The Three Eyes. Морис Леблан
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instance, the other day . . ."
She stopped and hesitated; her face betrayed anxiety; and I had to press her before she continued:
"No, no," she said, "I oughtn't to speak of that. It's not that your uncle forbade me to. But it has left such a painful impression. . . ."
"What do you mean, Bérangère?"
"I mean, an impression of fear and suffering. I saw, with your uncle, on a wall in the Yard, the most frightful things: images which represented three—sort of eyes. Were they eyes? I don't know. The things moved and looked at us. Oh, I shall never forget it as long as I live."
"And my uncle?"
"Your uncle was absolutely taken aback. I had to hold him up and bring him round, for he fainted. When he came to himself, the images had vanished."
"And did he say nothing?"
"He stood silent, gazing at the wall. Then I asked him, 'What is it, god-father?' Presently he answered, 'I don't know, I don't know: it may be the rays of which I spoke to you, the B-rays. If so, it must be a phenomenon of materialization.' That was all he said. Very soon after, he saw me to the door of the garden; and he has shut himself up in the Yard ever since. I did not see him again until just now."
She ceased. I felt anxious and greatly puzzled by this revelation:
"Then, according to you, Bérangère," I said, "my uncle's discovery is connected with those three figures? They were geometrical figures, weren't they? Triangles?"
She formed a triangle with her two fore-fingers and her two thumbs:
"There, the shape was like that. . . . As for their arrangement . . ."
She picked up a twig that had fallen from a tree and was beginning to draw lines in the sand of the path when a whistle sounded.
"That's god-father's signal when he wants me in the Yard," she cried.
"No," I said, "to-day it's for me. We fixed it."
"Does he want you?"
"Yes, to tell me about his discovery."
"Then I'll come too."
"He doesn't expect you, Bérangère."
"Yes, he does; yes, he does."
I caught hold of her arm, but she escaped me and ran to the top of the garden, where I came up with her outside a small, massive door in a fence of thick planks which connected a shed and a very high wall.
She opened the door an inch or two. I insisted:
"Don't do it, Bérangère! It will only vex him."
"Do you really think so?" she said, wavering a little.
"I'm positive of it, because he asked me and no one else. Come, Bérangère, be sensible."
She hesitated. I went through and closed the door upon her.
CHAPTER II
THE "TRIANGULAR CIRCLES"
What was known at Meudon as Noël Dorgeroux's Yard was a piece of waste-land in which the paths were lost amid the withered grass, nettles and stones, amid stacks of empty barrels, scrap-iron, rabbit-hutches and every kind of disused lumber that rusts and rots or tumbles into dust.
Against the walls and outer fences stood the workshops, joined together by driving-belts and shafts, and the laboratories filled with furnaces, pneumatic receivers, innumerable retorts, phials and jars containing the most delicate products of organic chemistry.
The view embraced the loop of the Seine, which lay some three hundred feet below, and the hills of Versailles and Sèvres, which formed a wide circle on the horizon towards which a bright autumnal sun was sinking in a pale blue sky.
"Victorien!"
My uncle was beckoning to me from the doorway of the workshop which he used most often. I crossed the Yard.
"Come in," he said. "We must have a talk first. Only for a little while: just a few words."
The room was lofty and spacious and one corner of it was reserved for writing and resting, with a desk littered with papers and drawings, a couch and some old, upholstered easy-chairs. My uncle drew one of the chairs up for me. He seemed calmer, but his glance retained an unaccustomed brilliance.
"Yes," he said, "a few words of explanation beforehand will do no harm, a few words on the past, the wretched past which is that of every inventor who sees fortune slipping away from him. I have pursued it for so long! I have always pursued it. My brain had always seemed to me a vat in which a thousand incoherent ideas were fermenting, all contradicting one another and mutually destructive. . . . And then there was one that gained strength. And thenceforward I lived for that one only and sacrificed everything for it. It was like a sink that swallowed up all my money and that of others . . . and their happiness and peace of mind as well. Think of my poor wife, Victorien. You remember how unhappy she was and how anxious about the future of her son, of my poor Dominique! And yet I loved her so devotedly. . . ."
He stopped at this recollection. And I seemed to see my aunt's face again and to hear her telling my mother of her fears and her forebodings:
"He will ruin us," she used to say. "He keeps on making me sell out. He considers nothing."
"She did not trust me," Noël Dorgeroux continued. "Oh, I had so many disappointments, so many lamentable failures! Do you remember, Victorien, do you remember my experiment on intensive germination by means of electric currents, my experiments with oxygen and all the rest, all the rest, not one of which succeeded? The pluck it called for! But I never lost faith for a minute! . . . One idea in particular buoyed me up and I came back to it incessantly, as though I were able to penetrate the future. You know to what I refer, Victorien: it appeared and reappeared a score of times under different forms, but the principle remained the same. It was the idea of utilizing the solar heat. It's all there, you know, in the sun, in its action upon us, upon cells, organisms, atoms, upon all the more or less mysterious substances that nature has placed at our disposal. And I attacked the problem from every side. Plants, fertilizers, diseases of men and animals, photographs: for all these I wanted the collaboration of the solar rays, utilized by the aid of special processes which were mine alone, my secret and nobody else's."
My uncle Dorgeroux was talking with renewed eagerness; and his eyes shone feverishly. He now held forth without interrupting himself:
"I will not deny that there was an element of chance about my discovery. Chance plays its part in everything. There never was a discovery that did not exceed our inventive effort; and I can confess to you, Victorien, that I do not even now understand what has happened. No, I can't explain it by a long way; and I can only just believe it. But, all the same, if I had not sought in that direction, the thing would not have occurred. It was due to me that the incomprehensible miracle took place. The picture is outlined in the very frame which I constructed, on the very canvas which I prepared; and, as you will perceive, Victorien, it is my will that makes the phantom which you are about to see emerge from the darkness."
He expressed himself in a tone of pride with which was mingled a certain uneasiness, as though he doubted himself and as though his words overstepped the actual limits of truth.
"You're referring to those three—sort of eyes, aren't you?" I asked.
"What's that?" he exclaimed, with a start. "Who told you? Bérangère, I suppose! She shouldn't have. That's what we must avoid at all costs: indiscretions. One word too much and I am undone; my discovery is stolen. Only think, the first man that comes along . . ."
I had risen from my chair. He pushed me towards his desk:
"Sit down here, Victorien," he said, "and write. You mustn't mind my taking