When Mrs. Bansberg had exposed to me the whole story of Johan-mysteries clear and mysteries to clarify - and when she gave me his reasoned opinion on the party that should be taken, I could only abound in its meaning; and we decided by mutual agreement that the persecutor of her husband would be arrested the next morning on the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts - as long as he was punctual!
Reserving for later the joys of wonder, I drew up the program of action.
"It is indispensable," said I to Madame Bansberg, "that your husband gives his evidence today. I will, therefore, provoke at the Palais de Justice the meeting of some persons whose ministry must be required, or whose assistance seems to me to be advisable. Your husband will speak in front of them, and the arrest warrant will be signed.
"I know enough of the manners of the Palace, and I take it upon myself to fix the time and place of the appearance. Come both at three o'clock in the afternoon. But you must avoid the espionage of which you may be the object. We must track down the possible followers and accomplices who could stand guard around the office of Mr. Dupin ... On the other hand, if your husband is watched, it is necessary that his arguments see him go to his banker, in order to make them believe that he went to get the million ... What is your bank?
- Crédit Lyonnais.
-Central office?
- Yes.
- It's more than perfect. Give me your attention:
"At half-past two you will be taken to Credit Lyonnais in your car. Johan will be provided with a suitcase. You will go down in front of the facade, Boulevard des Italiens. The car will wait for you there. You will detour on detours in the heights of the labyrinth of Finance, and you will leave by the door of the rue de Choiseul, where you will find a taxi mobilized by me.
"This taxi will take you to Quai de l'Horloge, at the door of the Conciergerie. I will be there myself, and I will guide you to a certain room of my acquaintance, where we will be completely safe from the unfortunate.
- In jail? You will upset my poor Johan!
- What do you want! I cannot call Mr. Dupin and Mr. Lambert at Maxim or the Majestic! The Conciergerie has a hallway with the Palace; these gentlemen will arrive there, it is convenient and prudent. I continue:
"The deposition completed, you will regain Credit Lyonnais by the same means; the taxi drops you off rue de Choiseul. You cross the labyrinth of finance. And you go home in your car, carrying a million imaginary.
- It will stuff the bag with old paper ...
- Useless. A million in thousand notes does not take more space than a big book.
- How long will the deposition last?
- The time it would take to get the payment of a million to Credit Lyonnais.
" Everything is fine? Are you there? ... So, leave me. I'll be out of here only after you, and I do not have a minute to lose. Mrs. Bansberg held out her hand, which I kissed. We went together to the landing of Alexis, driven back by the pleasant second. There, I allowed Mrs. Bansberg to take the lead, and, simulating the businessman who is writing orders on his tablets, I counted up to a thousand, at the pace of the troop step, before crossing the threshold of the building.
The offices of my newspaper are located in the neighborhood. I went there on time, and seized the phone.
The room I had chosen to play Johan Bansberg's testimony is at the very heart of the old Parisian jail.
There was only one table and some chairs for furniture.
When I introduced Mr. and Mrs. Bansberg, four people were already there. Guards and an employee of the anthropometric department stood in the corridor.
I made the appeal of the presents aside: the attorney Lambert, a clerk, M. Sicot, the old Dr. Grassinet, a forensic doctor.
Two absent. One would not come, I had been warned. The other was reputed for its inaccuracy, and when we entered, Mr. Lambert was pleasantly saying that, if it is true that accuracy is the courtesy of kings, Mr. Dupin would not have known how to crown without becoming a boor; from which he concluded, not without jubilation, that M. Dupin found himself unsuitable, by nature, to curl up in a throne and to make reels with a scepter.
Johan - needless to say - showed the pallor and the hustle and bustle of insecurity. However, until then, everything had gone according to my predictions. In a stormy rain, a taxi was waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Bansberg at the door of the Conciergerie, and their limousine awaited them no less in front of the Credit Lyonnais.
We had only to wait, uniting our prayers so that M. Dupin would not testify to the excess of his incapacity to govern the people.
The officials I had summoned - with, of course, the acquiescence of Mr. Dupin - were unaware of the importance of this alert. "An interesting statement," they did not know any more. And each one occupied his idleness as he could.
The grilled window, overlooking an interior court, cast a gloomy light on this judicial place; she was streaming, whipped with gusts. M. Sicot appeared to me in unison with the atmosphere. His rage and sorrow, his muteness, adapted to the climate and the atmosphere. He was almost uncivil towards us who arrived, barely getting up and looking at us without amenity.
I must say, in his defense, that the circumstances did not imply any mundane curtsy: and M. Lambert made us feel this well by resuming with Dr. Grassinet - and this in a low voice - an interrupted conversation.
The clerk contemplated his nails. Sicot looked at Johan with that grumbling dog's eye (was he resuming his first suspicions?). Only the alternating whispers of the substitute and the forensic doctor were heard on the flares of the squall.
In spite of the care they took to pronounce no name, I understood that they were talking about the Rue d'Assas case.
Dr. Grassinet had performed the autopsy of the corpses.
"No," he said, "not the slightest indication, neither external nor internal. I thought, for a moment, to have discovered a hair in a nail of the first death ... A black hair. But it was a bit of bear skin.
- And ... And in the eyes ...? the half fig and half grape substitute ventured.
- In the eyes, I did not find anything either, answered the doctor firmly. Oh! I do not hide it: I looked in the eyes ...
"Until now, my numerous observations make me believe that never a murderer will keep, photographed on his retina, the image of his last vision and that we will thus be able to find in himself the portrait of his assassin. I think it's a legend. But I consider it scrupulous to make sure of it on every occasion, even if I pass for an old fool. For this legend is based on the theory of scotomas; and that is science.
- Scotomas? asked Mr. Lambert.
- Scotomas: dark spots, silhouettes left on the retina by the contemplation of an object too bright or too illuminated. You remember the worms of Rostand:
... when too much sun is set
We see everything on a round vermeil ...
"Only rhyme has deceived the poet. The round is not vermeil; it is dark, a particularly sensitive phenomenon when viewed on a white background. At most the scotomas are surrounded by a halo ignescent barely overflowing. These are negative clichés.
- What are they due to?
- You know that vision is nothing more than a series of photographs. The eye is the dark room, the retina, the sensitive plate, and the retinal purple the layer of salts that the light breaks down. Normally, the purple is recomposing enough instantly that each photograph fades as soon as taken. But if you commit the imprudence of looking at a splendid point for a long time, or if some dazzling object strikes your eyes, it is done: the purple, too strongly impressed, regenerates only slowly, and sometimes the image, indelible, will affect him without hope of healing.
- It's weird…
- Death, by stopping all functions, removes all reconstructive work. Suppose a man succumbs before his retinal purple has got rid of a scotoma; if this scotoma reproduces the contours of his murderer (whom we imagine to have been resplendent), is this not a fact that corroborates our legend?
- Indeed.
- Yes, but
from there a scotoma is visible from the outside, under the magnifying glass of a forensic doctor, there is far! And if the one who speaks to you studies the question, if he experiments certain processes, believe that it is under the bushel. More than one colleague would ridicule me! ...
"Just remember what I told you about scotomas; and know that in the eyes of the second corpse there was, alas! no sketch of armed knife hand. Yet this phosphorescent apparition, in full darkness, whose mediums spoke - this luminous body placed before the eyes of the victim at the moment of his death - eh! what an opportunity!
The doctor no longer thought of those who listened to him.
He then saw, with great surprise, Mrs. Bansberg approaching him.
- Doctor, she said, let me ask you a question:
"Do you believe that the seizure can have any effect on the persistence of a scotoma? According to you, a scotoma produced by the sudden vision of a ... dazzling object, is it likely eclipses and flashbacks? Can he, having disappeared, reappear at certain moments, under the effect of a violent emotion? ...
"I do not think so, no, Madame," said Dr. Grassinet, in the most courteous tone. An intermittent scotoma, it seems odd, at first. But ... But I rely here on the habit of facts, organs and temperaments; and always leave room for the exception. I cannot, for example, treat as ordinary eyes the exceptional eyes that give me the grace to land on me now ... Excuse the old practitioner who guesses your thought so easily. But the old practitioner is also an old admirer of beauty, and he tells you:
"Madame, do not try to penetrate the organic reason for your seduction. The indefinable charm of your big eyes, do not ask science to turn it into a pathological anomaly. Leave the functional troubles alone. The doctors have no gallantry; for them, every exception, even adorable, is a monstrosity. When we have eyes like yours, we keep them. To explain them would be to disarm them. If justice is not interested, who will forgive us this sacrilege?
Katarina, delightful in her confusion, looked at me and looked at Johan knowingly.
She knew well, the pretty one, that her eyes distilled an unusual grace, and she was the first to hold this gift for infinitely precious.
I promised myself never to talk to him again about "Demonoplasm". Yet, I was glad to feel reassured about this specter that had not arisen before her, but in her - that shadow that was not the cause of her emotions, but their instantaneous effect - this ghost, in a word, which was only a scotome!
Katarina had thrown herself toward the light in the daze. The sagacity of the old man had embarrassed her. But the arrival of M. Dupin happened at the right moment to draw him out of it.
Ashamed of being late, he concealed his boredom beneath a bouncy flutter that twisted his corpulence of invertebrate. Gigantic and childlike, he was progressing slowly, skirting the rump against the back of his chest, his head bowed over one shoulder, his fat, white hand raised to his cheek in a pose full of anointing and affectation.
When he was lodged behind the table, he invited Johan to drop.
The latter complied and, as if confiding in his tie, revealed the whole story of his hands.
I leave the audience astonished. But Mr. Dupin nodded from the chief:
"That, Mr. Bansberg," he said, looking at me to make me understand that it was to me that he was speaking in truth. That, Mr. Bansberg ...
He made exasperated gestures, and his reproachful glance shot me.
- Sorry! I said, getting up. But, in spite of the absence of Dr. Petiot, who is in America for a few days and would have liked to hear you, we can proceed to the identification of the hands of Mr. Johan Bansberg, and become certain that his hands are those of Danvers.
"Mr. Sicot, you who knew Danvers, do you want to approach? Sicot, extremely moved, obeyed, and Johan handed him his hands.
- I seem to recognize ... But I would not swear ... said the inspector after a moment. The Danvers affair was several months old ... The accused's hands had not caught my attention ... I only dwelt on the correlation of fingerprints ... Finally, Mr. Bansberg subjected his hands to so many treatments, if I dare say ...
- Or, I left. But M. Berthier, dead as he is, will enlighten us.
Thereupon, I asked permission to introduce the employee of the Anthropometric Service.
He was carrying a small package that he began to undo.
- The Danvers fact sheet! I said. And take, please, the fingerprints of Monsieur.
He put the card in front of the magistrates. Johan, solicited, removed his overcoat, his jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, then, having pressed the tips of his fingers on a pad saturated with black ink, he printed their traces in the middle of a white sheet.
- Now, measure the fingers!
The employee had his hands stretched out flat, and practiced the surveying with the help of an appropriate height.
Footprints and figures were compared. M. Dupin was stupefied.
However, Dr. Grassinet, yielding to my prayer, examined Johan's hands, his arms, and especially the network of scars surrounding his forearms a few inches from the wrist.
- Well? I asked him.
"I cannot say the opposite," said the scientist. You see me confused. I think I live in the year 2000 - unless there is a trick ... But, if it's Petiot, the word trickery, no more than the word impossible, must be pronounced ... It's a heck of a lot. man. He would be hooked up with Nikola Tesla and Edison.
"It remains to be seen," said the substitute coldly, "if Dr. Petiot is the author of these scars.
- Mrs. Bansberg, have you ever spoken to Dr. Petiot about your husband's hands?
"I remember our conversations very well," Katarina replied. But it was not my husband's hands that gave me anxiety. I only asked Dr. Petiot about the operation on the head; so that he has never been obliged to lie in order to respect professional secrecy.
"In summary," concludes Mr. Lambert, "we have evidence that Mr. Johan Bansberg has Danvers hands - or hands that look curiously like Danvers - and that their fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Here. And? ... Now, we have to prove to ourselves: first that Danvers is alive, secondly that he is the culprit!
We saw Johan waving like a cloth in the wind. He had spoken. The spell was cast. Unless Petiot could provide some unforeseen intelligence, his life depended on the arrest of the criminal!
"Read this," I said to the magistrates.
It was an excerpt from the record of execution, reporting that Danvers' body had been given to Dr. Petiot for autopsy, dissection and experiments.
"Hardly a beginning of proof," remarked Mr. Dupin. What do you conclude? The transplant of the hands? Perhaps; for Dr. Petiot must have had a motive of this kind to claim the corpse. As well he will tell us himself in a few days. But the resurrection of the tortured? Stupidity! Now, on this point, the doctor will not be able to testify, since, according to yourself, he would have taken no part in this ... this thing, finally, to sleep upright! ... I bet you twenty francs that Danvers is always dead, and that your net will close on the void! - And he added without care: Ah! no, Mr. Ray, there are limits!
Who will you believe such blunders? My word! You take us for ... for je-ne-sais-quoi! ...
I looked at him in a leaning way, weighing on him with all my visual powers.
- Start an arrest warrant anyway!
- Against who? Against Danvers? You are crazy! Start an arrest warrant against a dead person! As much to give immediately my resignation!
- Well! Judge, "interjected Sicot with a quasi-theatrical decision," leave the name blank, if the name crumples you. But sign! And give me your full trust.
The inspector's attitude mediated all the witnesses of this dramatic scene. His eyes, literally, threw lightning. He beamed with sudden enthusiasm. And addressing Johan, he said with fire:
- Repeat me the description of Danvers without taking care of the sheet ... You say that the man let grow his beard, and he must have aged during his death! And, the cards, it's never complete). Let's see: brown complexio
n, black eyes, big thin nose, with a mole on the right nostril, rather southern accent? Sniff at every moment? Roll the r? has very short and very white teeth? ...
- Absolutely that.
Sicot burst with happiness:
- The hand, Mr Bansberg. I must shake your hand!
Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen…. Page 24