The Three Eyes Part 14

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 G.o.d-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 wis.h.i.+ng to express his love for her and his extreme anxiety on her behalf. In writing his G.o.d-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 G.o.d-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 ma.n.u.script which M. Dorgeroux sent you has disappeared: who was in a better position than she to steal it?

However, mark me, I make no a.s.sertions. 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 Ma.s.signac 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 G.o.d-daughter--the police consented, at my earnest entreaties, to accept this as the official version--the theft of my uncle's ma.n.u.script, 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, cla.s.sify, 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. .h.i.t 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 ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d-daughter, Berangere Ma.s.signac 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 doc.u.ment, 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 const.i.tuted 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 partners.h.i.+p. 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 a.s.surance.

"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."