The Three Eyes Part 28

The next shows us two men walking along a deserted path, beside which flows a narrow river. They are talking without animation; they might be discussing the weather.

When they turn round and retrace their steps, we see that one of the two men, the one who hitherto had been hidden behind his companion, carries a revolver.

They both stop and continue to talk quietly. But the face of the armed man becomes distorted and a.s.sumes the same criminal expression which we beheld in the first murderer. And suddenly he makes a movement of attack and fires; the other falls; and the first flings himself upon him and s.n.a.t.c.hes a pocket-book from him.

There were four more murders, none of which had as its perpetrator or its victim any one who was known to us. They were so many sensational incidents, very short, restricted to the essential factors; the peaceful representation of a scene in daily life and the sudden explosion of crime in all its b.e.s.t.i.a.l horror.

The sight was dreadful, especially because of the expression of confidence and serenity maintained by the victim, while we, in the audience, saw the phantom of death rise over him. The waiting for the blow which we were unable to avert left us breathless and terrified.

And one last picture of a man appeared to us. A stifled exclamation rose from the crowd. It was Noel Dorgeroux.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CHaTEAU DE PRe-BONY

The exclamation of the crowd proved to me that, at the sight of the great old man, who was known to all by his portraits and by the posters exhibited at the doors of the Yard, the same thought had instantaneously struck us all. We understood from the first. After the series of criminal pictures, we knew the meaning of Noel Dorgeroux's appearance on the screen and knew the inexorable climax of the story which we were being told. There had been six victims. My uncle would be the seventh. We were going to witness his death and to see the face of the murderer.

All this was planned with the most disconcerting skill and with a logic whose implacable rigour wrung our very souls. We were as though imprisoned in a horribly painful track which we were bound to follow to the end, notwithstanding the unspeakable violence of our sensations. I sometimes ask myself, in all sincerity, whether the series of miraculous visions could have been continued much longer, so far did the nervous tension which they demanded exceed our human strength.

A succession of pictures showed us several episodes of which the first dated back to a period when Noel Dorgeroux certainly had not discovered the great secret, for his son was still alive. It was the time of the war. Dominique, in uniform, was embracing the old fellow, who was weeping and trying to hold him back; and, when Dominique went, Noel Dorgeroux watched him go with all the distress of a father who is not to see his son again.

Next we have him again, once more in the Yard, which is enc.u.mbered with its sheds and workshops, as it used to be. Berangere, quite a child, is running to and fro. She is thirteen or fourteen at most.

We now follow their existence in pictures which tell us with what hourly attention my uncle Dorgeroux's labours were watched _from up yonder_. He became old and bent. The little one grew up, which did not deter her from playing and running about.

On the day when we are to see her as I had found her in the previous summer, we see at the same time Noel Dorgeroux standing on a ladder and daubing the wall with a long brush which he keeps dipping into a can. He steps back and looks with a questioning gaze at the wall where the screen is marked out. There is nothing. Nevertheless something vague and confused must already have throbbed in the heart of the substance, because he seems to be waiting and seeking. . . .

A click; and everything is changed. The amphitheatre arises, unfinished in parts, as it was on the Sunday in March when I discovered my uncle's dead body. The new wall is there, surrounded by its canopy. My uncle has opened the recess contained in the bas.e.m.e.nt and is arranging his carboys.

But, now, beyond the amphitheatre, which grows smaller for an instant, we see the trees in the woods and the undulations of the adjoining meadow; and a man comes up on that side and moves towards the path which skirts the fence. I for my part recognize his figure. It is the man with whom I was to struggle, half an hour later, in the wood through which he had just come. It is the murderer. He is wrapped in a rain-coat whose upturned collar touches the lowered brim of his hat.

He walks uneasily. He goes up to the lamp-post, looks around him, climbs up slowly and makes his way into the Yard. He follows the road which I myself took that day after him and thrusts forward his head as I did.

Noel Dorgeroux is standing before the screen. He has closed the recess and jotted down some notes in a book. The victim suspects nothing.

Then the man throws off his wrap and his hat. He turns his face in our direction. It is Ma.s.signac.

The crowd was so much expecting to find that it was he that there was no demonstration of surprise. Besides, the pictures on this day were of a nature that left no room for alien thoughts or impressions. The consequences which might ensue from the public proof of Ma.s.signac's guilt were not apparent to us. We were not living through the minutes which were elapsing _in the past_ but through those which were elapsing _in the present_; and until the last moment we thought only of knowing _whether Noel Dorgeroux, whom we knew to be dead, was going to be murdered_.

The scene did not last long. In reality my uncle was not conscious for a second of the danger that threatened him; and, contrary to what was elicited at the enquiry, there was no trace of that struggle of which the signs appeared to have been discovered. This struggle occurred _afterwards_, when my uncle had been struck down and was lying on the ground, motionless. It took place between a murderer seized with insensate fury and the corpse which he seemed bent upon _killing anew_.

And in fact it was this act of savage brutality that let loose the rage of the crowd. Held back until then by a sort of unreasoning hope and petrified, in its terror, at the sight of the loathsome act accomplished on the screen, it was stirred with anger and hatred against the living and visible murderer whose existence suddenly provoked it beyond endurance. It experienced a sense of revolt and a need for immediate justice which no considerations were able to stay.

It underwent an immediate change of att.i.tude. It withdrew itself abruptly from any sort of memory or evocation of the past, to fling itself into the reality of the present and to play its part in the necessary action. And, obeying an unanimous impulse, pouring helter-skelter down the tiers and flowing like a torrent through every gangway, it rushed to the a.s.sault of the iron cage in which Ma.s.signac was sheltering.

I cannot describe exactly the manner in which things took place.

Ma.s.signac, who attempted to take flight at the first moment of the accusation, found in front of him the twelve policemen, who next turned against the crowd when it came dashing against the rails of the high grille. But what resistance were those twelve men able to offer? The grille fell. The police were borne down in the crush. In a flash I saw Ma.s.signac braced against the wall and taking aim with two revolvers held in his outstretched hands. A number of shots rang out.

Some of the aggressors dropped. Then Ma.s.signac, taking advantage of the hesitation which kept back the others, stooped swiftly towards the electric battery in the foundation. He pressed a b.u.t.ton. Right at the top of the wall, the canopy overhanging the two pillars opened like a sluice and sent forth streams of a bluish liquid, which seethed and bubbled in a cascade over the whole surface of the screen.

I then remembered Ma.s.signac's terrible prophecy:

"If I die, it means the death of Noel Dorgeroux's secret. We shall perish together."

In the anguish of peril, at the very bottom of the abyss, he had conceived the abominable idea and had the courage to carry out his threat. My uncle's work was utterly destroyed.

Nevertheless I darted forward, as though I could still avert the disaster by saving the scoundrel's life. But the crowd had seized upon its prey and was pa.s.sing it from hand to hand, like a howling pack worrying and rending the animal which it had hunted down.

I succeeded in shouldering my way through with the aid of two policemen and then only because Ma.s.signac's body had ended by falling into the hands of a band of less infuriated a.s.sailants, who were embarra.s.sed by the sight of the dying man. They formed themselves into a group to protect his death-struggles and one of them even, raising his voice above the din, called to me:

"Quick, quick!" he said, when I came near. "He is speaking your name."

At the first glance at the ma.s.s of bleeding flesh that lay on one of the tiers, between two rows of seats, I perceived that there was no hope and that it was a miracle that this corpse was still breathing.

Still it was uttering my name. I caught the syllables as I stooped over the face mauled beyond recognition and, speaking slowly and distinctly, I said:

"It's I, Ma.s.signac, it's Victorien Beaugrand. What have you to say to me?"

He managed to lift his eyelids, looked at me with a dim eye which closed again immediately and stammered:

"A letter . . . a letter . . . sewn in the lining. . . ."

I felt the rags of cloth which remained of his jacket. Ma.s.signac had done well to sew up the letter, for all the other papers had left his pocket. I at once read my name on the envelope.

"Open it . . . open it," he said, in a whisper.

I tore open the envelope. There were only a few lines scribbled in a large hand across the sheet of paper, a few lines of which I took the time to read only the first, which said:

"Berangere knows the formula."

"Berangere!" I exclaimed. "But where is she? Do you know?"

I at once understood the imprudence of which I had been guilty in thus mentioning the girl's name aloud; and, bending lower down, I put my ear to Ma.s.signac's mouth to catch his last words.

He repeated the name of Berangere time after time, in the effort to p.r.o.nounce the answer which I asked for and which his memory perhaps refused to supply. His lips moved convulsively and he stammered forth some hoa.r.s.e sounds which were more like a death-rattle but which yet enabled me to distinguish the words:

"Berangere. . . . Chateau . . . Chateau de Pre-Bony. . . ."

However great the tension of the mind may be when concentrated on an idea which entirely absorbs it, we remain more or less subject to the thousand sensations that a.s.sail us. Thus, at the very moment when I rose and, in a whisper, repeated, "Chateau de Pre-Bony . . . de Pre-Bony," the vague impression that another had heard the address which Ma.s.signac had given began to take shape and consistency within me. Nay more, I perceived, _when it was too late_, that this other man, thanks to his position at my side, must have been able to read as I had read, the opening words of Theodore Ma.s.signac's letter. And that other man's able make-up suddenly dropped away before my eyes to reveal the pallid features of the man Velmot.

I turned my head. The man had just made his way out of the band of onlookers who stood gathered round us and was slipping through the shifting ma.s.ses of the crowd. I called out. I shouted his name. I dragged detectives in his wake. It was too late.