectators--some were women, young girls, students, and
children who were hovering about the place, hoping that some chance
would permit them to satisfy their morbid curiosity and to enter and
gaze on those slabs whereon lay--swollen, livid, disfigured--the bodies.
Never, perhaps, in his life had the police officer been so strongly
moved with a desire to succeed. He brought to his tragic task all the
ardor of an apostle. It was not the idea of success, the renown, or the
possibility of advancement which urged him on; it was the joy, the glory
of aiding progress, of attaching his name to a new discovery. He worked
for art and the love of art. As he wandered about, his sole thought was
of his desire to test Dr. Bourion's experiment; of the realization of
his dream. "Ah! if M. Ginory will only permit it," he thought.
As he formulated that hope in his mind, he saw M. Ginory descend from
the fiacre; he hurried up to him and saluted him respectfully. Seeing
Bernardet so moved and the first one on the spot, he could not repress a
smile.
"I see you are still enthused."
"I have thought of nothing else all night, Monsieur Ginory."
"Well, but," said Monsieur Ginory in a tone which seemed to Bernardet to
imply hope, "no idea must be rejected, and I do not see why we should
not try the experiment. I have reflected upon it. Where is the
unsuitableness?"
"Ah, Monsieur le Juge," cried the agent, "if you permit it who knows but
that we may revolutionize medical jurisprudence?"
"Revolutionize, revolutionize!" Would the Examining Magistrate yet find
it an idiotic idea?
M. Ginory passed around the building and entered by a small door opening
on the Seine. The registrar followed him, and behind him came the police
agent. Bernardet wished to wait until the doctors delegated to perform
the autopsy should arrive, and the head keeper of the Morgue advised him
to possess himself with patience, and while he was waiting to look
around and see the latest cadavers which had been brought there.
"We have had, in eight days, a larger number of women than men, which is
rare. And these women were nearly all habitues of the public balls and
race tracks."
"And how can you tell that?"
"Because they have pretty feet."
Professor Morin arrived with a confrere, a young Pasteurian doctor, with
a singular mind, broad and receptive, and who passed among his
companions for a man fond of chimeras, a little retiring, however, and
giving over to making experiments and to vague dreams. Monsieur Morin
saluted M. Ginory and presented to him the young doctor, Erwin by name,
and said to the Magistrate that the house students had probably begun
the autopsy to gain time.
The body, stripped of its clothing, lay upon the dissecting table, and
three young men, in velvet skull caps, with aprons tied about their
waists, were standing about the corpse; they had already begun the
autopsy. The mortal wound looked redder than ever in the whiteness of
the naked body.
Bernardet glided into the room, trying to keep out of sight, listening
and looking, and, above everything, not losing sight of M. Ginory's
face. A face in which the look was keen, penetrating, sharp as a knife,
as he bent over the pale face of the murdered man, regarding it as
searchingly as the surgeons' scalpels were searching the wound and the
flesh. Among those men in their black clothes, some with bared heads, in
order to work better; others with hats on, the stretched-out corpse
seemed like a wax figure upon a marble slab. Bernardet thought of those
images which he had seen copied from Rembrandt's pictures--the poet with
the anatomical pincers and the shambles. The surgeons bent over the
body, their hands busy and their scissors cutting the muscles. That
wound, which had let out his life, that large wound, like a monstrous
and grimacing mouth, they enlarged still more; the head oscillated from
side to side, and they were obliged to prop it with some mats. The eyes
remained the same, and, in spite of the hours which had passed, seemed
as living, as menacing and eloquent as the night before; they were,
however, veiled with something vitreous over the pupils, like the
amaurosis of death, yet full of that anger, of that fright, or that
ferocious malediction which was reproduced in a startling manner in the
negatives taken by Bernardet.
"The secret of the crime is in that look," thought the police agent.
"Those eyes see, those eyes speak; they tell what they know, they accuse
some one."
Then, while the professor, his associates and his students went on with
the autopsy, exchanging observations, following in the mutilated body,
their researches for the truth, trying to be very accurate as to the
nature of the wound, the form even of the knife with which it was made,
Bernardet softly approached the Examining Magistrate and in a low tone,
timidly, respectfully, he spoke some words, which were insistent,
however, and pressing, urging the Magistrate to quickly interfere.
"Ah! Monsieur le Juge, this is the moment; you who can do
everything"----
The Examining Magistrate has, with us, absolute power. He does whatever
seems to him best. And he wishes to do a thing, because he wishes to do
it. M. Ginory, curious by nature and because it was his duty,
hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed his nose, bit his lips, listened to
the supplicating murmur of the police officer; but decided not to speak
just then, and continued gazing with a fixed stare at the dead man.
This thought came to him, moreover, insistent and imperious, that he was
there to testify in all things in favor of that truth, the discovery of
which imposed upon him--and suddenly, his sharp voice interrupted the
surgeon's work.
"Messieurs, does not the expression of the open eyes strike you?"
"Yes; they express admirably the most perfect agony," M. Morin replied.
"And does it not seem," asked the Examining Magistrate, "as if they were
fixed with that expression on the murderer?"
"Without doubt! The mouth seems to curse and the eyes to menace."
"And what if the last image seen, in fact, that of the murderer, still
remains upon the retina of the eyes?"
M. Morin looked at the Magistrate in astonishment, his air was slightly
mocking and the lips and eyes assumed a quizzical expression. But
Bernardet was very much surprised when he heard one remark. Dr. Erwin
raised his head and while he seemed to approve of that which M. Ginory
had advanced, he said: "That image must have disappeared from the
retina some time ago."
"Who knows?" said M. Ginory.
Bernardet experienced a profound emotion. He felt that this time the
problem would be officially settled. M. Ginory had not feared ridicule
when he spoke, and a discussion arose there, in that dissecting room, in
the presence of the corpse. What had existed only in a dream, in
Bernardet's little study, became here, in the presence of the Examining
Magistrate, a member of the Institute, and the young students, almost
full fledged doctors, a question frankly discussed in all its bearings.
And it was he, standing back, he, a poor devil of a police officer, who
had urged this Examining Magistrate to question this savant.
"At the back of the eyes," said the Professor, touching the eyes with
his scalpel, "there is nothing, believe me. It is elsewhere that you
must look for your proof."
"But"--and M. Ginory repeated his "Who knows?"--"What if we try it this
time; will it inconvenience you, my dear Master?" M. Morin made a
movement with his lips which meant _peuh!_ and his whole countenance
expressed his scorn. "But, I see no inconvenience." At the end of a
moment he said in a sharp tone: "It will be lost time."
"A little more, a little less," replied M. Ginory, "the experiment is
worth the trouble to make it."
M. Ginory had proved without doubt that he, like Bernardet, wished to
satisfy his curiosity, and in looking at the open eyes of the corpse,
although in his duties he never allowed himself to be influenced by the
sentimental or the dramatic, yet it seemed to him that those eyes urged
him to insist, nay, even supplicated him.
"I know, I know," said M. Morin, "what you dream of in your magistrate's
brain is as amusing as a tale of Edgar Poe's. But to find in those eyes
the image of the murderer--come now, leave that to the inventive genius
of a Rudyard Kipling, but do not mix the impossible with our researches
in medical jurisprudence. Let us not make romance; let us make, you the
examinations and I the dissection."
The short tone in which the Professor had spoken did not exactly please
M. Ginory, who now, a little through self-conceit (since he had made the
proposition), a little through curiosity, decided that he would not beat
a retreat. "Is there anything to risk?" he asked. "And it might be one
chance in a thousand."
"But there is no chance," quickly answered M. Morin. "None--none!"
Then, relenting a little, he entered the discussion, explaining why he
had no faith.
"It is not I, M. Ginory, who will deny the possibility of such a result.
But it would be miraculous. Do you believe in miracles, the impressions
of heat, of the blood, of light, on our tissues are not catalogueable,
if I may be allowed the expression. The impression on the retina is
produced by the refraction which is called ethereal, phosphorescent, and
which is almost as difficult to seize as to weigh the imponderable. To
think to find on the retina a luminous impression after a certain number
of hours and days would be, as Vernois has very well said, to think one
can find in the organs of hearing the last sound which reverberated
through them. _Peuh!_ Seize the air-bubble at the end of a tube and
place it in a museum as a curiosity. Is there anything left of it but a
drop of water which is burst, while of the fleeting vision or the
passing sound nothing remains."
The unfortunate Bernardet suffered keenly when he heard this. He wished
to answer. The words came to his lips. Ah! if he was only in M. Ginory's
place. The latter, with bowed head, listened and seemed to weigh each
word as it dropped from M. Morin's lips.
"Let us reason it, but," the Professor went on, "since the
ophthalmoscope does not show to the oculist on the retina, any of the
objects or beings which a sick man sees--you understand, not one of
them--how can you think that photography can find that object or being
on the retina of a dead man's eye?"
He waited for objections from the Examining Magistrate and Bernardet
hoped that M. Ginory would combat some of the Professor's arguments. He
had only to say: "What of it? Let us see! Let us experiment!" And
Bernardet had longed for just these words from him; but the Magistrate
remained silent, his head still bent. The police agent felt, with
despair, his chance slipping, slipping away from him, and that never,
never again would he find a like opportunity to test the experiment.
Suddenly, the strident tones of Dr. Erwin's voice rung out sharply, like
an electric bell, and Bernardet experienced a sensation like that of a
sudden unexpected illumination.
"My dear Master," he respectfully began, "I saw at home in Denmark, a
poor devil, picked up dying, half devoured by a wolf; and who, when
taken from the very jaws of the beast, still retained in the eye a very
visible image in which one could see the nose and teeth of the brute. A
vision! Imagination, perhaps! But the fact struck me at the time and we
made a note of it."
"And?" questioned M. Morin, in a tone of raillery.
Bernardet cocked his ears as a dog does when he hears an unusual sound.
M. Ginory looked at this slender young man with his long blond hair, his
eyes as blue as the waters of a lake, his face pale and wearing the
peculiar look common to searchers after the mysterious. The students and
the others gathered about their master, remained motionless and listened
intently as to a lecture.
"And," Dr. Erwin went on frigidly, "if we had found absolutely nothing
we would, at least, have kept silent about an unsuccessful research, it
is useless to say. Think, then, my dear Master, the exterior objects
must have imprinted themselves on the retina, did they not? reduced in
size, according to the size of the place wherein they were reflected;
they appeared there, they certainly appeared there! There is--I beg your
pardon for referring to it, but it is to these others (and Dr. Erwin
designated M. Ginory, his registrar, and Bernardet)--there is in the
retina a substance of a red color, the _pourpre retinien_, very
sensitive to the light. Upon the deep red of this membrane objects are
seen white. And one can fix the image. M. Edmond Perrier, professor in
the Museum of Natural History, reports (you know it better than I, my
dear Master), in a work on animal anatomy and physiology which our
students are all familiar with, that he made an experiment. After
removing a rabbit's eye, a living rabbit's eye--yes, science is
cruel--he placed it in a dark room, so that he could obtain upon the
retina the image of some object, a window for instance, and plunged it
immediately into a solution of alum and prevented the decomposition of
the _pourpre retinien_, and the window could plainly be seen, fixed on
the eye. In that black chamber which we have under our eyebrows, in the
orbit, is a storehouse, a storehouse of images which are retained, like
the image which the old Dane's eye held of the wolf's nose and teeth.
And who knows? Perhaps it is possible to ask of a dead man's eye the
secret of what it saw when living."
This was, put in more scientific terms by the young Danish doctor, the
substance of what Bernardet believed possible. The young men had
listened with the attractive sympathy, which is displayed when anything
novel is explained. Rigid, upon the marble slab, the victim seemed to
wait for the result of the discussion, deaf to all the confused sounds
about him; his eye fixed upon the infinite, upon the unknowable which he
now knew.
It was, however, this insensible body which had caused the discussion of
what was an enigma to savants. What was the secret of his end? The last
word of his agony? Who made that wound which had ended his life? And
like a statue lying on its stone couch, the murdered man seemed to wait.
What they knew not, he knew. What they wished to know, he still knew,
perhaps! This doubt alone, rooted deep in M. Ginory's mind, was enough
to urge him to have the experiment tried, and, excusing himself for his
infatuation, he begged M. Morin to grant permission to try the
experiment, which some of the doctors had thought would be successful.
"We shall be relieved even if we do not succeed, and we can but add our
defeat to the others."
M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile. But after all, the
Examining Magistrate was master of the situation, and since young Dr.
Erwin brought the result of the Denmark experiment--a contribution new
in these researches--to add weight to the matter, the Professor
requested that he should not be asked to lend himself to an experiment
which he declared in advance would be a perfectly useless one.
There was a photographic apparatus at the Morgue as at the Prefecture,
used for anthropometry. Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand.
One could photograph the retina as soon as the membrane was separated
from the eye by the autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it
had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while Bernardet was accustomed
to all the horrors of crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to
suffocation during this operation. He noticed that M. Ginory became very
pale, and that he bit his lips, casting occasional pitying glances
toward the dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent over the body
and studied it with the admiration and joy of treasure seekers digging
in a mine. Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some new truth.
They were like jewelers before a casket full of gems, and what they
studied, weighed, examined, was a human corpse. And when those eyes,
living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving behind them two empty
orbits, the Professor suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing
and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works of art. And it was, in
truth, a work of art, this wonderful mechanism which he explained to his
students, who listened eagerly to each word. It was a work of art, this
eye, with its sclerotic, its transparent cornea, its aqueous and
vitreous humor, its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a
photographic plate in that black chamber in which the luminous rays
reflect, reversed, the objects seen. And M. Morin, holding between his
fingers the object which he was demonstrating, spoke of the membrane
formed of fibres and of the terminal elements of the optic nerve, as a
professor of painting or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a
Benvenuto.
"The human body is a marvel," cried M. Morin, "a marvel, Messieurs," and
he held forth for several minutes upon the wonderful construction of
this marvel. His enthusiasm was shared, moreover, by the young men and
Dr. Erwin, who listened intently. Bernardet, ignorant and respectful,
felt troubled in the presence of this renowned physiologist, and
congratulated himself that it was he who had insisted on this experiment
and caused a member of the Institute to hold forth thus. As for M.
Ginory, he left the room a moment, feeling the need of air. The
operation, which the surgeons prolonged with joy, made him ill, and he
felt very faint. He quickly recovered, however, and returned to the
dissecting room, so as not to lose any of the explanation which M. Morin
was giving as he stood with the eye in his hand. And in that eye an
image remained, perhaps. He was anxious to search for it, to find it.
"I will take it upon myself," Bernardet said.