The Three Eyes Part 16

He was laughing, however, with a look of a man who congratulates himself on the events with which he is mixed up, or rather, perhaps, on the very skilful fas.h.i.+on in which he believes himself to have manipulated them.

With one hand, I pushed in his direction the hat which he had laid on the table. Then I opened the door leading into the hall.

He rose and said:

"I am staying close by, at the Station Hotel. Would you mind having any letters sent there which may come for me here? For I suppose you have no room for me at the Lodge?"

I abruptly gripped him by the arm and cried:

"You know what you're risking, don't you?"

"In doing what?"

"In pursuing your enterprise."

"Upon my word, I don't quite see . . ."

"Prison, sir, prison."

"Oh, come! Prison!"

"Prison, sir. The police will never accept all your stories and all your lies!"

His mouth widened into a new laugh:

"What big words! And how unjust, when addressed to a respectable father who seeks nothing but his daughter's happiness! No, no, sir, believe me, the inauguration will take place on the fourteenth of May . . . unless, indeed, you oppose the wishes which your uncle expresses in his will. . . ."

He gave me a questioning look, which betrayed a certain uneasiness; and I myself wavered as to the answer which I ought to give him. My hesitation yielded to a motive of which I did not weigh the value clearly but which seemed to me so imperious that I declared:

"I shall raise no opposition: not that I respect a will which does not represent my uncle's real intentions, but because I am bound to sacrifice everything to his fame. If Noel Dorgeroux's discovery depends on you, go ahead: the means which you have employed to get hold of it do not concern me."

With a fresh burst of merry laughter and a low bow, the fellow left the room. That evening, in the course of a visit to the solicitor, and next day, through the newspapers, he boldly set forth his claims, which, I may say, from the legal point of view, were recognized as absolutely legitimate. But, two days later, he was summoned to appear before the examining-magistrate and an enquiry was opened against him.

Against him is the right term. Certainly, there was no fact to be laid to his charge. Certainly, he was able to prove that he had been ill in bed, nursed by a woman-of-all-work who had been looking after him for a month, and that he had left his place in Toulouse only to come straight to Paris. But what had he done in Paris? Whom had he seen?

From whom had he obtained the ma.n.u.script and the formula? He was unable to furnish explanations in reply to any of these questions.

He did not even try:

"I am pledged to secrecy," he said. "I gave my word of honour not to say anything about those who handed me the doc.u.ments I needed."

The man Ma.s.signac's word of Honour! The man Ma.s.signac's scruples!

Lies, of course! Hypocrisy! Subterfuge! But, all the same, however suspect the fellow might be, it was difficult to know of what to accuse him or how to sustain the accusation when made.

And then there was this element of strangeness, that the suspicion, the presumption, the certainty that the man Ma.s.signac was the willing tool of the two criminals, all this was swept away by the great movement of curiosity that carried people off their feet. Judicial procedure, ordinary precautions, regular adjournments, legal procrastinations which delay the entry into possession of the legatees were one and all neglected. The public wanted to see and know; and Theodore Ma.s.signac was the man who held the prodigious secret.

He was therefore allowed to have the keys of the amphitheatre and went in alone, or with labourers upon whom he kept an eye, replacing them by fresh gangs so as to avoid plots and machinations. He often went to Paris, throwing off the scent of the detectives who dogged his movements, and returned with bottles and cans carefully wrapped up.

On the day before that fixed for the inauguration, the police were no wiser than on the first day in matters concerning the man Ma.s.signac, or Velmot's hiding-place, or the murderer's, or Berangere's. The same ignorance prevailed regarding Noel Dorgeroux's secret, the circ.u.mstances of his death and the ambiguous words which he had scribbled on the plaster of the wall. As for the miraculous visions which I have described, they were denied or accepted as vigorously and as unreasonably by both the disputing parties. In short, n.o.body knew anything.

And this perhaps was the reason why the thousand seats in the amphitheatre were sold out within a few hours. Priced at a hundred francs apiece, they were bought up by half-a-dozen speculators who got rid of them at two or three times their original cost. How delighted my poor uncle would have been had he lived to see it!

The night before the fourteenth of May, I slept very badly, haunted by nightmares that kept on waking me with a start. At the first glimmer of dawn, I was sitting on the side of my bed when, in the deep silence, which was barely broken by the twittering of a few birds, I seemed to hear the sound of a key in a lock and a door creaking on its hinges.

I must explain that, since my uncle's death, I had been sleeping next to the room that used to be his. Now the noise came from that room, from which I was separated only by a glazed door covered with a chintz curtain. I listened and heard the sound of a chair moved from its place. There was certainly some one in the next room; and this some one, obviously unaware that I occupied the adjoining chamber, was taking scarcely any precautions. But how had he got in?

I sprang from the bed, slipped on my trousers, took up a revolver and drew aside a corner of the curtain. At first, the shutters were closed and the room in darkness and I saw only an indistinct shadow. Then the window was opened softly. Somebody lifted the iron bar and pushed back the shutters, thus admitting the light.

I now saw a woman return to the middle of the room. She was draped from head to foot in a brown stuff cloak. Nevertheless I knew her at once. It was Berangere.

I had a feeling not so much of amazement as of sudden and profound pity at the sight of her emaciated face, her poor face, once so bright and eager, now so sad and wan. I did not even think of rejoicing at the fact of her being alive, nor did I ask myself what clandestine business had brought her back to the Lodge. The one thing that held me captive was the painful spectacle of her pallid face, with its feverish, burning eyes and blue eyelids. Her cloak betrayed the shrunken figure beneath it.

Her heart must have been beating terribly, for she held her two hands to her breast to suppress its throbbing. She even had to lean on the edge of the table. She staggered and nearly fell. Poor Berangere. I felt anguish-stricken as I watched her.

She pulled herself together, however, and looked around her. Then, with a tottering gait, she went to the mantelpiece, where two old engravings, framed in black with a gold beading, hung one on either side of the looking-gla.s.s. She climbed on a chair and took down the one on the right, a portrait of D'Alembert.

Stepping down from the chair, she examined the back of the frame, which was closed by a piece of old card-board the edges of which were fastened to the sides of the frame by strips of gummed cloth.

Berangere cut these strips with a pen-knife, bending back the tacks which held the cardboard in position. It came out of the frame; and I then saw--Berangere had her back turned in my direction, so that not a detail escaped me--I then saw that there was inserted between the cardboard and the engraving a large sheet of paper covered with my uncle's writing.

At the top, in red ink, was a drawing of the three geometrical eyes.

Next came the following words, in bold black capitals:

"Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from the ma.n.u.script sent to my nephew."

And next forty or fifty very closely-written lines, in a hand too small to allow me to decipher them.

Besides, I had not the time. Berangere merely glanced at the paper.

Having found the object of her search and obtained possession of an additional doc.u.ment which my uncle had provided in case the ma.n.u.script should be lost, she folded it up, slipped it into her bodice, replaced the cardboard and hung the engraving where she had found it.

Was she going away? If so, she was bound to return as she had come, that is to say, evidently, through Noel Dorgeroux's dressing-room, on the other side of the bedroom, of which she had left the communicating-door ajar. I was about to prevent her and had already taken hold of the door-handle, when suddenly she moved a few steps towards my uncle's bed and fell on her knees, stretching out her hands in despair.

Her sobs rose in the silence. She stammered words which I was able to catch:

"G.o.d-father! . . . My poor G.o.d-father!"

And she pa.s.sionately kissed the coverlet of the bed beside which she must often have sat up watching my uncle when he was ill.

Her fit of crying lasted a long time and did not cease until just as I entered. Then she turned her head, saw me and stood up slowly, without taking her eyes from my face:

"You!" she murmured. "It's you!"

Seeing her make for the door, I said:

"Don't go, Berangere."

She stopped, looking paler than ever, with drawn features.

"Give me that sheet of paper," I said, in a voice of command.