CHAPTER XIII. THE VEIL IS LIFTED edit
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 Prevotelle report, in which the problem was attacked in so masterly a fashion and solved it 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 Prevotelle 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 Prevotelle himself! At ten o'clock, in fact, one of the neighbours living nearest to the lodge, from whose house my uncle or Berangere 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 Prevotelle. 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 Prevotelle? 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 Noel 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 Noel 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 Prevotelle 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 Prevotelle'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, Noel 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, Noel 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 Prevotelle, with a note of increasing triumph in his voice, “the evidence is complete. Noel 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...”
“Theodore 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 Prevotelle. “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 Prevotelle'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. Prevotelle?” 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 Berangere's voice:
“Berangere,” 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 Berangere, 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 Berangere.
- * * * *
This unaccountable adventure, like all those in which Berangere 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 Berangere'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 fastened 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 Prevotelle 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 Prevotelle 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, Noel 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.
“We subjoin a few particulars gleaned in the course of an interview which Benjamin Prevotelle was good enough to grant us. We apologize for being able to give no more details concerning his personality. How should it be otherwise: Benjamin Prevotelle is twenty-three years of age. He...”
I had to stop here, as the subsequent lines escaped my eyes. Was I to learn more?
Velmot had risen from his chair and was walking to and fro. After a brief disappearance, he returned with a bottle of some liqueur, of which he drank two glasses in quick succession. Then he unfolded the newspaper and began to peruse the report or rather to reperuse it, for I had no doubt that he had read it before.
His chair was right against my shutter. He sat leaning back, so that I was able to see, not the end of the preliminary article, but the report itself, which he read rather slowly.
The daylight, proceeding from a sky whose clouds must have hidden the sun, was meantime diminishing. I read simultaneously with Velmot:
“An Open Letter to the Academy of Science
“I will beg you, gentlemen, to regard this memorandum as only the briefest possible introduction to the more important essay which I propose to write and to the innumerable volumes to which it is certain to give rise in every country, to which volumes also it will serve as a modest preface.
“I am writing hurriedly, allowing my pen to run away with me, improvising hastily as I go along. You will find omissions and defects which I do not attempt to conceal and which are due in equal proportions to the restricted number of observations which we were able to make at Meudon and to the obstinate refusal which M. Theodore Massignac opposes to every request for additional information. But the remarkable feeling aroused by the miraculous pictures makes it my duty to offer the results, as yet extremely incomplete, of an investigation in respect of which I have the legitimate ambition to reserve the right of priority. I thus hope, by confining my hypotheses to a definite channel, to assist towards establishing the truth and relieving the public mind.
“My investigations were commenced immediately after the first revelations made by M. Victorien Beaugrand. I collated all his statements. I analysed all his impressions. I seized upon all that Noel Dorgeroux had said. I went over the details of all his experiments. And in consequence of carefully weighing and examining all these things I did not come to the first performance at Meudon with my hands in my pockets, as a lover of sensations and a dabbler in mystery. On the contrary, I came with a well-considered plan and with a few working-implements, deliberately selected and concealed under my own clothing and that of some of my friends who were good enough to assist me.
“First of all, a camera. This was a matter of some difficulty. M. Theodore Massignac had his misgivings and had prohibited the introduction of so much as the smallest Kodak. Nevertheless I succeeded. I had to. I had to provide a definite answer to a first question, which might be called the critical question: are the Meudon apparitions due to individual or collective suggestions, possessing no reality outside those who experience them, or have they a real and external cause? That answer may certainly be deduced from the absolute identity of the impressions received by all the spectators. But to-day I am adducing a direct proof which I consider to be unassailable. The camera refuses any sort of suggestion. The camera is not a brain in which the picture can create itself, in which an hallucination is formed out of internal data. It is a witness that does not lie and is not mistaken. Well, this witness has spoken. The sensitive plate certifies the phenomena to be real. I hold at the disposal of the Academy seven negatives of the screen thus obtained by instantaneous exposures. Two of them, representing Rheims Cathedral on fire, are remarkably clear.
“Here then the first point is settled: the screen is the seat of an emanation of light-rays.
“While I was obtaining the proofs of this emanation, I submitted it to the means of investigation which physics places at our disposal. I was not, unfortunately, able to make as many or as accurate experiments as I should have wished. The distance of the wall, the local arrangements and the inadequacy of the light emitted by the screen were against me. Nevertheless, by using the spectroscope and the polarimeter, I ascertained that this light did not appear to differ perceptibly from the natural light diffused by a white surface.
“But a more tangible result and one to which I attach the greatest importance was obtained by examining the screen by means of a revolving mirror. It is well known that, if our ordinary cinematographic pictures projected on a screen be viewed in a mirror to which we impart a rapid rotary movement, the successive pictures are dislocated and yield images in the field of the mirror. A similar effect can be obtained, though less distinctly, by turning one's head quickly so as to project the successive pictures upon different points of the retina. It was therefore indicated that I should apply this method of analysis to the animated projections produced at Meudon. I was thus able to prove positively that these projections, like those of the ordinary cinematograph, break up into separate and successive images, but with a rapidity which is notably greater than in the operations to which we are accustomed, for I found that they average 28 to the second. On the other hand, these images are not emitted at regular intervals. I observed rhythmical alterations of acceleration and retardation and I am inclined to believe that the rhythmical variations are not unconnected with the extraordinary impression of stereoscopic relief which all the spectators at Meudon received.
“The foregoing observations led up to a scientific certainty and naturally guided my investigations into a definite channel: the Meudon pictures are genuine cinematographic projections thrown upon the screen and perceived by the spectators in the ordinary manner. But where is the projecting-apparatus? How does it work? This is where the gravest difficulty lies, for hitherto no trace of an apparatus has been discovered, nor even the least clue to the existence of any apparatus whatever.
“Is it allowable to suppose, as I did not fail to do, that the projections may proceed from within the screen, by means of an underground device which it is not impossible to imagine? This last theory would obviously greatly relieve our minds, by attributing the visions to some clever trick. But it was not without good reason that first M. Victorien Beaugrand and afterwards the audience itself refused to accept it. The visions bear a stamp of authenticity and unexpectedness which strikes all who see them, without any exception. Moreover, the specialists in cinematographic “faking,” when questioned, frankly proclaim that their expert knowledge is at a loss and their technique at fault. It may even be declared that the exhibitor of these images possesses no power beyond that of receiving them on a suitable screen and that he himself does not know what is about to appear on the screen. Lastly, it may be added that the preparation of such films as that would be a long and complicated operation, necessitating an extensive equipment and a numerous staff of actors; and it is really impossible that these preparations can have been effected in absolute secrecy.
“This is exactly the point to which my enquiries had led me on the night before the last, after the first performance. I will not presume to say that I knew more than any chance member of the public about that which constitutes the fundamental nature of the problem. Nevertheless, when I took my seat at the second performance, I was in a better condition mentally than any of the other onlookers. I was standing on solid ground. I was self controlled, free of feverish excitement or any other factor that might diminish the intensity of my attention. I was hampered by no preconceived ideas; and no new idea, no new fact could come within my grasp without my immediately perceiving it.
“This was what happened. The new fact was the bewildering and mystifying spectacle of the grotesque Shapes. I did not at once draw the conclusion which this spectacle entailed, or at least I was not aware of so doing. But my perceptions were aroused. Those beings equipped with three arms became connected in my mind with the initial riddle of the Three Eyes. If I did not yet understand, at least I had a presentiment of the truth; if I did not know, at least I suspected that I was about to know. The door was opening. The light was beginning to dawn.
“A few minutes later, as will be remembered, came the gruesome picture of a cart conveying two gendarmes, a priest and a king who was being led to his death. It was a confused, fragmentary, mutilated picture, continually broken up and pieced together again. Why? For, after all, the thing was not normal. Until then, as we know and as M. Victorien Beaugrand had told us, until then the pictures were always admirably distinct. And suddenly we beheld a flickering, defective image, confused, dim and at moments almost invisible. Why?
“At that critical instant, this was the only train of thought permissible. The horror and strangeness of the spectacle no longer counted. Why was this, technically speaking, a defective picture? Why was the faultless mechanism, which until now had worked with perfect smoothness, suddenly disordered? What was the grain of sand that had thrown it out of gear?
“Really the problem was proposed to me with a simplicity that confounded me. The terms of the problem were familiar to all. We had before us cinematographic pictures. These cinematographic pictures did not proceed from the wall itself. They did not come from any part of the amphitheatre. Then whence were they projected? And what obstacle was now preventing their free projection?
“Instinctively, I made the only movement that could be made, the movement which a child would have made if that elementary question had been put to it: I raised my eyes to the sky.
“It was absolutely clear, an immense, empty sky.
“Clear and empty, yes, but in the part which my eyes were able to interrogate. Was it the same in the part hidden from my view by the upper wall of the amphitheatre?
“The mere silent utterance of the words which propounded the question was enough to make me almost swoon with anxiety. They bore the tremendous truth within themselves. I had only to speak them for the great mystery to vanish utterly.
“With trembling limbs and a heart that almost ceased to beat, I climbed to the top of the amphitheatre and gazed at the horizon. Yonder, towards the west, light clouds were floating....”