THE police officer did not follow the autopsical operations closely. He
was eager to know--he was impatient for the moment when, having taken
the picture, he might develop the negatives and study them to see if he
could discover anything, could decipher any image. He had used
photography in the service of anthropometry; he had taken the pictures
at the Morgue with his kodak, and now, at home in his little room, which
he was able to darken completely, he was developing his plates.
Mme. Bernardet and the children were much struck with the expression of
his face. It was not troubled, but preoccupied and as if he were
completely absorbed. He was very quiet, eating very little, and seemed
thoughtful. His wife asked him, "Art thou ill?" He responded, "No, I
think not." And his little girls said to each other in low tones, "Papa
is on a trail!"
He was, in truth! The hunting dog smelled the scent! The pictures which
he had taken of the retina and had developed showed a result
sufficiently clear for Bernardet to feel confident enough to tell his
chief that he distinctly saw a visage, the face of a man, confused, no
doubt, but clear enough to recognize not only a type, but a distinct
type. As from the depths of a cloud, in a sort of white halo, a human
face appeared whose features could be distinctly seen with a magnifying
glass! The face of a man with a pointed black beard, the forehead a
little bald, and blackish spots which indicated the eyes. It was only a
phantom, evidently, and the photographer at the Prefecture seemed more
moved than Bernardet by the proofs obtained. Clearer than in spirit
photographs, which so many credulous people believe in, the image showed
plainly, and in studying it one could distinctly follow the contours. A
spectre, perhaps, but the spectre of a man who was still young and
resembled, with his pointed beard, some trooper of the sixteenth
century, a phantom of some Seigneur Clouet.
"For example," said the official photographer, "if one could discover a
murderer by photographing a dead man's eyes, this would be miraculous.
It is incredible!"
"Not more incredible," Bernardet replied, "than what the papers publish:
Edison is experimenting on making the blind see by using the Roentgen
Rays. There is a miracle!"
Then Bernardet took his proofs to M. Ginory. The police officer felt
that the magistrate, the sovereign power in criminal researches, ought,
above everything, to collaborate with him, to consent to these
experiments which so many others had declared useless and absurd. The
taste for researches, which was with M. Ginory a matter of temperament
as well as a duty to his profession, was, fortunately, keen on this
scent. Criminals call in their argot, the judges, "the pryers."
Curiosity in this man was combined with a knowledge of profound
researches.
When Bernardet spread out on M. Ginory's desk the four photographs which
he had brought with him, the first remark which the examining Magistrate
made was: "But I see nothing--a cloud, a mist, and then after?"
Bernardet drew a magnifying glass from his pocket and pointed out as he
would have explained an enigmatical design, the lineaments, moving his
finger over the contour of the face which his nail outlined, that human
face which he had seen and studied in his little room in the passage of
the Elysee des Beaux-Arts. He made him see--after some moments of minute
examination--he made him see that face. "It is true--there is an image
there," exclaimed M. Ginory. He added: "Is it plain enough for me to see
it so that I can from it imagine a living being? I see the form, divined
it at first, saw it clearly defined afterward. At first it seemed very
vague, but I find it sufficiently well defined so that I can see each
feature, but without any special character. Oh!" continued M. Ginory,
excitedly, rubbing his plump little hands, "if it was only possible, if
it was only possible! What a marvel!"
"It is possible, Monsieur le Juge! have faith," Bernardet replied.
"I swear to you that it is possible." This enthusiasm gained over
the Examining Magistrate. Bernardet had found a fellow-sympathizer
in his fantastic ideas. M. Ginory was now--if only to try the
experiment--resolved to direct the investigation on this plan. He was
anxious to first show the proofs to those who would be apt to recognize
in them a person whom they might have once seen in the flesh. "To
Moniche first and then to his wife," said Bernardet.
"Who is Moniche?"
"The concierge in the Boulevard de Clichy."
Ordered to come to the court, M. and Mme. Moniche were overjoyed. They
were summoned to appear before the Judges. They had become important
personages. Perhaps their pictures would be published in the papers.
They dressed themselves as for a fete. Mme. Moniche in her Sunday best
strove to do honor to M. Rovere. She said to Moniche in all sincerity:
"Our duty is to avenge him."
While sitting on a bench in one of the long, cold corridors, the porter
and his wife saw pass before them prisoners led by their jailers; some
looked menacing, while others had a cringing air and seemed to try to
escape notice. These two persons felt that they were playing roles as
important as those in a melodrama at the Ambigu. The time seemed long
to them, and M. Ginory did not call them as soon as they wished that he
would. They thought of their home, which, while they were detained
there, would be invaded by the curious, the gossips and reporters.
"How slow these Judges are," growled Moniche.
When he was conducted into the presence of M. Ginory and his registrar,
and seated upon a chair, he was much confused and less bitter. He felt a
vague terror of all the paraphernalia of justice which surrounded him.
He felt that he was running some great danger, and to the Judge's
questions he replied with extreme prudence. Thanks to him and his wife
M. Ginory found out a great deal about M. Rovere's private life; he
penetrated into that apparently hidden existence, he searched to see if
he could discover, among the people who had visited the old ex-Consul
the one among all others who might have committed the deed.
"You never saw the woman who visited Rovere?"
"Yes. The veiled lady. The Woman in Black. But I do not know her. No one
knew her."
The story told by the portress about the time when she surprised the
stranger and Rovere with the papers in his hand in front of the open
safe made quite an impression on the Examining Magistrate.
"Do you know the name of the visitor?"
"No, Monsieur," the portress replied.
"But if you should see him again would you recognize him?"
"Certainly! I see his face there, before me!"
She made haste to return to her home so that she might relate her
impressions to her fellow gossips. The worthy couple left the court
puffed up with self-esteem because of the role which they had been
called upon to play. The obsequies were to be held the next day, and the
prospect of a dramatic day in which M. and Mme. Moniche would still play
this important role, created in them an agony which was almost joyous.
The crowd around the house of the crime was always large. Some few
passers-by stopped--stopped before the stone facade behind which a
murder had been committed. The reporters returned again and again for
news, and the couple, greedy for glory, could not open a paper without
seeing their names printed in large letters. One journal had that
morning even published an especial article: "Interviews with M. and Mme.
Moniche."
The crowd buzzed about the lodge like a swarm of flies. M. Rovere's body
had been brought back from the Morgue. The obsequies would naturally
attract an enormous crowd; all the more, as the mystery was still as
deep as ever. Among his papers had been found a receipt for a tomb in
the cemetery at Montmartre, bought by him about a year before. In
another paper, not dated, were found directions as to how his funeral
was to be conducted. M. Rovere, after having passed a wandering life,
wished to rest in his native country. But no other indications of his
wishes, nothing about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as if he
was a man without a family, without any place in society, or any claim
on any one to bury him. And this distressing isolation added to the
morbid curiosity which was attached to the house, now all draped in
black, with the letter "R" standing out in white against its silver
escutcheon.
Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovere had appointed no one. He had asked
in that paper that a short notice should be inserted in the paper giving
the hour and date of the services, and giving him the simple title
ex-Consul. "I hope," went on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery
quietly and followed by intimate friends, if any remain."
Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without doubt, but the dead
man's wish could hardly be carried out. Those obsequies which he had
wished to be quiet became a sort of fete, funereal and noisy; where the
thousands of people crowding the Boulevard crushed each other in their
desire to see, and pressed almost upon the draped funeral car which the
neighbors had covered with flowers.
Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The guardians of the peace
strove to keep back the crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of
the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of the staircase in the
narrow corridor opening upon the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a
table in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovere's unknown friends
could write their names.
Bernardet, alert, with his eyes wide open, studying the faces, searching
the eyes, mingled with the crowd, looked at the file of people,
scrutinized, one by one, the signatures; Bernardet, in mourning, wearing
black gloves, seemed more like an undertaker's assistant than a police
spy. Once he found himself directly in front of the open door of the
lodge and the table where the leaves lay covered with signatures; when
in the half light of the corridor draped with black, where the bier lay,
he saw a man of about fifty, pale and very sad looking. He had arrived,
in his turn in the line, at the table, where he signed his name. Mme.
Moniche, clothed in black, with a white handkerchief in her hand,
although she was not weeping, found herself side by side with Bernardet;
in fact, their elbows touched. When the man reached the table, coming
from the semi-darkness of the passage, and stepped into the light which
fell full on him from the window, the portress involuntarily exclaimed,
"Ah!" She was evidently much excited, and caught the police officer by
the hand and said:
"I am afraid!"
She spoke in such a low tone that Bernardet divined rather than heard
what she meant in that stifled cry. He looked at her from the corner of
his eye. He saw that she was ghastly, and again she spoke in a low tone:
"He! he whom I saw with M. Rovere before the open safe!"
Bernardet gave the man one sweeping glance of the eye. He fairly pierced
him through with his sharp look. The unknown, half bent over the table
whereon lay the papers, showed a wide forehead, slightly bald, and a
pointed beard, a little gray, which almost touched the white paper as he
wrote his name.
Suddenly the police officer experienced a strange sensation; it seemed
to him that this face, the shape of the head, the pointed beard, he had
recently seen somewhere, and that this human silhouette recalled to him
an image which he had recently studied. The perception of a possibility
of a proof gave him a shock. This man who was there made him think
suddenly of that phantom discernible in the photographs taken of the
retina of the murdered man's eye.
"Who is that man?"
Bernardet shivered with pleasurable excitement, and, insisting upon his
own impression that this unknown strongly recalled the image obtained,
and mentally he compared this living man, bending over the table,
writing his name, with that spectre which had the air of a trooper which
appeared in the photograph. The contour was the same, not only of the
face, but the beard. This man reminded one of a Seigneur of the time of
Henry III., and Bernardet found in that face something formidable. The
man had signed his name. He raised his head, and his face, of a dull
white, was turned full toward the police officer; their looks crossed,
keen on Bernardet's side, veiled in the unknown. But before the fixity
of the officer's gaze the strange man dropped his head for a moment;
then, in his turn, he fixed a piercing, almost menacing, gaze on
Bernardet. Then the latter slowly dropped his eyes and bowed; the
unknown went out quickly and was lost in the crowd before the house.
"It is he! it is he!" repeated the portress, who trembled as if she had
seen a ghost.
Scarcely had the unknown disappeared than the police officer took but
two steps to reach the table, and bending over it in his turn, he read
the name written by that man:
"Jacques Dantin."
The name awakened no remembrance in Bernardet's mind, and now it was a
living problem that he had to solve.
"Tell no one that you have seen that man," he hastily said to Mme.
Moniche. "No one! Do you hear?" And he hurried out into the Boulevard,
picking his way through the crowd and watching out to find that Jacques
Dantin, whom he wished to follow.