The Three Eyes Part 11

This last incident, I confess, caused me a certain alarm. My uncle's fears were shown to be based upon a serious fact. There was evidently some one prowling around the Lodge and forcing an entrance in pursuance of a scheme whose nature was easy to guess. Involuntarily I thought of the man with the gla.s.ses and his relations with Berangere.

There was no knowing. . . .

I made a fresh attempt to persuade the girl to communicate with me:

"You know what's happening at the Lodge, don't you?" I wrote. "How do you explain those facts, which to me seem pretty significant? Be sure to send me word if you feel the least uneasiness. And keep a close watch in the meantime."

I followed up this letter with two telegrams dispatched in quick succession. But Berangere's stubborn silence, instead of distressing me, served rather to allay my apprehensions. She would not have failed to send for me had there been any danger. No, my uncle was mistaken.

He was a victim to the feverish condition into which his discovery was throwing him. As the date approached on which he had decided to make it public, he felt anxious. But there was nothing to justify his apprehensions.

I allowed a few more days to elapse. Then I wrote Berangere a letter of twenty pages, filled with reproaches, which I did not post. Her behaviour exasperated me. I suffered from a bitter fit of jealousy.

At last, on Sat.u.r.day, the twenty-ninth of March, I received from my uncle a registered bundle of papers and a very explicit letter, which I kept and which I am copying _verbatim_:

"MY DEAR VICTORIEN,

"Recent events, combined with certain very serious circ.u.mstances of which I will tell you, prove that I am the object of a cunningly devised plot against which I have perhaps delayed defending myself longer than I ought. At any rate, it is my duty, in the midst of the dangers which threaten my very life, to protect the magnificent discovery which mankind will owe to my efforts and to take precautionary measures which you will certainly not think unwarranted.

"I have, therefore, drawn up--as I always refused to do before--a detailed report of my discovery, the investigations that led up to it and the conclusions to which my experiments have led me. However improbable it may seem, however contrary to all the accepted laws, the truth is as I state and not otherwise.

"I have added to my report a very exact definition of the technical processes which should be employed in the installation and exploitation of my discovery, as also of my special views upon the financial management of the amphitheatre, the advertising, the floating of the business and the manner in which it might subsequently be extended by building in the garden and where the Lodge now stands a second amphitheatre to face the other side of the wall.

"I am sending you this report by the same post, sealed and registered, and I will ask you not to open it unless I come by some harm. As an additional precaution, I have not included in it the chemical formula which has resulted from my labours and which is the actual basis of my discovery. You will find it engraved on a small and very thin steel plate which I always carry inside the lining of my waistcoat. In this way you and you alone will have in your hands all the necessary factors for exploiting the invention.

This will need no special qualifications or scientific preparation. The report and the formula are ample. Holding these two, you are master of the situation; and no one can ever rob you of the material profits of the wonderful secret which I am bequeathing to you.

"And now, my dear boy, let us hope that all my presentiments are unfounded and that we shall soon be celebrating together the happy events which I foresee, including first and foremost your marriage with Berangere. I have not yet been able to obtain a favourable reply from her and she has for some time appeared to me to be, as you put it, in a rather fanciful mood; but I have no doubt that your return will make her reconsider a refusal which she does not even attempt to justify.

"Ever affectionately yours, NOeL DORGEROUX."

This letter reached me too late to allow me to catch the evening express. Besides, was there any urgency for my departure? Ought I not to wait for further news?

A casual observation made short work of my hesitation. As I sat reflecting, mechanically turning the envelope in my hands, I perceived that it had been opened and then fastened down again; what is more, this had been done rather clumsily, probably by some one who had only a few seconds at his disposal.

The full gravity of the situation at once flashed across my mind. The man who had opened the letter before it was dispatched and who beyond a doubt was the man whom Noel Dorgeroux accused of plotting, this man now knew that Noel Dorgeroux carried on his person, in the lining of his waistcoat, a steel plate bearing an inscription containing the essential formula.

I examined the registered packet and observed that it had not been opened. Nevertheless, at all costs, though I was firmly resolved not to read my uncle's report, I undid the string and discovered a pasteboard tube. Inside this tube was a roll of paper which I eagerly examined. It consisted of blank pages and nothing else. The report had been stolen.

Three hours later, I was seated in a night train which did not reach Paris until the afternoon of the next day, Sunday. It was four o'clock when I walked out of the station at Meudon. The enemy had for at least two days known the contents of my uncle's letter, his report and the dreadful means of procuring the formula.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIERCE-EYED MAN

The staff at the Lodge consisted in its entirety of one old maid-servant, a little deaf and very short-sighted, who combined the functions, as occasion demanded, of parlour-maid, cook and gardener.

Notwithstanding these manifold duties, Valentine hardly ever left her kitchen-range, which was situated in an extension built on to the house and opening directly upon the street.

This was where I found her. She did not seem surprised at my return--nothing, for that matter, ever surprised or perturbed her--and I at once saw that she was still living outside the course of events and that she would be unable to tell me anything useful. I gathered, however, that my uncle and Berangere had gone out half an hour earlier.

"Together?" I asked.

"Good gracious, no! The master came through the kitchen and said, 'I'm going to post a letter. Then I shall go to the Yard.' He left a bottle behind him, you know, one of those blue medicine-bottles which he uses for his experiments."

"Where did he leave it, Valentine?"

"Why, over there, on the dresser. He must have forgotten it when he put on his overcoat, for he never parts with those bottles of his."

"It's not there, Valentine."

"Now that's a funny thing! M. Dorgeroux hasn't been back, I know."

"And has no one else been?"

"No. Yes, there has, though; a gentleman, a gentleman who came for Mlle. Berangere a little while after."

"And did you go to fetch her?"

"Yes."

"Then it must have been while you were away . . ."

"You don't mean that! Oh, how M. Dorgeroux will scold me!"

"But who is the gentleman?"

"Upon my word, I couldn't tell you. . . . My sight is so bad. . . ."

"Do you know him?"

"No, I didn't recognize his voice."

"And did they both go out, Berangere and he?"

"Yes, they crossed the road . . . opposite."

Opposite meant the path in the wood.

I thought for a second or two; and then, tearing a sheet of paper from my note-book, I wrote:

"MY DEAR UNCLE,

"Wait for me, when you come back, and don't leave the Lodge on any account. The danger is imminent.

"VICTORIEN."