The Three Eyes Part 22

And I at once took up the receiver:

"Are you there? Is that M. Prevotelle?"

At first I heard only my name, uttered in a very faint, indistinct voice, a woman's voice:

"Victorien. . . . Victorien. . . ."

"Hullo!" I cried, very excitedly, though I did not yet understand.

"Hullo! . . . Yes, it's I, Victorien Beaugrand. I happened to be at the telephone. . . . Hullo! . . . Who is it speaking?"

For a few seconds the voice sounded nearer and then seemed to fall away. After that came perfect silence. But I had caught these few words:

"Help, Victorien! . . . My father's life is in danger: help! . . .

Come to the Blue Lion at Bougival. . . ."

I stood dumbfounded. I had recognised Berangere's voice:

"Berangere," I muttered, "calling on me for help. . . ."

Without even pausing to think, I rushed to the station.

A train took me to Saint-Cloud and another two stations further.

Wading through the mud, under the pelting rain, and losing my way in the dark, I covered the mile or two to Bougival on foot, arriving in the middle of the night. The Blue Lion was closed. But a small boy dozing under the porch asked me if I was M. Victorien Beaugrand. When I answered that I was, he said that a lady, by the name of Berangere, had told him to wait for me and take me to her, at whatever time I might arrive.

I trudged beside the boy, through the empty streets of the little town, to the banks of the Seine, which we followed for some distance.

The rain had stopped, but the darkness was still impenetrable.

"The boat is here," said the boy.

"Oh, are we crossing?"

"Yes, the young lady is hiding on the other side. Be very careful not to make a noise."

We landed soon after. Then a stony path took us to a house where the boy gave three knocks on the door.

Some one opened the door. Still following my guide, I went up a few steps, crossed a pa.s.sage lighted by a candle and was shown into a dark room with some one waiting in it. Instantly the light of an electric lamp struck me full in the face.

The barrel of a revolver was pointed at me and a man's voice said:

"Silence, do you understand? The least sound, the least attempt at escape; and you're done for. Otherwise you have nothing to fear; and the best thing you can do is to go to sleep."

The door was closed behind me. Two bolts were shot.

I had fallen into the trap which the man Velmot--I did not hesitate to fix upon him at once--had laid for me through the instrumentality of Berangere.

This unaccountable adventure, like all those in which Berangere was involved, did not alarm me unduly at the moment. I was no doubt too weary to seek reasons for the conduct of the girl and of the man under whose instructions she was acting. Why had she betrayed me? How had I incurred the man Velmot's ill-will? And what had induced him to imprison me, if I had nothing to fear from him as he maintained? These were all idle questions. After groping through the room and finding that it contained a bed, or rather a mattress and blankets, I took off my boots and outer clothing, wrapped myself in the blankets and in a few minutes was fast asleep.

I slept well into the following day. Meanwhile some one must have entered the room, for I saw on a table a hunk of new bread and a bottle of water. The cell which I occupied was a small one. Enough light to enable me to see came through the slats of a wooden shutter, which was firmly barricaded outside, as I discovered after opening the narrow window. One of the slats was half broken. Through the gap I perceived that my prison overlooked from a height of three or four feet a strip of ground at the edge of which little waves lapped among the reeds. Finding that, after crossing one river, I was facing another, I concluded that Velmot had brought me to an island in the Seine. Was this not the island which I had beheld, in a fleeting vision, on the chapel in the cemetery? And was it not here that Velmot and Ma.s.signac had established their head-quarters last winter?

Part of the day pa.s.sed in silence. But, about five o'clock, I heard a sound of voices and outbursts of argument. This happened under my room and consequently in a cellar the grating of which opened beneath my window. On listening attentively, I seemed on several occasions to recognize Ma.s.signac's voice.

The discussion lasted fully an hour. Then some one made his appearance outside my window and called out:

"Hi, you chaps, come on and get ready! . . . . He's a stubborn beast and won't speak unless we make him."

It was the tall fellow who, the day before, had forced his way through the crowd in the Yard by making an outcry about a wounded man. It was Velmot, a leaner Velmot, without beard or gla.s.ses, Velmot, the c.o.xcomb, the object of Berangere's affections.

"_I'll_ make him, the brute! Think of it. I've got him here, at my mercy: is it likely that I shouldn't be able to make him spew up his secret? No, no, we must finish it and by nightfall. You're still decided?"

He received two growls in reply. He sneered:

"He's not half badly trussed up, eh? All right. I'll do without you.

Only just lend me a hand to begin with."

He stepped into a boat fastened to a ring on the bank. One of the men pushed it with a boat-hook between two stakes planted in the mud and standing out well above the reeds. Velmot knotted one end of a thick rope to the top of each stake and in the middle fastened an iron hook, which thus hung four or five feet above the water.

"That's it," he said, on returning. "I shan't want you any more. Take the other boat and go and wait for me in the garage. I'll join you there in three or four hours, when Ma.s.signac has blabbed his little story and after I've had a little plain speaking with our new prisoner. And then we'll be off."

He walked away with his two a.s.sistants. When I saw him again, twenty minutes later, he had a newspaper in his hand. He laid it on a little table which stood just outside my window. Then he sat down and lit a cigar. He turned his back to me, hiding the table from my view. But at one moment he moved and I caught sight of his paper, the _Journal du Soir_, which was folded across the page and which bore a heading in capitals running right across the width of the sheet, with this sensational t.i.tle:

"THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MEUDON APPARITIONS REVEALED"

I was shaken to the very depths of my being. So the young student had not lied! Benjamin Prevotelle had discovered the truth and had managed, in the s.p.a.ce of a few hours, to set it forth in the report of which he had spoken and to make it public.

Glued to the shutter, how I strove to read the opening lines of the article! These were the only lines that met my eyes, because of the manner in which the paper was folded. And how great was my excitement at each word that I made out!

I have carefully preserved a copy of that paper, by which a part at least of the great mystery was made known to me. Before reprinting the famous report, which Benjamin Prevotelle had published that morning, it said:

"Yes, the fantastic problem is solved. A contemporary published this morning, in the form of 'An Open Letter to the Academy of Science,' the most sober, luminous and convincing report conceivable. We do not know whether the official experts will agree with the conclusions of the report, but we doubt if the objections, which for that matter are frankly stated by the author, are strong enough, however grave they may be, to demolish the theory which he propounds. The arguments seem unanswerable. The proofs are such as to compel belief. And what doubles the value of this admirable theory is that it does not merely appear to be una.s.sailable, but opens up to us the widest and most marvellous horizons. In fact, Noel Dorgeroux's discovery is no longer limited to what it is or what it seems to be. It implies consequences which cannot be foretold. It is calculated to upset all our ideas of man's past and all our conceptions of his future.

Not since the beginning of the world has there been an event to compare with this. It is at the same time the most incomprehensible event and the most natural, the most complex and the simplest. A great scientist might have announced it to the world as the result of meditation. And he who, thanks both to able intuition and intelligent observation has achieved this inestimable glory is little more than a boy in years.

"We subjoin a few particulars gleaned in the course of an interview which Benjamin Prevotelle was good enough to grant us. We apologize for being able to give no more details concerning his personality. How should it be otherwise: Benjamin Prevotelle is twenty-three years of age. He . . ."

I had to stop here, as the subsequent lines escaped my eyes. Was I to learn more?

Velmot had risen from his chair and was walking to and fro. After a brief disappearance, he returned with a bottle of some liqueur, of which he drank two gla.s.ses in quick succession. Then he unfolded the newspaper and began to peruse the report or rather to reperuse it, for I had no doubt that he had read it before.

His chair was right against my shutter. He sat leaning back, so that I was able to see, not the end of the preliminary article, but the report itself, which he read rather slowly.

The daylight, proceeding from a sky whose clouds must have hidden the sun, was meantime diminis.h.i.+ng. I read simultaneously with Velmot:

"_An Open Letter to the Academy of Science_

"I will beg you, gentlemen, to regard this memorandum as only the briefest possible introduction to the more important essay which I propose to write and to the innumerable volumes to which it is certain to give rise in every country, to which volumes also it will serve as a modest preface.

"I am writing hurriedly, allowing my pen to run away with me, improvising hastily as I go along. You will find omissions and defects which I do not attempt to conceal and which are due in equal proportions to the restricted number of observations which we were able to make at Meudon and to the obstinate refusal which M. Theodore Ma.s.signac opposes to every request for additional information. But the remarkable feeling aroused by the miraculous pictures makes it my duty to offer the results, as yet extremely incomplete, of an investigation in respect of which I have the legitimate ambition to reserve the right of priority.

I thus hope, by confining my hypotheses to a definite channel, to a.s.sist towards establis.h.i.+ng the truth and relieving the public mind.