Through the Wall Part 64

Quickly and skillfully the a.s.sistant adjusted the leather sleeve over the bared left arm and drew it close with straps.

"Not too tight," said Duprat. "You feel a sense of throbbing at first, but it is nothing. Besides, we shall take the sleeve off shortly. Now then," he turned toward the lantern.

Immediately a familiar scene appeared upon the sheet, a colored photograph of the Place de la Concorde.

"What is it?" asked the doctor pleasantly.

The prisoner was silent.

"You surely recognize this picture. Look! The obelisk and the fountain, the Tuileries gardens, the arches of the Rue de Rivoli, and the Madeleine, there at the end of the Rue Royale. Come, what is it?"

"The Place de la Concorde," answered Groener sullenly.

"Of course. You see how simple it is. Now another."

The picture changed to a view of the grand opera house and at the same moment a point of light appeared in the headpiece back of the chair. It was shaded so that the prisoner could not see it and it illumined a graduated white dial on which was a gla.s.s tube about thirty inches long, the whole resembling a barometer. Inside the tube a red column moved regularly up and down, up and down, in steady beats and Coquenil understood that this column was registering the beating of Groener's heart. Standing behind the chair, the doctor, the magistrate, and the detective could at the same time watch the pulsating column and the pictures on the sheet; but the prisoner could not see the column, he did not know it was there, he saw only the pictures.

"What is that?" asked the doctor.

Groener had evidently decided to make the best of the situation for he answered at once: "The grand opera house."

"Good! Now another! What is that?"

"The Bastille column."

"Right! And this?"

"The Champs Elysees."

"And this?"

"Notre-Dame church."

So far the beats had come uniformly about one in a second, for the man's pulse was slow; at each beat the liquid in the tube shot up six inches and then dropped six inches, but, at the view of Notre-Dame, the column rose only three inches, then dropped back and shot up seven inches.

The doctor nodded gravely while Coquenil, with breathless interest, with a, morbid fascination, watched the beating of this red column. It was like the beating of red blood.

"_And this?_"

As the picture changed there was a quiver in the pulsating column, a hesitation with a quick fluttering at the bottom of the stroke, then the red line shot up full nine inches.

M. Paul glanced at the sheet and saw a perfect reproduction of private room Number Six in the Ansonia. Everything was there as on the night of the crime, the delicate yellow hangings, the sofa, the table set for two. And, slowly, as they looked, two holes appeared in the wall. Then a dim shape took form upon the floor, more and more distinctly until the dissolving lens brought a man's body into clear view, a body stretched face downward in a dark red pool that grew and widened, slowly straining and wetting the polished wood.

"Groener," said the magistrate, his voice strangely formidable in the shadows, "do you recognize this room?"

"No," said the prisoner impa.s.sively, but the column was pulsing wildly.

"You have been in this room?"

"Never."

"Nor looked through these eyeholes?"

"No."

"Nor seen that man lying on the floor?"

"No."

Now the prisoner's heart was beating evenly again, somehow he had regained his self-possession.

"You are lying, Groener," accused the judge. "You remember this man perfectly. Come, we will lift him from the floor and look him in the face, full in the face. There!" He signaled the lantern operator and there leaped forth on the sheet the head of Martinez, the murdered, mutilated head with shattered eye and painted cheeks and the greenish death pallor showing underneath. A ghastly, leering cadaver in collar and necktie, dressed up and photographed at the morgue, and now flashed hideously at the prisoner out of the darkness. Yet Groener's heart pulsed on steadily with only a slight quickening, with less quickening than Coquenil felt in his own heart.

"Who is it?" demanded the judge.

"I don't know," declared the accused.

Again the picture changed.

"Who is this?"

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"And this?"

"Prince Bismarck."

"And this?"

"Queen Victoria."

Here, suddenly, at the view of England's peaceful sovereign, Groener seemed thrown into frightful agitation, not Groener as he sat on the chair, cold and self-contained, but Groener as revealed by the unsuspected dial. Up and down in mad excitement leaped the red column with many little breaks and quiverings at the bottom of the beats and with tremendous up-shootings as if the frightened heart were trying to burst the tube with its spurting red jet.

The doctor put his mouth close to Coquenil's ear and whispered: "It's the shock showing now, the shock that he held back after the body."

Then he leaned over Groener's shoulder and asked kindly: "Do you feel your heart beating fast, my friend?"

"No," murmured the prisoner, "my--my heart is beating as usual."

"You will certainly recognize the next picture," pursued the judge. "It shows a woman and a little girl! There! Do you know these faces, Groener?"

As he spoke there appeared the fake photograph that Coquenil had found in Brussels, Alice at the age of twelve with the smooth young widow.

The prisoner shook his head. "I don't know them--I never saw them."

"Groener," warned the magistrate, "there is no use keeping up this denial, you have betrayed yourself already."

"No," cried the prisoner with a supreme rally of his will power, "I have betrayed nothing--nothing," and, once more, while the doctor marveled, his pulse steadied and strengthened and grew normal.