CHAPTER VI
ANXIETIES
"You seem very happy, uncle!" said I to Noël Dorgeroux, who walked briskly on the way to the station, whistling one gay tune after another.
"Yes," he replied, "I am happy as a man is who has come to a decision."
"You've come to a decision, uncle?"
"And a very serious one at that. It has cost me a sleepless night; but it's worth it."
"May I ask.. ?"
"Certainly. In two words, it's this: I'm going to pull down the sheds in the Yard and build an amphitheatre there."
"What for?"
"To exploit the thing.. the thing you know of."
"How do you mean, to exploit it?"
"Why, it's a tremendously important discovery; and, if properly worked, it will give me the money which I have always been trying for, not for its own sake, but because of the resources which it will bring me, money with the aid of which I shall be able to continue my labours without being checked by secondary considerations. There are millions to be made, Victorien, millions! And what shall I not accomplish with millions! This brain of mine," he went on, tapping his forehead, "is simply crammed with ideas, with theories which need verifying. And it all takes money… Money! Money! You know how little I care about money! But I want millions, if I am to carry through my work. And those millions I shall have!"
Mastering his enthusiasm, he took my arm and explained:
"First of all, the Yard cleared of its rubbish and levelled. After that, the amphitheatre, with five stages of benches facing the wall. For of course the wall remains: it is the essential point, the reason for the whole thing. But I shall heighten and widen it; and, when it is quite unobstructed, there will be a clear view of it from every seat. You follow me, don't you?"
"I follow you, uncle. But do you think people will come?"
"Will they come? What! You, who know, ask me that question! Why, they will pay gold for the worst seat, they'll give a king's ransom to get in! I'm so sure of it that I shall put all I have left, the last remnant of my savings, into the business. And within a year I shall have amassed incalculable wealth."
"The place is quite small, uncle, and you will have only a limited number of seats."
"A thousand, a thousand seats, comfortably! At two hundred francs a seat to begin with, at a thousand francs!."
"I say, uncle! Seats in the open air, exposed to the rain, to the cold, to all sorts of weather!"
"I've foreseen that objection. The Yard will be closed on rainy days. I want bright daylight, sunshine, the action of the light and other conditions besides, which will still further decrease the number of demonstrations. But that doesn't matter: each seat will cost two thousand francs, five thousand francs, if necessary! I tell you, there's no limit! No one will be content to die without having been to Noël Dorgeroux's Yard! Why, Victorien, you know it as well as I do! When all is said, the reality is more extraordinary than anything that you can imagine, even after what you have seen with your own eyes."
I could not help asking him:
"Then there are fresh manifestations?"
He replied by nodding his head:
"It's not so much that they're new," he said, "as that, above all, they have enabled me, with the factors which I already possess, to probe the truth to the bottom."
"Uncle! Uncle!" I cried. "You mean to say that you know the truth?"
"I know the whole truth, my boy," he declared. "I know how much is my work and how much has nothing to do with me. What was once darkness is now dazzling light."
And he added, in a very serious tone:
"It is beyond all imagination, my boy. It is beyond the most extravagant dreams; and yet it remains within the province of facts and certainties. Once humanity knows of it, the earth will pass through a thrill of religious awe; and the people who come here as pilgrims will fall upon their knees – as I did – fall upon their knees like children who pray and fold their hands and weep!"
His words, which were obviously exaggerated, seemed to come from an ill-balanced mind. Yet I felt the force of their exciting and feverish influence:
"Explain yourself, uncle, I beg you."
"Later on, my boy, when all the points have been cleared up."
"What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing from you."
"From whom then?"
"Nobody. But I have my misgivings.. quite wrongly, perhaps. Still, certain facts lead me to think that I am being spied upon and that some one is trying to discover my secret. It's just a few clues.. things that have been moved from their place.. and, above all, a vague intuition."
"This is all very indefinite, uncle."
"Very, I admit," he said, drawing himself up. "And so forgive me if my precautions are excessive.. and let's talk of something else: of yourself, Victorien, of your plans."
"I have no plans, uncle."
"Yes, you have. There's one at least that you're keeping from me."
"How so?"
He stopped in his walk and said:
"You're in love with Bérangère."
I did not think of protesting, knowing that Noël Dorgeroux had been in the Yard the day before, in front of the screen:
"I am, uncle, I'm in love with Bérangère, but she doesn't care for me."
"Yes, she does, Victorien."
I displayed some slight impatience:
"Uncle, I must ask you not to insist. Bérangère is a mere child; she does not know what she wants; she is incapable of any serious feeling; and I do not intend to think about her any more. On my part, it was just a fancy of which I shall soon be cured."
Noël Dorgeroux shrugged his shoulders:
"Lovers' quarrels! Now this is what I have to say to you, Victorien. The work at the Yard will take up all the winter. The amphitheatre will be open to the public on the fourteenth of May, to the day. The Easter holidays will fall a month earlier; and you shall marry my god-daughter during the holidays. Not a word; leave it to me. And leave both your settlements and your prospects to me as well. You can understand, my boy, that, when money is pouring in like water – as it will without a doubt – Victorien Beaugrand will throw up a profession which does not give him sufficient leisure for his private studies and that he will live with me, he and his wife. Yes, I said his wife; and I stick to it. Good-bye, my dear chap, not another word."
I walked on. He called me back:
"Say good-bye to me, Victorien."
He put his arms round me with greater fervour than usual; and I heard him murmur:
"Who can tell if we shall ever meet again? At my age! And threatened as I am, too!"
I protested. He embraced me yet again:
"You're right. I am really talking nonsense. You think of your marriage. Bérangère is a dear, sweet girl. And she loves you. Good-bye and bless you! I'll write to you. Good-bye."
I confess that Noël Dorgeroux's ambitions, at least in so far as they related to the turning of his discovery to practical account, did not strike me as absurd; and what I have said of the things seen at the Yard will exempt me, I imagine, from stating the reasons for my confidence. For the moment, therefore, I will leave the question aside and say no more of those three haunting eyes or the phantasmal scenes upon the magic screen. But how could I indulge the dreams of the future which Noël Dorgeroux suggested? How could I forget Bérangère's hostile attitude, her ambiguous conduct?
True, during the months that followed, I often sought to cling to the delightful memory of the vision which I had surprised and the charming picture of Bérangère bending over me with that soft look in her eyes. But I very soon pulled myself up and cried:
"I saw the thing all wrong! What I took for affection and, God forgive me, for love was only the expression of a woman triumphing over a man's abasement! Bérangère does not care for me. The movement that threw her against my shoulder was due to a sort of nervous crisis; and she felt so much ashamed of it that she at once pushed me away and ran indoors. Besides, she had an appointment with that man the very next day and, in order to keep it, let me go without saying good-bye to me."
My months of exile therefore were painful months. I wrote to Bérangère in vain. I received no reply.
My uncle in his letters spoke of nothing but the Yard. The works were making quick progress. The amphitheatre was growing taller and taller. The wall was quite transformed. The last news, about the middle of March, told me that nothing remained to be done but to fix the thousand seats, which had long been on order, and to hang the iron curtain which was to protect the screen.
It was at this period that Noël Dorgeroux's misgivings revived, or at least it was then that he mentioned them when writing to me. Two books which he bought in Paris and which he used to read in private, lest his choice of a subject should enable anyone to learn the secret of his discovery, had been removed, taken away and then restored to their place. A sheet of paper, covered with notes and chemical formulae, disappeared. There were footprints in the garden. The writing-desk had been broken open, in the room where he worked at the Lodge since the demolition of the sheds.
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 glasses and his relations with Bérangère. 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 Bérangère'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 Bérangère 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 Saturday, 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 circumstances 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 Bérangère. 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,Noël 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 Noël Dorgeroux accused of plotting, this man now knew that Noël 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 Bérangère 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. Bérangère 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, Bérangère 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."
"Give this to M. Dorgeroux as soon as you see him, Valentine. I shall be back in half an hour."
The path ran in a straight line through dense thickets with tiny leaves burgeoning on the twigs of the bushes. It had rained heavily during the last few days, but a bright spring sun was drying the ground and I could distinguish no trace of footsteps. After walking three hundred yards, however, I met a small boy of the neighbourhood, whom I knew by sight, coming back to the village and pushing his bicycle, which had burst a tyre.
"You don't happen to have seen Mlle. Bérangère, have you?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "with a gentleman."
"A gentleman wearing glasses?"
"Yes, a tall chap, with a big beard."
"Are they far away?"
"When I saw them, they were a mile and a quarter from here. I turned back later.. they had taken the old road.. the one that goes to the left."
I quickened my pace, greatly excited, for I was conscious of an increasing dread. I reached the old road. But, a little farther on, it brought me to an open space crossed by a number of paths. Which was I to take?
Feeling more and more anxious, I called out:
"Bérangère!.. Bérangère!"
Presently I heard the hum of an engine and the sound of a motor-car getting under way. It must have been five hundred yards from where I was. I turned down a path in which, almost at once, I saw footsteps very clearly marked in the mud, the footsteps of a man and of a woman. These led me to the entrance of a cemetery which had not been used for over twenty years and which, standing on the boundary of two parishes, had become the subject of claims, counterclaims and litigation generally.
I made my way in. The tall grass had been trampled down along two lines which skirted the wall, passed before the remnants of what had once been the keeper's cottage, joined around the kerb of a cistern fitted up as a well and were next continued to the wall of a half-demolished little mortuary chapel.
Between the cistern and the chapel the soil had been trodden several times over. Beyond the chapel there was only one track of footsteps, those of a man.
I confess that just then my legs gave way beneath me, although there was no trace of a definite idea in my mind. I examined the inside of the chapel and then walked round it.
Something lying on the ground, at the foot of the only wall that was left wholly standing, attracted my attention. It was a number of bits of loose plaster which had fallen there and which were of a dark-grey colour that at once reminded me of the sort of wash with which the screen in the Yard was coated.
I looked up. More pieces of plaster of the same colour, placed flat against the wall and held in position by clamp-headed nails, formed another screen, an incomplete, broken screen, on which I could plainly see that a quite fresh layer of substance had been spread.
By whom? Evidently by one of the two persons whom I was tracking, by the man with the eye-glasses or by Bérangère, perhaps even by both. But with what object? Was it to conjure up the miraculous vision? And was I to believe – the supposition really forced itself upon me as a certainty – that the fragments of plaster had first been stolen from the rubbish in the Yard and then pieced together like a mosaic?
In that case, if the conditions were the same, if the necessary substance was spread precisely in accordance with the details of the discovery, if I was standing opposite a screen identical at all points with the other, it was possible.. it was possible..
While this question was taking shape, my mind received so plain an answer that I saw the Three Eyes before they emerged from the depths whence I was waiting for them to appear. The image which I was evoking blended gradually with the real image which was forming and which presently opened its threefold gaze upon me, a fixed and gloomy gaze.
Here, then, as yonder, in the abandoned cemetery as in the Yard where Noël Dorgeroux summoned his inexplicable phantoms from the void, the Three Eyes were awakening to life. Chipped in one place, cracked in another, they looked through the fragments of disjointed plaster as they had done through the carefully tended screen. They gazed in this solitude just as though Noël Dorgeroux had been there to kindle and feed their mysterious flame.
The gloomy eyes, however, were changing their expression. They became wicked, cruel, implacable, ferocious even. Then they faded away; and I waited for the spectacle which those three geometrical figures generally heralded. And in fact, after a break, there was a sort of pulsating light, but so confused that it was difficult for me to make out any clearly defined scenes.
I could barely distinguish some trees, a river with an eyot in it, a low-roofed house and some people; but all this was vague, misty, unfinished, broken up by the cracks in the screen, impeded by causes of which I was ignorant. One might have fancied a certain hesitation in the will that evoked the image. Moreover, after a few fruitless attempts and an effort of which I perceived the futility, the image abruptly faded away and everything relapsed into death and emptiness.
"Death and emptiness," I said aloud.
I repeated the words several times over. They rang within me like a funereal echo with which the memory of Bérangère was mingled. The nightmare of the Three Eyes became one with the nightmare that drove me in pursuit of her. And I remained standing in front of the gruesome chapel, uncertain, not knowing what to do.
Bérangère's footprints brought me back to the well, near which I found in four places the marks of both her slender soles and both her pointed heels. The well was covered with a small, tiled dome. Formerly a bucket was lowered by means of a pulley to bring up the rainwater that had been gathered from the roof of the house.
There was of course no valid reason to make me believe that a crime had been committed. The footmarks did not constitute a sufficient clue. Nevertheless I felt myself bathed in perspiration; and, leaning over the open mouth, from which floated a damp and mildewed breath I faltered:
"Bérangère!"
I heard not a sound.
I lit a piece of paper, which I screwed into a torch, throwing a glimmer of light into the widened reservoir of the cistern. But I saw nothing save a sheet of water, black as ink and motionless.
"No," I protested, "it's impossible. I have no right to imagine such an atrocity. Why should they have killed her? It was my uncle who was threatened, not she."
At all events I continued my search and followed the man's single track. This led me to the far side of the cemetery and then to an avenue of fir-trees, where I came upon some cans of petrol. The motor-car had started from here. The tracks of the tyres ran through the wood.
I went no farther. It suddenly occurred to me that I ought before all to think of my uncle, to defend him and to take joint measures with him.
I therefore turned in the direction of the post-office. But, remembering that this was Sunday and that my uncle after dropping his letter in the box, had certainly gone back to the Yard, I ran to the Lodge and called out to Valentine:
"Has my uncle come in? Has he had my note?"
"No, no," she said. "I told you, the master has gone to the Yard."
"Exactly: he must have come this way!"
"Not at all. Coming from the post-office, he would go straight through the new entrance to the amphitheatre."
"In that case," I said, "all I need do is to go through the garden."
I hurried away, but the little door was locked. And from that moment, though there was nothing to prove my uncle's presence in the Yard, I felt certain that he was there and also felt afraid that my assistance had come too late.
I called. No one answered. The door remained shut.
Then, terrified, I went back to the house and out into the street and ran round the premises on the left, in order to go in by the new entrance.
This turned out to be a tall gate, flanked on either side by a ticket-office and giving access to a large courtyard, in which stood the back of the amphitheatre.
This gate also was closed, by means of a strong chain which my uncle had padlocked behind him.
What was I to do? Remembering how Bérangère and then I myself had climbed over the wall one day, I followed the other side of the Yard, in order to reach the old lamp-post. The same deserted path skirted the same stout plank fence, the corner of which ran into the fields.
When I came to this corner, I saw the lamp-post. At that moment, a man appeared on the top of the wall, caught hold of the post and let himself down by it. There was no room for doubt; the man leaving the Yard in this way had just been with my uncle. What had passed between them?
The distance that separated us was too great to allow me to distinguish his features. As soon as he saw me, he turned down the brim of his soft hat and drew the two ends of a muffler over his face. A loose-fitting grey rain-coat concealed his figure. I received the impression, however, that he was shorter and thinner than the man with the eye-glasses.
"Stop!" I cried, as he moved away.
My summons only hastened his flight; and it was in vain that I darted forward in his pursuit, shouting insults at him and threatening him with a revolver which I did not possess. He covered the whole width of the fields, leapt over a hedge and reached the skirt of the woods.
I was certainly younger than he, for I soon perceived that the interval between us was decreasing; and I should have caught him up, if we had been running across open country. But I lost sight of him at the first clump of trees; and I was nearly abandoning the attempt to come up with him, when, suddenly, he retraced his steps and seemed to be looking for something.
I made a rush for him. He did not appear to be perturbed by my approach. He merely drew a revolver and pointed it at me, without saying a word or ceasing his investigations.
I now saw what his object was. Something lay gleaming in the grass. It was a piece of metal which, I soon perceived, was none other than the steel plate on which Noël Dorgeroux had engraved the chemical formula.
We both flung ourselves on the ground at the same time. I was the first to seize the strip of steel. But a hand gripped mine; and on this hand, which was half-covered by the sleeve of the rain-coat, there was blood.
I was startled and suffered from a moment's faintness. The vision of Noël Dorgeroux dying, nay, dead, had flashed upon me so suddenly that the man succeeded in overpowering me and stretching me underneath him.
As we thus lay one against the other, with our faces almost touching, I saw only part of his, the lower half being hidden by the muffler. But his two eyes glared at me, under the shadow of his hat; and we stared at each other in silence, while our hands continued to grapple.
Those eyes of his were cruel and implacable, the eyes of a murderer whose whole being is bent upon the supreme effort of killing. Where had I seen them before? For I certainly knew those fiercely glittering eyes. Their gaze penetrated my brain at a spot into which it had already been deeply impressed. It bore a familiar look, a look which had crossed my own before. But when? In what eyes had I seen that expression? In the eyes looming out of the wall perhaps? The eyes shown on the fabulous screen?
Yes, yes, those were the eyes! I recognized them now! They had shone in the infinite space that lay in the depths of the plaster! They had lived before my sight, a few minutes ago, on the ruined wall of the mortuary chapel. They were the same cruel, pitiless eyes, the eyes which had perturbed me then even as they were perturbing me now, sapping my last remnant of strength.
I released my hold. The man sprang up, caught me a blow on the forehead with the butt of his revolver and ran away, carrying the steel plate with him.
This time I did not think of pursuing him. Without doing me any great hurt, the blow which I received had stunned me. I was still tottering on my feet when I heard, in the woods, the same sound of an engine being started and a car getting under way which I had heard near the cemetery. The motor-car, driven by the man with the eye-glasses, had come to fetch my assailant. The two confederates, after having probably rid themselves of Bérangère and certainly rid themselves of Noël Dorgeroux, were making off..
My heart wrung with anguish, I hurried back to the foot of the old lamp-post, hoisted myself to the top of the fence and in this way jumped into the front part of the Yard, contained between the main wall and the new structure of the amphitheatre.
This wall, entirely rebuilt, taller and wider than it used to be, now had the size and the importance of the outer wall of a Greek or Roman amphitheatre. Two square columns and a canopy marked the place of the screen, whose plaster, from the distance at which I stood, did not seem yet to be coated with its layer of a dark-grey composition, which explained why my uncle had left it uncovered. Nor could I at first see the lower part, which was concealed by a heap of materials of all kinds. But how certain I felt of what I should see when I came nearer! How well I knew what was there, behind those planks and building-stones!
My legs were trembling. I had to seek a support. It cost me an untold effort to take a few steps forward.