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

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Therefore and without any sort of discussion I admit that we are debarred from supposing that light can be the agent of the transmissions which have been observed. The laws of diffraction indeed are absolutely opposed to the strictly rectilinear propagation of luminous rays and hence to the formation and reception of pictures at the exceptional distances actually under consideration. Not only are the laws of geometrical optics merely a somewhat rough approximation, but the complicated refractions which would inevitably occur in the atmospheres of the earth and Venus would disturb the optical images. The veto of science therefore is peremptory in so far as the possibility of these optical transmissions is concerned.

  “For that matter, I should be quite willing to believe that the inhabitants of Venus have already tried to correspond with us through the intermediary of luminous signals and that, if they abandoned their endeavours, this was precisely because the imperfection of our human science made them useless. We know in fact that Lowell and Schiaparelli saw on the face of Venus brilliant specks and a transient gleam which they themselves attributed either to volcanic eruptions or, as is more probable, to the attempts at communication of which I have spoken.

  “But science does not prevent us from asking ourselves whether, after the failure of these attempts, the inhabitants of Venus did not resort to another method of correspondence. How can we avoid thinking, for instance, of the X-rays, whose strictly rectilinear path would allow of the formation of pictures so clear that one could wish for nothing better? In fact it is not impossible that these rays are employed for the emission received on the Meudon screen, though the quality of the light when analyzed in the spectroscope makes the supposition highly improbable. But how are we to explain by means of X-rays the taking of the terrestrial views of which we saw the moving outline on the screen? We know, of course, if we go back to the concrete example to which I referred just now, we know that neither the brothers Montgolfier nor the surrounding landscape emitted X-rays. It is not therefore through the medium of these rays that the Venusians can have secured the instantaneous photographs which they afterwards transmitted to us.

  “Well, this exhausts all the possibilities of an explanation which can be referred to the present data of science. I declare positively that to-day, in this essay, I should not have dared to venture into the domain of theory and to suggest a solution in which my own labours are involved, if Noël Dorgeroux had not in a manner authorized me to do so. The fact is that, twelve months ago, I issued a pamphlet, entitled An Essay on Universal Gravitation, which fell flat on publication, but which must have attracted Noël Dorgeroux’s particular attention, because his nephew, Victorien Beaugrand, found my name written among his papers and because Noël Dorgeroux cannot have known my name except through this pamphlet. Nor would he have taken the trouble to write it down, if the theory of the rays of gravitation which I developed in my pamphlet had not appeared to him to be exactly adapted to the problem raised by his discovery?

  “I will therefore ask the reader to refer to my pamphlet. He will there find the results, vague but by no means negligible, which I was able to explain by my experiments with this radiation. He will see that it is propagated in a strictly rectilinear direction and with a speed which is thrice that of light, so that it would not take more than 46 seconds to reach Venus at the time when she is nearest to the earth. He will see lastly that, though the existence of these rays, thanks to which universal attraction is exercised according to the Newtonian laws, is not yet admitted and though I have not yet succeeded in making them visible by means of suitable receivers, I nevertheless give proofs of their existence which must be taken into consideration. And Noël Dorgeroux’s approval also is a proof that they must not be neglected.

  “On the other hand, we have the right to believe that, while our poor rudimentary science may, after centuries and centuries of efforts, have remained ignorant of the essential factor of the equilibrium of the planets, the Venusian scientists long since passed this inferior stage of knowledge and that they possess photographic receivers which allow films to be taken by means of the rays of gravitation and this by methods of truly wonderful perfection. They were therefore waiting. Looking down upon our planet, knowing all that happened here, witnessing our helplessness, they were waiting to communicate with us by the only means that appeared to them possible. They were waiting, patiently and persistently, formidably equipped, sweeping our soil with the invisible sheaves of rays assembled in their projectors and receivers, searching and prying into every nook and corner.

  “And one day the wonderful thing happened. One day the shaft of rays struck the layer of substance on the screen where and where alone the spontaneous work of chemical decomposition and immediate reconstitution could be performed. On that day, thanks to Noël Dorgeroux and thanks to luck, as we must confess, for Noël Dorgeroux was pursuing an entirely different series of experiments on that particular day, the Venusians established the connection between the two planets. The greatest fact in the history of the world was accomplished.

  “There is evidence even that the Venusians knew of Noël Dorgeroux’s earlier experiments, that they realized their importance, that they interested themselves in his labours and that they followed the events of his life, for it is now many years since they took the pictures showing how his son Dominique was killed in the war. But I will not recapitulate in detail each of the films displayed at Meudon. This is a work which anybody can now perform in the light of the theory which I am setting forth. But we must consider attentively the process by which the Venusians tried to give those films a sort of uniformity. It has been rightly said that the sign of the Three Eyes is a trade-mark, like the mark of any of our great cinematograph-producers, a trade-mark also very strikingly proves the superhuman resources possessed by the Venusians, since they succeed in giving to those Three Eyes, which have no relation to our human eyes, not only the expression of our eyes but something much more impressive, the expression of the eyes of the person destined to be the principal character in the film.

  “But why was this particular mark chosen? Why eyes and why three? At the stage which we have now reached, need we answer this question? The Venusians themselves have furnished the reply by showing us that apparently absurd film in which Shapes assuredly lived and moved in our sight in accordance with the lines and principle of Venusian life. Were we not the breathless spectators of a picture taken among them and from them? Did we not behold, to make a companion picture to the death of Louis XVI, an incident representing the martyrdom of some great personage whom the executioners tore to pieces with their three hands, severing from his body a sort of shapeless head provided with three eyes?

  “Three Hands! Three Eyes! Dare I, on the strength of this fragile basis, go beyond what we saw and declare that the Venusian possesses the complete symmetry of the triangle, just as man, with his two eyes, his two ears and his two arms, possesses bilateral symmetry? Shall I try to explain his method of progressing by successive distentions and of moving vertically along vertical streets, in towns built perpendicularly? Shall I have the courage to state, as I believe, that he is provided with organs which give him a magnetic sense, a sense of space, an electric sense and so on, organs numbered by threes? No. These are details with which the Venusian scientists will supply us on the day when it pleases them to enter into correspondence with us.

  “And, believe me, they will not fail to do so. All their efforts for centuries past have been directed towards this object. ‘Let us talk,’ they will say to us soon as they must have said to Noël Dorgeroux and as they no doubt succeeded in doing with him. It must have been a stirring conversation, from which the great seer derived such power and certainty that it is to him that I will refer, before concluding, in order to add to the discussion the two positive proofs which he himself tried to write at the foot of the screen during the few seconds of his death-struggle, a twofold declaration made by the man, who in departing this life, knew:

  “‘B-ray. . . . B
E R G E . . .’

  “When thus expressing his supreme belief in the B-rays, Noël Dorgeroux no longer indicated that unknown radiation which he had once imagined to explain the phenomena of the screen and which would have consisted of the materialization of pictures born within and projected by ourselves. More far-seeing, better-informed as the result of his experiments, abandoning moreover his attempt to connect the new facts with the action of the solar heat which he had so often utilized, he plainly indicated those rays of gravitation of whose existence he had learnt through my pamphlet and also perhaps through his communications with the Venusians, those rays which are habitually employed by them in the same manner as that in which the light-rays are employed by the humblest photographer.

  “And the five letters B E R G E are not the first two syllables of the word Bergeronnette. That was the fatal error of which Bérangère Massignac was the victim. They form the word Berger, complete all but the last letter. At the moment of his death, in his already overshadowed brain, Noël Dorgeroux, in order to name Venus, could find no other expression than l’Etoile du Berger, the Shepherd’s Star; and his enfeebled hand was able to write only the first few letters. The proof therefore is absolute. The man who knew had time to tell the essential part of what he knew: by means of the rays of gravitation, the Shepherd’s Star sends its living messages to the earth.

  “If we accept the successive deductions stated in this preliminary essay, which I trust will one day prove to be in a manner a replica of the report stolen from Noël Dorgeroux, there still remain any number of points concerning which we possess not a single element of truth. What is the form of the recording- and projecting-apparatus employed by the Venusians? By what prodigious machinery do they obtain a perfect fixity in the projections between two stars each animated with such complicated movements in space (at present we know of seventeen in the earth alone)? And, to consider only what is close at hand, what is the nature of the screen employed for the Meudon projections? What is that dark-grey substance with which it is coated? How is that substance composed? How is it able to reconstruct the pictures? These are so many questions which our scientific attainments are incapable of solving. But at least we have no right to pronounce them insoluble; and I will go farther and declare that it is our duty to study them by all the means which the public authorities are bound to place at our disposal. This M. Massignac is said to have disappeared from sight. Let the opportunity be seized, let the Meudon Amphitheatre be declared national property! It is out of the question that an individual should, to the detriment of all mankind, remain the sole possessor of such tremendous secrets and have it in his power, if he please and in obedience to a mere whim, to destroy them for all time. The thing cannot be allowed. Before many days have elapsed we must enter into unbroken relations with the inhabitants of Venus. They will tell us the age-old history of our past, reveal to us the great problems which they have elucidated and assist us to benefit by the conquests of a civilization beside which our own as yet seems nothing but confusion, ignorance, the lisping of babes and the stammering of savages. . . .”

  CHAPTER XVI. WHERE LIPS UNITE

  WE HAVE BUT to read the newspapers of the period, to realize that the excitement caused by the Meudon pictures reached its culminating point as the result of Benjamin Prévotelle’s essay. I have four of those newspapers, dated the following day, on my table as I write. Not one of them contains throughout its eight pages a single line that does not refer to what at once became known as the Splendid Theory.

  For the rest, the chorus of approval and enthusiasm was general, or very nearly so. There were barely a few cries of vehement protest uttered by experts who felt exasperated by the boldness of the essay even more than by the gaps occurring in it. The great mass of the public saw in all this not a theory but a fact and accepted it as such with the faith of true believers confronted with the divine truth. Every one contributed his own proof as yet one more stone added to the edifice. The objections, however strong they might be — and they were set forth without compromise — seemed temporary and capable of being removed by closer study and a more careful confirmation of the phenomena.

  And it is with this conclusion, Benjamin Prévotelle’s own conclusion, that all the articles, all the interviews and all the letters that appeared end. The measures recommended by Benjamin Prévotelle were loudly called for. Action must be taken without delay and a series of experiments must be made in the Meudon amphitheatre.

  Amid this effervescence, the kidnapping of Massignac went for little. The man Massignac had disappeared? There was nothing to enable one to tell who had carried him off or where he was confined? Very well. It made very little difference. As Benjamin Prévotelle said, the opportunity was too good to miss. The doors of the Yard had been sealed on the first morning. What were we waiting for? Why not begin the experiments at once?

  As for me, I did not breathe a word of my Bougival adventure, in the constant fear of implicating Bérangère, who was directly involved in it. All the same, I returned to the banks of the Seine. My rough and ready enquiries showed that Massignac and Velmot had lived on the island during a part of the winter in the company of a small boy who, when they were away, looked after the house which one of them had hired under a false name. I explored the island and the house. No one was living there now. I found a few pieces of furniture, a few household implements, nothing more.

  On the fourth day, a provisional committee, appointed ad hoc, met in the Yard about the middle of the afternoon. As the sky was cloudy, they contented themselves with examining the carboys discovered in the basement of the walls and, after lowering the curtain, with cutting off strips of the dark-grey substance at different points of the screen along the edges.

  The analysis revealed absolutely nothing out of the way. They found an amalgam of organic materials and acids which it would be tedious to enumerate and which, however employed, supplied not the smallest explanation of the very tiniest phenomena. But, on the sixth day, the sky became clear and the committee returned, together with a number of official persons and mere sightseers who had succeeded in joining them.

  The wait in front of the screen was fruitless and just a little ridiculous. All those people looking out for something that did not happen, standing with wide-open eyes and distorted faces, in front of a wall that had nothing on it, wore an air of solemnity which was delightfully comical.

  An hour was spent in anxious expectation. The wall remained impassive.

  The disappointment was all the greater inasmuch as the public had been waiting for this test as the expected climax of this most sensational tragedy. Were we to give up all hope of knowing the truth and to admit that Noël Dorgeroux’s formula alone was capable of producing the pictures? I, for one, was convinced of it. In addition to the substances removed, there was a solution, compounded by Massignac from Noël Dorgeroux’s formula, which solution he kept carefully, as my uncle used to do, in blue phials or bottles and which was spread over the screen before each exhibition in order to give it the mysterious power of evoking the images.

  A thorough search was instituted, but no phials, no blue bottles came to light.

  There was no doubt about it: people were beginning to regret the disappearance, perhaps the death of the man Massignac. Was the great secret to be lost at the very moment when Benjamin Prévotelle’s theory had proved its incomparable importance?

  Well, on the morning of the eleventh day after the date of Benjamin Prévotelle’s essay, that is to say, the 27th of May, the newspapers printed a note signed by Théodore Massignac in which he announced that, in the late afternoon of that same day, the third exhibition in the Yard would take place under his own direction.

  He actually appeared at about twelve o’clock in the morning. The doors were closed and guarded by four detectives and he was unable to obtain admission. But at three o’clock an official from the Prefecture of Police arrived, armed with full powers of negotiation.

  Massignac laid down his co
nditions. He was once more to become the absolute master of the Yard, which was to be surrounded by detectives and closed between the performances to everybody except himself. None of the spectators was to carry a camera or any other instrument.

  Everything was conceded; everything was overlooked, in order to continue the interrupted series of miraculous exhibitions and to resume the communications with Venus. This capitulation on the part of the authorities before the audacity of a man whose crime was known to them showed that Benjamin Prévotelle’s theory was adopted in government circles.

  The fact is — and there was no one who failed to see it — that those in power were giving way in the hope of presently turning the tables and, by some subterfuge, laying hands on the screen at the moment when it was in working-order. Massignac felt this so clearly that, when the doors opened, he had the effrontery to distribute a circular couched in the following terms:

  WARNING

  “The audience is hereby warned that any attack on the management will have as its immediate consequence the destruction of the screen and the irreparable loss of Noël Dorgeroux’s secret.”