‘Of course. He must already be on his way.’
‘Will it last a long time?’
‘With all those blowhards, it’ll be two hours at least, maybe two-and-a-half. And it’ll all be hot air. Do you want to have lunch afterwards?’
‘I... I don’t know. No, don’t worry about me. Maybe I’ll join you there, or maybe I’ll phone again.’
‘Maryse, is Jacques aware of your projects?’
‘I haven’t any projects, and in any case, nobody’s aware. Goodbye, Bob.’
‘Wait. Promise me one thing: don’t do anything by yourself. There’s no danger if you stay home. Wait until the afternoon. We’ll work together. It’s too dangerous, Maryse.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be careful.’
And she hung up without waiting for more pleas from my friend.
There was a large crowd in the antechamber of the main conference room. All the journalists were there, gesticulating and holding forth, happy for the godsend, mentally preparing fascinating articles for the morrow. They stopped every new arrival in their quest for more information.
As we arrived, Professor Richard was in a debate with an agitated group. His foul mood had not dissipated. He responded to questions with acerbic witticisms and almost hurtful remarks. Jacques was there. He hastened towards us:
‘Have you any news of Maryse?’
‘She phoned me just before we left. Just between the two of us, you shouldn’t have lost sight of her. I’m worried that, left alone, she might do something stupid.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She wouldn’t tell me.’
Jannin arrived, and I couldn’t help noticing he was leaning on a cane. He was limping noticeably.
‘An attack of sciatica,’ he explained. ‘I haven’t slept a wink. And I can’t stay in one place. Sitting or lying down are equally painful. The best is to keep moving.’
Present at the conference were: the Président du Conseil; the Ministre de l’Intérieure, the Ministre de la Justice, their heads of cabinet, the Chef de la Sûreté and the Directeur de la Police Judiciaire; M. Delharbe (and his beard), Richard, Jannin, Bob and I. Plus two secretaries. We were all seated around a long table except Jannin, who had received authorisation to move about.
After a few minutes of chatting, Bernès began to speak:
‘I’ve invited you all to be here for this slightly irregular conference because the unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves demands exceptional measures. You have all followed the investigation, step by step, which dispenses with the need for a historical recap. But, to clarify all the subsequent discussion, I need to take up the question again.’
There followed a lengthy and insipid report, after which he handed the proceedings over to Richard.
The professor stood up, his beard dishevelled:
‘I repeat,’ he declared, ‘that we’ve heard enough idle chatter for today. We’re not the electorate, and it’s not by mouthing hollow banalities that we will beat the man in grey. Neither is it by condemning those who have had the unenviable responsibility of following the case that the denouement will be brought any closer. Particularly since you are not being fair to those with the thankless mission of building a trail with the nothings that the super-criminal has left. They have slaved day and night to amass a mountain of unconnected material, from which they have extracted tiny clues. Others have made great leaps of imagination to find common themes out of disparate elements.’
After a lengthy pause, the criminologist continued, in a sombre voice:
‘And what have I done? How have I contributed to this investigation other than by sarcastic and useless remarks? My name is there in all the papers, and I’m ashamed.
‘Or, rather, I was ashamed until these last few days, for now I believe I’m in a position to bring you important information which could advance the case significantly.’
There was a collective ‘Aha!’ of anticipation, myself included. Only Bob, a knowing smile on his lips, nodded his head as if he’d expected this revelation. Richard continued, cutting off any interruption:
‘I have thought a great deal since the beginning of this affair. I’m not the only one but, recently, I have come to believe it was not a complete waste of time. It’s true that I came across some of the fundamental elements by chance. I started by asking myself what was the significance of twoof them: the frescos and the colour-blindness. I’m sure you’ve already understood for quite a long time.’
The ashamed expression on the face of the Président and some of the other officials brought a smile to the professor’s face. I found myself blushing, because I hadn’t understood at all.
‘Colour-blindness is not at all what many people think. Ask those who have heard of it what it is, and they vast majority will say that it means seeing red as green, and green as red. That’s idiotic because, if that were the case, no one would ever know! Colour-blind people—or daltonians, as they are sometimes called—are partially or totally blind to certain colours. There are, in fact, several types of colour-blindness: achromatopsia for those who cannot see any colour; anerythropsia: red; achloropsia: green. These first don’t interest us. Let’s look at the others.
‘Someone who is daltonian with regard to a colour (red or green) cannot detect its tints. The result is confusion between, for example, light red and dark yellow. It follows that if one were to draw a line composed of dots of different colours, a normal person would see just that, but a daltonian would see a straight line in a more or less homogenous tint. Obviously, if you were to write a message that way, the former would not notice it in the welter of colours, but the daltonian would see it more or less clearly.’
‘Very ingenious,’ exclaimed the Ministre de la Justice.
‘Very. For if you take the precaution of only showing the painting to people with normal vision, all they will see is a collection of harmonious colours, and nothing else. From the moment that Slowman’s intuition alerted us to the possibility of colour-blindness, we were expecting to find such coloured paintings. So, once we learnt of the existence of frescos in the Arcueil house, we were sure we were on the right track. The additional precaution of covering the paintings with wallpaper had a double objective. First of all, it prevented accidental discovery by a daltonian. Secondly, it preserved the freshness of the paint, a necessary condition for clear reading. Note that it was by an extraordinary stroke of fate that Duroyer, himself a daltonian, was charged with stripping the wallpaper and revealing the frescos. A fate which almost undid the criminal, who could scarcely have foreseen that a housepainter could be colour-blind.
‘All that, I repeat, is elementary and does not advance our enquiries. We still don’t know the essentials: what was in the message thus disseminated; and the identity of the individual responsible for this creative method of cryptography.
‘I shall start with the second question. Who could have painted the frescos? We haven’t seen them, and are relying on the testimony of young Gégène. He found a certain charm in those paintings without a subject, from which we may conclude that they were painted by a skilful artist, familiar with modern techniques.
‘I thus knew two things about our man: a painter of talent who was also familiar with the latest theories of colour-blindness. Here, I had a considerable advantage, which I don’t wish to boast about. As soon as I connected painting and colour-blindness, I remembered a student of mine some fifteen years ago who had written a remarkable thesis on the latter. His name is Bernard Argier, and he was born in Egypt, the son of a French engineer and an aristocratic Egyptian lady.’
‘What happened to this Egyptian?’
‘I’m getting there. After he passed his exams, he returned to Egypt. His father had died almost penniless a long time before, and his own health had been badly affected by the climate and pleasures of Paris. What he did there I do not know. It appears he returned to France in 1933, but I haven’t been able to trace his wanderings. Nevertheless, about two years
ago, he was back in Paris. He was a veritable wreck: poor, without a job, unable to use his brilliant talents and, worst of all, afflicted with who-knows-what disease. The doctor who treated him, practically for free, could never work out what it was. Although it was basically a form of tuberculosis, there was also radiation-induced dermatitis present.
‘At the beginning of 19.., in other words, roughly eighteen months ago, Argier was hospitalised, and placed in the care of Dr. André Richard.’
The name surprised us, particularly since it appeared naturally in the professor’s account. His voice had remained steady up to that point but, with those two words, it broke. It was the only thing which revealed the emotions of the professor, and all the more poignant for that. We remained silent for a moment, without looking at the heart-broken father. When he started speaking again, the only trace of emotion was in his more rapid speech.
‘My son was interested in the sick man’s case, as much for the strangeness of his affliction as his subtle intelligence, albeit sarcastic and bitter. He kept me informed and shared his findings with me. He was never able to solve the mystery of what killed poor Bernard. He died in October, during a brief absence on the part of my son. The autopsy wasn’t able to find anything we didn’t already know.
‘I arranged to speak to my son’s favourite nurse, who had looked after Argier until the end and was with him when he expired. I thought she might have some information. Here’s what she told me. About two weeks before his death, Bernard asked that a telegramme be sent to his half-brother Arnault, demanding to see him urgently. The latter replied that he would arrive via Marseille but, being very tired, would need to stay there overnight and would not arrive in Paris until the evening of the 10th. Bernard died on the morning of the 9th. He was lucid to the last and, desperate to see his brother, he asked the nurse to convey this simple but very important message to Arnault: “Sade—Dalton—Curie”.’
The professor paused again. Emotions were running high. We sensed the end coming.
‘And did the nurse pass the message on?’ asked the Président.
‘When the telegramme announcing his brother’s death arrived at Arnault’s hotel, he himself was already dead from a heart attack. The nurse, not knowing what to do, passed the message on to my son. He promised to take care of it. But he was very busy with his research at the time, and put it off until later. I myself was away, and didn’t hear anything. As far as I know, only one of his best friends heard anything about it. I didn’t return until the end of the month, called back by an urgent telegramme... as you know....’
This time his voice broke completely. We respected his silence for a long time. Bob’s attitude astonished me. Staring at the ceiling, he seemed lost in thought. He didn’t change his position when Richard, with a visible effort, continued his account:
‘I had reached an impasse. The words “Sade” and “Dalton” were easily interpreted, but what about “Curie”? I couldn’t help thinking of the strange sickness that had taken Argier’s life. The secret, then, concerned radium, or something like it.
‘I needed to change direction again. The question I asked myself (because in a criminal investigation, just as in scientific research, one only makes progress by asking oneself questions) was the following: why did the bandit, knowing since the end of May the secret of the frescos, find it necessary, in November, to eliminate those who knew only a part of what he knew? Why? And why so late?
‘Why? Let’s take stock of the situation. The bandit had done everything to divide the secret so no one but he could make use of it. Benefitting from the fact that the text was spread out over the walls of twelve rooms, he had arranged for the contents of each room to be “translated” by a different individual, making sure they came from places as far apart as possible. If he had been planning to kill them all along, why bother with all that complication? There would only be one single daltonian needed for the entire message, who could be executed afterwards. So, back in May, there shouldn’t have been a plan to kill anyone else. There was no risk and no need for a lot of blood to be spilt.
‘Six months later, in November, he changed his mind. Now, we’re dealing with a man who doesn’t do anything lightly, so it must be that a new danger had appeared. From whence did it come? From the twelve daltonians? Surely not. If they posed no problem in May, they would be even less likely to do so in November, when their memories would have faded.
‘That forced me to think of a double of the frescos. Was it possible that Argier had painted another series in another building? Hardly likely. I could only see one solution: photography.’
Another pause. But this time, very skilful. He had to allow us time to digest the importance of his discovery.
‘Yes. Photography. Suppose someone took colour snapshots of the frescos. If they fell into the hands of one of the twelve daltonians, he couldn’t fail to recognise them. On the other hand, a normal person would see nothing. And an uninformed daltonian? We have to suppose that the writing is big enough to be easily readable. Which explains the need for such a great length of painting—I calculated it was one hundred and sixty-seven metres long. But you can’t do that all in one photo.It’s obvious that reduced to a single snapshot, no matter how big, nothing would be distinguishable to the naked eye. But, with a significant enlargement, everything would appear. Nobody would think to do it unless they knew ahead of time what they would find.
‘But how could such snapshots be equally accessible to people so different and in such relatively remote places? It had to be that the copies were published—or were about to be. Where? Book? Magazine? Magazine, almost certainly, and one in particular: L’Image.
‘I learnt that a series of forty-eight pictures were, in fact, due to be inserted in the Noël issue, accompanied by an article about the pure painting. An accident to the unique machine which prints such works of art prevented publication of the aforementioned article. Attempts were made to replace it. The issue, let me remind you, normally appears at the beginning of December. This year, it came out on the twelfth. Up to the last minute, there were hopes that the machine could be fixed. I also knew something else: at the end of October, there was an attempt at burglary. Nothing was stolen. The snapshots were in a safe. They were obviously the reason for the break-in which, unfortunately, failed. I say unfortunately, because if it had succeeded, there would be thirteen bodies less.
‘I want to make two points: the article in question, if it mentioned the name of the painter, didn’t talk about the building; since the papers were reclassified, nobody thinks about them. Furthermore, the author, whom you all know, has been in the Far East for the last two months. Which explains why the meagre and tardy revelations appearing in the press didn’t ring a bell with anyone. You’ll understand in a minute why I stress that point.
‘My research took several days. Unfortunately, the fellow responsible for the snapshots was away on a trip, and I didn’t get hold of the forty-eight images until yesterday morning. I have to say they are perfect. I was able to get hold of one of my friends, in whom I have the utmost confidence, and who also happens to be daltonian. He and I spent the whole day yesterday deciphering the document. It was not easy, but at midnight, I finally had the complete result. Here it is!’
And, showman that he was, the professor brought a roll of paper out of his jacket pocket and started to unwind it. At that moment, excusing himself for a short absence, Bob stood up and left the room. During the minute the absence lasted, M. Delharbe asked a question:
‘You say that your son only communicated Bernard Argier’s dying message to one of his best friends. Who was it?’
‘I prefer not to say,’ replied the professor with a smile. ‘You can draw your own conclusions, which I know will be false.’
There was a short silence, during which Bob tip-toed back into the room. So as not to go around the table, he sat on Jannin’s empty chair, just opposite me. Richard had unrolled his paper. He put on his spectacles and started to read:<
br />
‘“I am, and I say this without pride, the descendant of one of the royal families. At one point in time, my ancestors wore the crown and the tiara, the pschent. Thousands of years have gone by since, and the most terrible vicissitudes befell my family. But their traditions survived, in one form or another. The last descendant, my mother, married a French engineer. Being widowed young, and having only me (my half-brother, Arnault, having left the country), my mother regaled me, during my infancy and adolescence, with what I believed were delicious or terrifying legends.
‘“One day, I had a violent emotion. It was in Cairo, in the museum, which was one of my favourite haunts. Everyone knew me and I was allowed everywhere. A papyrus which had been in a recently discovered batch of documents interested me enormously. It was not written in hieroglyphics. More precisely, the symbols employed were not in common use. The experts had argued about it for a long time, but up until then, nobody had been able to read it. Except me.
‘“It took me years. One of the legends my mother had taught me had impressed me with its savage passion and its realism. It is unknown to the rest of the world, because it was part of the secret literary heritage of the Pharaoh. Here it is:
‘“Anubis, the god with the head of a fox, suspects that a secret allows the sun-god to conquer life, assuring him not only eternity, but a permanent and triumphant youth. And he mourns his own, which is fading. He wants to know Râ’s secret. But he fears the mysteries and perils of the Douât, where no human and no god have penetrated. Eventually, he decides to do it. Trembling, and crawling under cover to avoid the watchful eye of Ammon, he follows its course. Weeks later he arrives at his destination, to discover the retreat where his master, profiting from the night, renews himself. Finally, at the end of his tether, his whole being trembling, more from fright than fatigue (for the gods, in those times, knew fear) he is able to see his enemy stop in a strange gorge surrounded by immense mountains.
The Thirteenth Bullet Page 11