Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  Before a week was over, Paris, France, the whole world knew in every detail, save for the points which concerned Bérangère and myself alone, what was at once and spontaneously described as the mystery of the Three Eyes.

  Of course I was met with irony, sarcasm and uproarious laughter. A miracle finds no believers except among its astounded witnesses. And what but a miracle could be put forward as the cause of a phenomenon which, I maintained, had no credible cause? The execution of Edith Cavell was a miracle. So was the representation of the fight between two airmen. So was the scene in which Noël Dorgeroux’s son was hit by a bullet. So, above all, was the looming of those Three Eyes, which throbbed with life, which gazed at the spectator and which were the eyes of the very people about to figure in the spectacle as the actors thus miraculously announced!

  Nevertheless, one by one, voices were raised in my defence. My past was gone into, the value of my evidence was weighed; and, though people were still inclined to accuse me of being a visionary or a sick man, subject to hallucinations, at least they had to admit my absolute bona fides. A party of adherents took up the cudgels for me. There was a noisy battle of opinions. Ah, my poor uncle Dorgeroux had asked for wide publicity for his amphitheatre! His fondest wishes were far exceeded by the strident and tremendous clamour which continued like an unbroken peal of thunder.

  For the rest, all this uproar was dominated by one idea, which took shape gradually and summed up the thousand theories which every one was indulging. I am copying it from a newspaper-article which I carefully preserved:

  “In any case, whatever opinion we may hold of Noël Dorgeroux’s alleged discovery, whatever view we may take of M. Victorien Beaugrand’s common sense and mental equilibrium, one thing is certain, which is that we shall sooner or later know the truth. When two such competent people as Velmot and his accomplice join forces to accomplish a definite task, namely, the theft of a scientific secret, when they carry out their plot so skilfully, when they succeed beyond all hopes, their object, it will be agreed, is certainly not that they may enjoy the results of their enterprise by stealth.

  “If they have Noël Dorgeroux’s manuscript in their hands, together with the chemical formula that completes it, their intention beyond a doubt is to make all the profits on which Noël Dorgeroux himself was counting. To make these profits the secret must first be exploited. And, to exploit a secret of this kind, its possessors must act openly, publicly, in the face of the world. And, to do this, it will not pay them to settle down in a remote corner in France or elsewhere and to set up another enterprise. It will not pay, because, in any case, there would be the same confession of guilt. No, it will pay them better and do them no more harm to take up their quarters frankly and cynically in the amphitheatre of the Yard and to make use of what has there been accomplished, under the most promising conditions, by Noël Dorgeroux.

  “To sum up, therefore. Before long, some one will emerge from the darkness. Some one will remove the mask from his face. The sequel and the conclusion of the unfinished plot will be enacted in their fullness. And, three weeks hence, on the date fixed, the 14th of May, we shall witness the inauguration of the amphitheatre erected by Noël Dorgeroux. And this inauguration will take place under the vigorous management of the man who will be, who already is, the owner of the secret: a formidable person, we must admit.”

  The argument was strictly logical. Stolen jewels are sold in secret. Money changes hands anonymously. But an invention yields no profit unless it is exploited.

  Meanwhile the days passed and no one emerged from the darkness. The two accomplices betrayed not a sign of life. It was now known that Velmot, the man with the glasses, had practised all sorts of callings. Some Paris manufacturers, for whom he had travelled in the provinces, furnished an exact description of his person. The police learnt a number of things about him, but not enough to enable them to lay hands upon him.

  Nor did a careful scrutiny of Noël Dorgeroux’s papers supply the least information. All that the authorities found was a sealed, unaddressed envelope, which they opened. The contents surprised me greatly. They consisted of a will, dated five years back, in which Noël Dorgeroux, while naming me as his residuary legatee, gave and bequeathed to his god-daughter, Bérangère Massignac the piece of ground known as the Yard and everything that the Yard might contain on the day of his death. With the exception of this document, which was of no importance, since my uncle, in one of his last letters to me, had expressed different intentions, they found nothing but immaterial notes which had no bearing upon the great secret. Thereupon they indulged in the wildest conjectures and wandered about in a darkness which not even the sworn chemists called in to examine the screen were able to dispel. The wall revealed nothing in particular, for the layer of plaster with which it was covered had not received the special glaze; and it was precisely the formula of this glaze that constituted Noël Dorgeroux’s secret.

  But the glaze existed on the old chapel in the cemetery, where I had seen the geometrical figure of the Three Eyes appear. Yes, they certainly found something clinging to the surface of the fragments of plaster taken from that spot. But they were not able with this something to produce a compound capable of yielding any sort of vision. The right formula was obviously lacking; and so, no doubt, was some essential ingredient which had already been eliminated by the sun or the rain.

  At the end of April there was no reason to believe in the prophecies which announced a theatrical culmination as inevitable. And the curiosity of the public increased at each fresh disappointment and on each new day spent in waiting. Noël Dorgeroux’s yard had become a place of pilgrimage. Motor-cars and carriages arrived in swarms. The people crowded outside the locked gates and the fence, trying to catch a glimpse of the wall. I even received letters containing offers to buy the Yard at any price that I chose to name.

  One day, old Valentine showed into the drawing-room a gentleman who said that he had come on important business. I saw a man of medium height with hair which was turning grey and with a face which was wider than it was long and which was made still wider by a pair of bushy whiskers and a perpetual smile. His threadbare dress and down-at-heel shoes denoted anything but a brilliant financial position. He expressed himself at once, however, in the language of a person to whom money is no object:

  “I have any amount of capital behind me,” he declared, cheerfully and before he had even told me his name. “My plans are made. All that remains is for you and me to come to terms.”

  “What on?” I asked.

  “Why, on the business that I have come to propose to you!”

  “I am sorry, sir,” I replied, “but I am doing no business.”

  “That’s a pity!” he cried, still more cheerfully and with his mouth spreading still farther across his face. “That’s a pity! I should have been glad to take you into partnership. However, since you’re not willing, I shall act alone, without of course exceeding the rights which I have in the Yard.”

  “Your rights in the Yard?” I echoed, astounded at his assurance.

  “Why, rather!” he answered, with a loud laugh. “My rights: that’s the only word.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I admit that it’s not very clear. Well, suppose — you’ll soon understand — suppose that I have come into Noël Dorgeroux’s property.”

  I was beginning to lose patience and I took the fellow up sharply:

  “I have no time to spare for jesting, sir. Noël Dorgeroux left no relatives except myself.”

  “I didn’t say that I had come into his property as a relative.”

  “As what, then?”

  “As an heir, simply . . . as the lawful heir, specifically named as such by Noël Dorgeroux.”

  I was a little taken aback and, after a moment’s thought, rejoined:

  “Do you mean to say that Noël Dorgeroux made a will in your favour?”

  “I do.”

  “Show it to me.”

  “There’s no
need to show it to you: you’ve seen it.”

  “I’ve seen it?”

  “You saw it the other day. It must be in the hands of the examining-magistrate or the solicitor.”

  I lost my temper:

  “Oh, it’s that you’re speaking of! Well, to begin with, the will isn’t valid. I have a letter from my uncle . . .”

  He interrupted me:

  “That letter doesn’t affect the validity of the will. Any one will tell you that.”

  “And then?” I exclaimed. “Granting that it is valid, Noël Dorgeroux mentions nobody in it except myself for the Lodge and his god-daughter for the Yard. The only one who benefits, except myself, is Bérangère.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” replied the man, without changing countenance. “But nobody knows what has become of Bérangère Massignac. Suppose that she were dead . . .”

  I grew indignant:

  “She’s not dead! It’s quite impossible that she should be dead!”

  “Very well,” he said, calmly. “Then suppose that she’s alive, that she’s been kidnapped or that she’s in hiding. In any event, one fact is certain, which is that she is under twenty, consequently she’s a minor and consequently she cannot administer her own property. From the legal point of view she exists only in the person of her natural representative, her guardian, who in this case happens to be her father.”

  “And her father?” I asked, anxiously.

  “Is myself.”

  He put on his hat, took it off again with a bow and said:

  “Théodore Massignac, forty-two years of age, a native of Toulouse, a commercial traveller in wines.”

  It was a violent blow. The truth suddenly appeared to me in all its brutal nakedness. This man, this shady and wily individual, was Bérangère’s father; and he had come in the name of the two accomplices, working in their interest and placing at their service the powers with which circumstances had favoured him.

  “Her father?” I murmured. “Can it be possible? Are you her father?”

  “Why, yes,” he replied, with a fresh outburst of hilarity, “I’m the girl’s daddy and, as such, the beneficiary, with the right to draw the profits for the next eighteen months, of Noël Dorgeroux’s bequest. For eighteen months only! You can imagine that I’m itching to take possession of the estate, to complete the works and to prepare for the fourteenth of May an inauguration worthy in every respect of my old friend Dorgeroux.”

  I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my forehead. He had spoken the words which were expected and foretold. He was the man of whom public opinion had said:

  “When the time comes, some one will emerge from the darkness.”

  CHAPTER IX. THE MAN WHO EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS

  “WHEN THE TIME comes,” they had said, “some one will emerge from the darkness. When the time comes, some one will remove the mask from his face.”

  That face now beamed expansively before me. That some one, who was about to play the game of the two accomplices, was Bérangère’s father. And the same question continued to suggest itself, each time more painfully than the last:

  “What had been Bérangère’s part in the horrible tragedy?”

  There was a long, heavy silence between us. I began to stride across the room and stopped near the chimney, where a dying fire was smouldering. Thence I could see Massignac in a mirror, without his perceiving it; and his face, in repose, surprised me by a gloomy expression which was not unknown to me. I had probably seen some photograph of him in Bérangère’s possession.

  “It’s curious,” I said, “that your daughter should not have written to you.”

  I had turned round very briskly; nevertheless he had had time to expand his mouth and to resume his smile:

  “Alas,” he said, “the dear child hardly ever wrote to me and cared little about her poor daddy. I, on the other hand, am very fond of her. A daughter’s always a daughter, you know. So you can imagine how I jumped for joy when I read in the papers that she had come into money. I should at last be able to devote myself to her and to devote all my strength and all my energy to the great and wonderful task of defending her interests and her fortune.”

  He spoke in a honeyed voice and assumed a false and unctuous air which exasperated me. I questioned him:

  “How do you propose to fulfill that task?”

  “Why, quite simply,” he replied, “by continuing Noël Dorgeroux’s work.”

  “In other words?”

  “By throwing open the doors of the amphitheatre.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means that I shall show to the public the pictures which your uncle used to produce.”

  “Have you ever seen them?”

  “No. I speak from your evidence and your interviews.”

  “Do you know how my uncle used to produce them?”

  “I do, since yesterday evening.”

  “Then you have seen the manuscript of which I was robbed and the formula stolen by the murderer?”

  “Since yesterday evening, I say.”

  “But how?” I exclaimed, excitedly.

  “How? By a simple trick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He showed me a bundle of newspapers of the day before and continued, with a smirking air:

  “If you had read yesterday’s newspapers, or at least the more important of them, carefully, you would have noticed a discreet advertisement in the special column. It read, ‘Proprietor of the Yard wishes to purchase the two documents necessary for working. He can be seen this evening in the Place Vendôme.’ Nothing much in the advertisement, was there? But, to the possessors of the two documents, how clear in its meaning . . . and what a bait! To them it was the one opportunity of making a profit, for, with all the publicity attaching to the affair, they were unable to benefit by the result of their robberies without revealing their identity to the public. My calculation was correct. After I had waited an hour by the Vendôme Column, a very luxurious motor-car picked me up, you might almost say without stopping, and, ten minutes afterwards, dropped me at the Étoile, with the documents in my possession. I spent the night in reading the manuscript. Oh, my dear sir, what a genius your uncle was! What a revolution his discovery! And in what a masterly way he expounded it! I never read anything so methodical and so lucid! All that remains for me to do is mere child’s-play.”

  I had listened to the man Massignac with ever-increasing amazement. Was he assuming that anybody would for a moment credit so ridiculous a tale?

  He was laughing, however, with a look of a man who congratulates himself on the events with which he is mixed up, or rather, perhaps, on the very skilful fashion in which he believes himself to have manipulated them.

  With one hand, I pushed in his direction the hat which he had laid on the table. Then I opened the door leading into the hall.

  He rose and said:

  “I am staying close by, at the Station Hotel. Would you mind having any letters sent there which may come for me here? For I suppose you have no room for me at the Lodge?”

  I abruptly gripped him by the arm and cried:

  “You know what you’re risking, don’t you?”

  “In doing what?”

  “In pursuing your enterprise.”

  “Upon my word, I don’t quite see . . .”

  “Prison, sir, prison.”

  “Oh, come! Prison!”

  “Prison, sir. The police will never accept all your stories and all your lies!”

  His mouth widened into a new laugh:

  “What big words! And how unjust, when addressed to a respectable father who seeks nothing but his daughter’s happiness! No, no, sir, believe me, the inauguration will take place on the fourteenth of May . . . unless, indeed, you oppose the wishes which your uncle expresses in his will. . . .”

  He gave me a questioning look, which betrayed a certain uneasiness; and I myself wavered as to the answer which I ought to give him. My hesitation yielded to a motive of whi
ch I did not weigh the value clearly but which seemed to me so imperious that I declared:

  “I shall raise no opposition: not that I respect a will which does not represent my uncle’s real intentions, but because I am bound to sacrifice everything to his fame. If Noël Dorgeroux’s discovery depends on you, go ahead: the means which you have employed to get hold of it do not concern me.”

  With a fresh burst of merry laughter and a low bow, the fellow left the room. That evening, in the course of a visit to the solicitor, and next day, through the newspapers, he boldly set forth his claims, which, I may say, from the legal point of view, were recognized as absolutely legitimate. But, two days later, he was summoned to appear before the examining-magistrate and an enquiry was opened against him.

  Against him is the right term. Certainly, there was no fact to be laid to his charge. Certainly, he was able to prove that he had been ill in bed, nursed by a woman-of-all-work who had been looking after him for a month, and that he had left his place in Toulouse only to come straight to Paris. But what had he done in Paris? Whom had he seen? From whom had he obtained the manuscript and the formula? He was unable to furnish explanations in reply to any of these questions.

  He did not even try:

  “I am pledged to secrecy,” he said. “I gave my word of honour not to say anything about those who handed me the documents I needed.”

  The man Massignac’s word of Honour! The man Massignac’s scruples! Lies, of course! Hypocrisy! Subterfuge! But, all the same, however suspect the fellow might be, it was difficult to know of what to accuse him or how to sustain the accusation when made.

  And then there was this element of strangeness, that the suspicion, the presumption, the certainty that the man Massignac was the willing tool of the two criminals, all this was swept away by the great movement of curiosity that carried people off their feet. Judicial procedure, ordinary precautions, regular adjournments, legal procrastinations which delay the entry into possession of the legatees were one and all neglected. The public wanted to see and know; and Théodore Massignac was the man who held the prodigious secret.