A cart, of which we caught sight now and again, moved along these streets. It contained, in front, two gendarmes dressed as in the days of the Revolution and, at the back, a priest and a man in a full-skirted coat, dark breeches and white stockings.
An isolated picture showed us the man’s head and shoulders. I recognised and, generally speaking, the whole audience in the amphitheatre recognised the heavy-jowled face of King Louis XVI. This expression was hard and proud.
We saw him again, after a few interruptions, in a great square surrounded by artillery and black with soldiers. He climbed the steep steps of a scaffold. His coat and neck-tie had been removed. The priest was supporting him. Four executioners tried to lay hold of him.
I am obliged to interrupt my narrative, which I am deliberately wording as drily as possible, of these fleeting apparitions, in order to make it quite clear that they did not at the moment produce the effect of terror which my readers might suppose. They were too short, too desultory, let me say, and so bad from the strictly cinematographic point of view which the audience adopted, in spite of itself, that they excited irritation and annoyance rather than dread.
The spectators had suddenly lost all confidence. They laughed, they sang. They hooted Massignac. And the storm of invective increased when, on the screen, one of the executioners held up the head of the king and faded away in the mist, together with the scaffold, the soldiers and the guns.
There were a few more timid attempts at pictures, attempts on the part of the film, in which several persons say that they recognized Queen Marie Antoinette, attempts which sustained the patience of the onlookers who were anxious to see the end of a spectacle which they had paid so heavily to attend. But the violence could no longer be restrained.
Who started it? Who was the first to rush forward and provoke the disorder and the resultant panic? The subsequent enquiries failed to show. There seems no doubt that the whole crowd obeyed its impulse to give full expression to its dissatisfaction and that the more turbulent of its members seized the opportunity of belabouring Théodore Massignac and even of trying to take the fabulous screen by storm. This last attempt, at any rate, failed before the impenetrable rampart formed by the attendants, who, armed with knuckledusters or truncheons, repelled the flood of the invaders. As for Massignac, who, after raising the curtain, had the unfortunate idea of leaving his cage and running to one of the exits, he was struck as he passed and swallowed up in the angry swirl of rioters.
After that everybody attacked his neighbour, with a frantic desire for strife and violence which brought into conflict not only the enemies of Massignac and the partisans of order, but also those who were exasperated and those who had no thought but of escaping from the turmoil. Sticks and umbrellas were brandished on high. Women seized one another by the hair. Blood flowed. People fell to the ground, wounded.
I myself did my best to get out and shouldered my way through this indescribable fray. It was no easy work, for numbers of policemen and many people who had not been able to obtain entrance were thronging towards the exit-doors of the amphitheatre. At last I succeeded in reaching the gate through an opening that was made amid the crowd.
“Room for the wounded man!” a tall, clean-shaven fellow was shouting, in a stentorian voice.
Two others followed, carrying in their arms an individual covered with rugs and overcoats.
The crowd fell back. The little procession moved out. I seized my opportunity.
The tall fellow pointed to a private motor-car waiting outside:
“Chauffeur, I’m requisitioning you. Orders of the prefect of police. Come along, the two of you, and get a move on!”
The two men put the victim into the car and took their places inside. The tall fellow sat down beside the chauffeur; and the car drove off.
It was not until the very second when it turned the corner that I conceived in a flash and without any reason whatever the exact idea of what this little scene meant. Suddenly I guessed the identity of the wounded man who was hidden so attentively and carried off so assiduously. And suddenly also, notwithstanding the change of face, though he wore neither beard nor glasses, I gave a name to the tall, clean-shaven fellow. It was the man Velmot.
I rushed back to the Yard and informed the commissary of police who had hitherto had charge of the Dorgeroux case. He whistled up his men. They leapt into taxi-cabs and cars. It was too late. The roads were already filled with such a block of traffic that the commissary’s car was unable to move.
And thus, in the very midst of the crowd, by means of the most daring stratagem, taking advantage of a crush which he himself doubtless had his share in bringing about, the man Velmot had carried off his confederate and implacable enemy, Théodore Massignac.
CHAPTER XIII. THE VEIL IS LIFTED
I WILL NOT linger over the two films of this second performance and the evident connection between them. At the present moment we are too near the close of this extraordinary story to waste time over minute, tedious, unimportant details. We must remember that, on the following morning, a newspaper printed the first part, and, a few hours later, the second part of the famous Prévotelle report, in which the problem was attacked in so masterly a fashion and solved with so profoundly impressive a display of method and logic. I shall never forget it. I shall never forget that, during that night, while I sat in my bedroom reflecting upon the manner in which Massignac had been spirited away, during that night when the long-expected thunderstorm burst over the Paris district, Benjamin Prévotelle was writing the opening pages of his report. And I shall never forget that I was on the point of hearing of all this from Benjamin Prévotelle himself!
At ten o’clock, in fact, one of the neighbours living nearest to the lodge, from whose house my uncle or Bérangère had been in the habit of telephoning, sent word to say that he was connected with Paris and that I was asked to come to the telephone without losing a minute.
I went round in a very bad temper. I was worn out with fatigue. It was raining cats and dogs; and the night was so dark that I knocked against the trees and houses as I walked.
The moment I arrived, I took up the receiver. Some one at the other end addressed me in a trembling voice:
“M. Beaugrand . . . M. Beaugrand . . . Excuse me . . . I have discovered . . .”
I did not understand at first and asked who was speaking.
“My name will convey nothing to you,” was the answer. “Benjamin Prévotelle. I’m not a person of any particular importance. I am an engineer by profession; I left the Central School two years ago.”
I interrupted him:
“One moment, please, one moment. . . . Hullo! . . . Are you there? . . . Benjamin Prévotelle? But I know your name! . . . Yes, I remember, I’ve seen it in my uncle’s papers.”
“Do you mean that? You’ve seen my name in Noël Dorgeroux’s papers?”
“Yes, in the middle of a paper, without comment of any kind.”
The speaker’s excitement increased:
“Oh,” he said, “can it be possible? If Noël Dorgeroux made a note of my name, it proves that he read a pamphlet of mine, a year ago, and that he believed in the explanation of which I am beginning to catch a glimpse to-day.”
“What explanation?” I asked, somewhat impatiently.
“You’ll understand, monsieur, you’ll understand when you read my report.”
“Your report?”
“A report which I am writing now, to-night. . . . Listen: I was present at both the exhibitions in the Yard and I have discovered. . . .”
“Discovered what, hang it all?”
“The problem, monsieur, the solution of the problem.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “You’ve discovered it?”
“Yes, monsieur. I may tell you it’s a very simple problem, so simple that I am anxious to be first in the field. Imagine, if any one else were to publish the truth before me! So I rang up Meudon on the chance of getting you called to the telephone. . . . Oh, do listen to me,
monsieur: you must believe me and help me. . . .”
“Of course, of course,” I replied, “but I don’t quite see . . .”
“Yes, yes,” Benjamin Prévotelle implored, appealing to me, clinging to me, so to speak, in a despairing tone of voice. “You can do a great deal. I only want a few particulars. . . .”
I confess that Benjamin Prévotelle’s statements left me a little doubtful. However, I answered:
“If a few particulars can be of any use to you . . .”
“Perhaps one alone will do,” he said. “It’s this. The wall with the screen was entirely rebuilt by your uncle, Noël Dorgeroux, was it not?”
“Yes.”
“And this wall, as you have said and as every one had observed, forms a given angle with its lower part.”
“Yes.”
“On the other hand, according to your depositions, Noël Dorgeroux intended to have a second amphitheatre built in his garden and to use the back of the same wall as a screen. That’s so, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is the particular which I want you to give me. Have you noticed whether the back of the wall forms the same angle with its lower part?”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“In that case,” said Benjamin Prévotelle, with a note of increasing triumph in his voice, “the evidence is complete. Noël Dorgeroux and I are agreed. The pictures do not come from the wall itself. The cause lies elsewhere. I will prove it; and, if M. Massignac would show a little willingness to help . . .”
“Théodore Massignac was kidnapped this evening,” I remarked.
“Kidnapped? What do you mean?”
I repeated:
“Yes, kidnapped; and I presume that the amphitheatre will be closed until further notice.”
“But this is terrible, it’s awful!” gasped Benjamin Prévotelle. “Why, in that case they couldn’t verify my theory! There would never be any more pictures! No, look here, it’s impossible. Just think, I don’t know the indispensable formula! Nobody does, except Massignac. Oh, no, it is absolutely necessary . . . Hullo, hullo! Don’t cut me off, mademoiselle! . . . One moment more, monsieur. I’ll tell you the whole truth about the pictures. Three or four words will be enough. . . . Hullo, hullo! . . .”
Benjamin Prévotelle’s voice suddenly died away. I was clearly aware of the insuperable distance that separated him from me at the very moment when I was about to learn the miraculous truth which he in his turn laid claim to have discovered.
I waited anxiously. A few minutes passed. Twice the telephone-bell rang without my receiving any call. I decided to go away and had reached the bottom of the stairs when I was summoned back in a hurry. Some one was asking for me on the wire.
“Some one!” I said, going upstairs again. “But it must be the same person.”
And I at once took up the receiver:
“Are you there? Is that M. Prévotelle?”
At first I heard only my name, uttered in a very faint, indistinct voice, a woman’s voice:
“Victorien. . . . Victorien. . . .”
“Hullo!” I cried, very excitedly, though I did not yet understand. “Hullo! . . . Yes, it’s I, Victorien Beaugrand. I happened to be at the telephone. . . . Hullo! . . . Who is it speaking?”
For a few seconds the voice sounded nearer and then seemed to fall away. After that came perfect silence. But I had caught these few words:
“Help, Victorien! . . . My father’s life is in danger: help! . . . Come to the Blue Lion at Bougival. . . .”
I stood dumbfounded. I had recognised Bérangère’s voice:
“Bérangère,” I muttered, “calling on me for help. . . .”
Without even pausing to think, I rushed to the station.
A train took me to Saint-Cloud and another two stations further. Wading through the mud, under the pelting rain, and losing my way in the dark, I covered the mile or two to Bougival on foot, arriving in the middle of the night. The Blue Lion was closed. But a small boy dozing under the porch asked me if I was M. Victorien Beaugrand. When I answered that I was, he said that a lady, by the name of Bérangère, had told him to wait for me and take me to her, at whatever time I might arrive.
I trudged beside the boy, through the empty streets of the little town, to the banks of the Seine, which we followed for some distance. The rain had stopped, but the darkness was still impenetrable.
“The boat is here,” said the boy.
“Oh, are we crossing?”
“Yes, the young lady is hiding on the other side. Be very careful not to make a noise.”
We landed soon after. Then a stony path took us to a house where the boy gave three knocks on the door.
Some one opened the door. Still following my guide, I went up a few steps, crossed a passage lighted by a candle and was shown into a dark room with some one waiting in it. Instantly the light of an electric lamp struck me full in the face.
The barrel of a revolver was pointed at me and a man’s voice said:
“Silence, do you understand? The least sound, the least attempt at escape; and you’re done for. Otherwise you have nothing to fear; and the best thing you can do is to go to sleep.”
The door was closed behind me. Two bolts were shot.
I had fallen into the trap which the man Velmot — I did not hesitate to fix upon him at once — had laid for me through the instrumentality of Bérangère.
This unaccountable adventure, like all those in which Bérangère was involved, did not alarm me unduly at the moment. I was no doubt too weary to seek reasons for the conduct of the girl and of the man under whose instructions she was acting. Why had she betrayed me? How had I incurred the man Velmot’s ill-will? And what had induced him to imprison me, if I had nothing to fear from him as he maintained? These were all idle questions. After groping through the room and finding that it contained a bed, or rather a mattress and blankets, I took off my boots and outer clothing, wrapped myself in the blankets and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
I slept well into the following day. Meanwhile some one must have entered the room, for I saw on a table a hunk of new bread and a bottle of water. The cell which I occupied was a small one. Enough light to enable me to see came through the slats of a wooden shutter, which was firmly barricaded outside, as I discovered after opening the narrow window. One of the slats was half broken. Through the gap I perceived that my prison overlooked from a height of three or four feet a strip of ground at the edge of which little waves lapped among the reeds. Finding that, after crossing one river, I was facing another, I concluded that Velmot had brought me to an island in the Seine. Was this not the island which I had beheld, in a fleeting vision, on the chapel in the cemetery? And was it not here that Velmot and Massignac had established their head-quarters last winter?
Part of the day passed in silence. But, about five o’clock, I heard a sound of voices and outbursts of argument. This happened under my room and consequently in a cellar the grating of which opened beneath my window. On listening attentively, I seemed on several occasions to recognize Massignac’s voice.
The discussion lasted fully an hour. Then some one made his appearance outside my window and called out:
“Hi, you chaps, come on and get ready! . . . . He’s a stubborn beast and won’t speak unless we make him.”
It was the tall fellow who, the day before, had forced his way through the crowd in the Yard by making an outcry about a wounded man. It was Velmot, a leaner Velmot, without beard or glasses, Velmot, the coxcomb, the object of Bérangère’s affections.
“I’ll make him, the brute! Think of it. I’ve got him here, at my mercy: is it likely that I shouldn’t be able to make him spew up his secret? No, no, we must finish it and by nightfall. You’re still decided?”
He received two growls in reply. He sneered:
“He’s not half badly trussed up, eh? All right. I’ll do without you. Only just lend me a hand to begin with.”
He stepped into a boat f
astened to a ring on the bank. One of the men pushed it with a boat-hook between two stakes planted in the mud and standing out well above the reeds. Velmot knotted one end of a thick rope to the top of each stake and in the middle fastened an iron hook, which thus hung four or five feet above the water.
“That’s it,” he said, on returning. “I shan’t want you any more. Take the other boat and go and wait for me in the garage. I’ll join you there in three or four hours, when Massignac has blabbed his little story and after I’ve had a little plain speaking with our new prisoner. And then we’ll be off.”
He walked away with his two assistants. When I saw him again, twenty minutes later, he had a newspaper in his hand. He laid it on a little table which stood just outside my window. Then he sat down and lit a cigar. He turned his back to me, hiding the table from my view. But at one moment he moved and I caught sight of his paper, the Journal du Soir, which was folded across the page and which bore a heading in capitals running right across the width of the sheet, with this sensational title:
“THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MEUDON
APPARITIONS REVEALED”
I was shaken to the very depths of my being. So the young student had not lied! Benjamin Prévotelle had discovered the truth and had managed, in the space of a few hours, to set it forth in the report of which he had spoken and to make it public.
Glued to the shutter, how I strove to read the opening lines of the article! These were the only lines that met my eyes, because of the manner in which the paper was folded. And how great was my excitement at each word that I made out!
I have carefully preserved a copy of that paper, by which a part at least of the great mystery was made known to me. Before reprinting the famous report, which Benjamin Prévotelle had published that morning, it said:
“Yes, the fantastic problem is solved. A contemporary published this morning, in the form of ‘An Open Letter to the Academy of Science,’ the most sober, luminous and convincing report conceivable. We do not know whether the official experts will agree with the conclusions of the report, but we doubt if the objections, which for that matter are frankly stated by the author, are strong enough, however grave they may be, to demolish the theory which he propounds. The arguments seem unanswerable. The proofs are such as to compel belief. And what doubles the value of this admirable theory is that it does not merely appear to be unassailable, but opens up to us the widest and most marvellous horizons. In fact, Noël Dorgeroux’s discovery is no longer limited to what it is or what it seems to be. It implies consequences which cannot be foretold. It is calculated to upset all our ideas of man’s past and all our conceptions of his future. Not since the beginning of the world has there been an event to compare with this. It is at the same time the most incomprehensible event and the most natural, the most complex and the simplest. A great scientist might have announced it to the world as the result of meditation. And he who, thanks both to able intuition and intelligent observation has achieved this inestimable glory is little more than a boy in years.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 357