CHAPTER VII.

THE murder of M. Rovere, committed in broad daylight, in a quarter of Paris filled with life and movement, caused a widespread sensation. There was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What could be ascertained about the dead man's life was very dramatically written up by Paul Rodier in a sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged upon, soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy the interest of a judicial romance. All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man awoke, as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.

What was this M. Rovere, former Consul to Buenos Ayres or Havana, amateur collector of objects of virtu, member of the Society of Bibliophiles, where he had not been seen for a long time? What enemy had entered his room for the purpose of cutting his throat? Might he not have been assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms contained a collection of works of art? The fete at Montmartre was often in full blast in front of the house where the murder had been committed, and among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors who are always attendant upon foreign kirmesses might not some one of them have returned and committed the crime? The papers took advantage of the occasion to moralize upon permitting these fetes to be held in the outlying boulevards, where vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously from the soil.

But no one, not one journal--perhaps by order--spoke of that unknown visitor whom Moniche called _the individual_, and whom the portress had seen standing beside M. Rovere in front of the open safe. Paul Rodier in his sketch scarcely referred to the fact that justice had a clew important enough to penetrate the mystery of the crime, and in the end arrest the murderer. And the readers while awaiting developments asked what mystery was hidden in this murder. Moniche at times, wore a frightened yet important air. He felt that he was an object of curiosity to many, the centre of prejudices. The porter and his wife possessed a terrible secret. They were raised in their own estimation.

"We shall appear at the trial," said Moniche, seeing himself already before the red robes, and holding up his hand to swear that he would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

And as they sat together in their little lodge they talked the matter over and over, and brought up every incident in M. Rovere's life which might have a bearing on the case.

"Do you remember the young man who came one day and insisted on seeing Monsieur le Consul?"

"Ah! Very well, indeed," said Moniche. "I had forgotten that one. A felt hat, his face bronzed, and a droll accent. He had come from away off somewhere. He was probably a Spaniard."

"Some beggar, likely. A poor devil whom the Consul had known in America, in the Colonies, one knows not where."

"A bad face!" said Moniche. "M. Rovere received him, however, and gave him aid, I remember. If the young man had come often, I should think that he struck the blow. And also, I ought to add, if there was not the other."

"Yes, but there is the other," his wife replied. "There is the one whom I saw standing in front of the coupons, and who was looking at those other papers with flashing eyes, I give my word. There is that one, Moniche, and I am willing to put my hand into the fire and yours, too, Moniche, if it is not he."

"If he is the one, he will be found."

"Oh! but if he has disappeared? One disappears very quickly in these days."

"We shall see! we shall see! Justice reigns, and we are here!" He said that "we are here!" as a grenadier of the guard before an important engagement.

They had taken the body to the Morgue. At the hour fixed for the autopsy Bernardet arrived. He seemed much excited, and asked M. Ginory if, since their conversation in M. Rovere's library, he had reflected and decided to permit him to make the experiment--the famous experiment reported for so many years as useless, absurd, almost ridiculous.

"With any one but M. Ginory I should not dare to hope," thought the police officer, "but he does not sneer at strange discoveries."

He had brought his photographic apparatus, that kodak which he declared was more dangerous to the criminal than a loaded weapon. He had developed the negatives which he had taken, and of the three, two had come out in good condition. The face of the murdered man appeared with a clearness which, in the proofs, rendered it formidable as in the reality; and the eyes, those tragic, living eyes, retained their terrible, accusing expression which the supreme agony had left in them. The light had struck full on the eyes--and they spoke. Bernardet showed the proofs to M. Ginory. They examined them with a magnifying glass, but they showed only the emotion, the agony, the anger of that last moment. Bernardet hoped to convince M. Ginory that Bourion's experiment was not a failure.

Eleven o'clock was the hour named for the autopsy. Twenty minutes before, Bernardet was at the Morgue. He walked restlessly about outside among the spectators--some were women, young girls, students, and children who were hovering about the place, hoping that some chance would permit them to satisfy their morbid curiosity and to enter and gaze on those slabs whereon lay--swollen, livid, disfigured--the bodies.

Never, perhaps, in his life had the police officer been so strongly moved with a desire to succeed. He brought to his tragic task all the ardor of an apostle. It was not the idea of success, the renown, or the possibility of advancement which urged him on; it was the joy, the glory of aiding progress, of attaching his name to a new discovery. He worked for art and the love of art. As he wandered about, his sole thought was of his desire to test Dr. Bourion's experiment; of the realization of his dream. "Ah! if M. Ginory will only permit it," he thought.

As he formulated that hope in his mind, he saw M. Ginory descend from the fiacre; he hurried up to him and saluted him respectfully. Seeing Bernardet so moved and the first one on the spot, he could not repress a smile.

"I see you are still enthused."

"I have thought of nothing else all night, Monsieur Ginory."

"Well, but," said Monsieur Ginory in a tone which seemed to Bernardet to imply hope, "no idea must be rejected, and I do not see why we should not try the experiment. I have reflected upon it. Where is the unsuitableness?"

"Ah, Monsieur le Juge," cried the agent, "if you permit it who knows but that we may revolutionize medical jurisprudence?"

"Revolutionize, revolutionize!" Would the Examining Magistrate yet find it an idiotic idea?

M. Ginory passed around the building and entered by a small door opening on the Seine. The registrar followed him, and behind him came the police agent. Bernardet wished to wait until the doctors delegated to perform the autopsy should arrive, and the head keeper of the Morgue advised him to possess himself with patience, and while he was waiting to look around and see the latest cadavers which had been brought there.

"We have had, in eight days, a larger number of women than men, which is rare. And these women were nearly all habitues of the public balls and race tracks."

"And how can you tell that?"

"Because they have pretty feet."

Professor Morin arrived with a confrere, a young Pasteurian doctor, with a singular mind, broad and receptive, and who passed among his companions for a man fond of chimeras, a little retiring, however, and giving over to making experiments and to vague dreams. Monsieur Morin saluted M. Ginory and presented to him the young doctor, Erwin by name, and said to the Magistrate that the house students had probably begun the autopsy to gain time.

The body, stripped of its clothing, lay upon the dissecting table, and three young men, in velvet skull caps, with aprons tied about their waists, were standing about the corpse; they had already begun the autopsy. The mortal wound looked redder than ever in the whiteness of the naked body.

Bernardet glided into the room, trying to keep out of sight, listening and looking, and, above everything, not losing sight of M. Ginory's face. A face in which the look was keen, penetrating, sharp as a knife, as he bent over the pale face of the murdered man, regarding it as searchingly as the surgeons' scalpels were searching the wound and the flesh. Among those men in their black clothes, some with bared heads, in order to work better; others with hats on, the stretched-out corpse seemed like a wax figure upon a marble slab. Bernardet thought of those images which he had seen copied from Rembrandt's pictures--the poet with the anatomical pincers and the shambles. The surgeons bent over the body, their hands busy and their scissors cutting the muscles. That wound, which had let out his life, that large wound, like a monstrous and grimacing mouth, they enlarged still more; the head oscillated from side to side, and they were obliged to prop it with some mats. The eyes remained the same, and, in spite of the hours which had passed, seemed as living, as menacing and eloquent as the night before; they were, however, veiled with something vitreous over the pupils, like the amaurosis of death, yet full of that anger, of that fright, or that ferocious malediction which was reproduced in a startling manner in the negatives taken by Bernardet.

"The secret of the crime is in that look," thought the police agent. "Those eyes see, those eyes speak; they tell what they know, they accuse some one."

Then, while the professor, his associates and his students went on with the autopsy, exchanging observations, following in the mutilated body, their researches for the truth, trying to be very accurate as to the nature of the wound, the form even of the knife with which it was made, Bernardet softly approached the Examining Magistrate and in a low tone, timidly, respectfully, he spoke some words, which were insistent, however, and pressing, urging the Magistrate to quickly interfere.

"Ah! Monsieur le Juge, this is the moment; you who can do everything"----

The Examining Magistrate has, with us, absolute power. He does whatever seems to him best. And he wishes to do a thing, because he wishes to do it. M. Ginory, curious by nature and because it was his duty, hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed his nose, bit his lips, listened to the supplicating murmur of the police officer; but decided not to speak just then, and continued gazing with a fixed stare at the dead man.

This thought came to him, moreover, insistent and imperious, that he was there to testify in all things in favor of that truth, the discovery of which imposed upon him--and suddenly, his sharp voice interrupted the surgeon's work.

"Messieurs, does not the expression of the open eyes strike you?"

"Yes; they express admirably the most perfect agony," M. Morin replied.

"And does it not seem," asked the Examining Magistrate, "as if they were fixed with that expression on the murderer?"

"Without doubt! The mouth seems to curse and the eyes to menace."

"And what if the last image seen, in fact, that of the murderer, still remains upon the retina of the eyes?"

M. Morin looked at the Magistrate in astonishment, his air was slightly mocking and the lips and eyes assumed a quizzical expression. But Bernardet was very much surprised when he heard one remark. Dr. Erwin raised his head and while he seemed to approve of that which M. Ginory had advanced, he said: "That image must have disappeared from the retina some time ago."

"Who knows?" said M. Ginory.

Bernardet experienced a profound emotion. He felt that this time the problem would be officially settled. M. Ginory had not feared ridicule when he spoke, and a discussion arose there, in that dissecting room, in the presence of the corpse. What had existed only in a dream, in Bernardet's little study, became here, in the presence of the Examining Magistrate, a member of the Institute, and the young students, almost full fledged doctors, a question frankly discussed in all its bearings. And it was he, standing back, he, a poor devil of a police officer, who had urged this Examining Magistrate to question this savant.

"At the back of the eyes," said the Professor, touching the eyes with his scalpel, "there is nothing, believe me. It is elsewhere that you must look for your proof."

"But"--and M. Ginory repeated his "Who knows?"--"What if we try it this time; will it inconvenience you, my dear Master?" M. Morin made a movement with his lips which meant _peuh!_ and his whole countenance expressed his scorn. "But, I see no inconvenience." At the end of a moment he said in a sharp tone: "It will be lost time."

"A little more, a little less," replied M. Ginory, "the experiment is worth the trouble to make it."

M. Ginory had proved without doubt that he, like Bernardet, wished to satisfy his curiosity, and in looking at the open eyes of the corpse, although in his duties he never allowed himself to be influenced by the sentimental or the dramatic, yet it seemed to him that those eyes urged him to insist, nay, even supplicated him.

"I know, I know," said M. Morin, "what you dream of in your magistrate's brain is as amusing as a tale of Edgar Poe's. But to find in those eyes the image of the murderer--come now, leave that to the inventive genius of a Rudyard Kipling, but do not mix the impossible with our researches in medical jurisprudence. Let us not make romance; let us make, you the examinations and I the dissection."

The short tone in which the Professor had spoken did not exactly please M. Ginory, who now, a little through self-conceit (since he had made the proposition), a little through curiosity, decided that he would not beat a retreat. "Is there anything to risk?" he asked. "And it might be one chance in a thousand."

"But there is no chance," quickly answered M. Morin. "None--none!"

Then, relenting a little, he entered the discussion, explaining why he had no faith.

"It is not I, M. Ginory, who will deny the possibility of such a result. But it would be miraculous. Do you believe in miracles, the impressions of heat, of the blood, of light, on our tissues are not catalogueable, if I may be allowed the expression. The impression on the retina is produced by the refraction which is called ethereal, phosphorescent, and which is almost as difficult to seize as to weigh the imponderable. To think to find on the retina a luminous impression after a certain number of hours and days would be, as Vernois has very well said, to think one can find in the organs of hearing the last sound which reverberated through them. _Peuh!_ Seize the air-bubble at the end of a tube and place it in a museum as a curiosity. Is there anything left of it but a drop of water which is burst, while of the fleeting vision or the passing sound nothing remains."

The unfortunate Bernardet suffered keenly when he heard this. He wished to answer. The words came to his lips. Ah! if he was only in M. Ginory's place. The latter, with bowed head, listened and seemed to weigh each word as it dropped from M. Morin's lips.

"Let us reason it, but," the Professor went on, "since the ophthalmoscope does not show to the oculist on the retina, any of the objects or beings which a sick man sees--you understand, not one of them--how can you think that photography can find that object or being on the retina of a dead man's eye?"

He waited for objections from the Examining Magistrate and Bernardet hoped that M. Ginory would combat some of the Professor's arguments. He had only to say: "What of it? Let us see! Let us experiment!" And Bernardet had longed for just these words from him; but the Magistrate remained silent, his head still bent. The police agent felt, with despair, his chance slipping, slipping away from him, and that never, never again would he find a like opportunity to test the experiment. Suddenly, the strident tones of Dr. Erwin's voice rung out sharply, like an electric bell, and Bernardet experienced a sensation like that of a sudden unexpected illumination.

"My dear Master," he respectfully began, "I saw at home in Denmark, a poor devil, picked up dying, half devoured by a wolf; and who, when taken from the very jaws of the beast, still retained in the eye a very visible image in which one could see the nose and teeth of the brute. A vision! Imagination, perhaps! But the fact struck me at the time and we made a note of it."

"And?" questioned M. Morin, in a tone of raillery.

Bernardet cocked his ears as a dog does when he hears an unusual sound. M. Ginory looked at this slender young man with his long blond hair, his eyes as blue as the waters of a lake, his face pale and wearing the peculiar look common to searchers after the mysterious. The students and the others gathered about their master, remained motionless and listened intently as to a lecture.

"And," Dr. Erwin went on frigidly, "if we had found absolutely nothing we would, at least, have kept silent about an unsuccessful research, it is useless to say. Think, then, my dear Master, the exterior objects must have imprinted themselves on the retina, did they not? reduced in size, according to the size of the place wherein they were reflected; they appeared there, they certainly appeared there! There is--I beg your pardon for referring to it, but it is to these others (and Dr. Erwin designated M. Ginory, his registrar, and Bernardet)--there is in the retina a substance of a red color, the _pourpre retinien_, very sensitive to the light. Upon the deep red of this membrane objects are seen white. And one can fix the image. M. Edmond Perrier, professor in the Museum of Natural History, reports (you know it better than I, my dear Master), in a work on animal anatomy and physiology which our students are all familiar with, that he made an experiment. After removing a rabbit's eye, a living rabbit's eye--yes, science is cruel--he placed it in a dark room, so that he could obtain upon the retina the image of some object, a window for instance, and plunged it immediately into a solution of alum and prevented the decomposition of the _pourpre retinien_, and the window could plainly be seen, fixed on the eye. In that black chamber which we have under our eyebrows, in the orbit, is a storehouse, a storehouse of images which are retained, like the image which the old Dane's eye held of the wolf's nose and teeth. And who knows? Perhaps it is possible to ask of a dead man's eye the secret of what it saw when living."

This was, put in more scientific terms by the young Danish doctor, the substance of what Bernardet believed possible. The young men had listened with the attractive sympathy, which is displayed when anything novel is explained. Rigid, upon the marble slab, the victim seemed to wait for the result of the discussion, deaf to all the confused sounds about him; his eye fixed upon the infinite, upon the unknowable which he now knew.

It was, however, this insensible body which had caused the discussion of what was an enigma to savants. What was the secret of his end? The last word of his agony? Who made that wound which had ended his life? And like a statue lying on its stone couch, the murdered man seemed to wait. What they knew not, he knew. What they wished to know, he still knew, perhaps! This doubt alone, rooted deep in M. Ginory's mind, was enough to urge him to have the experiment tried, and, excusing himself for his infatuation, he begged M. Morin to grant permission to try the experiment, which some of the doctors had thought would be successful.

"We shall be relieved even if we do not succeed, and we can but add our defeat to the others."

M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile. But after all, the Examining Magistrate was master of the situation, and since young Dr. Erwin brought the result of the Denmark experiment--a contribution new in these researches--to add weight to the matter, the Professor requested that he should not be asked to lend himself to an experiment which he declared in advance would be a perfectly useless one.

There was a photographic apparatus at the Morgue as at the Prefecture, used for anthropometry. Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand. One could photograph the retina as soon as the membrane was separated from the eye by the autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while Bernardet was accustomed to all the horrors of crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to suffocation during this operation. He noticed that M. Ginory became very pale, and that he bit his lips, casting occasional pitying glances toward the dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent over the body and studied it with the admiration and joy of treasure seekers digging in a mine. Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some new truth. They were like jewelers before a casket full of gems, and what they studied, weighed, examined, was a human corpse. And when those eyes, living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving behind them two empty orbits, the Professor suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works of art. And it was, in truth, a work of art, this wonderful mechanism which he explained to his students, who listened eagerly to each word. It was a work of art, this eye, with its sclerotic, its transparent cornea, its aqueous and vitreous humor, its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a photographic plate in that black chamber in which the luminous rays reflect, reversed, the objects seen. And M. Morin, holding between his fingers the object which he was demonstrating, spoke of the membrane formed of fibres and of the terminal elements of the optic nerve, as a professor of painting or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a Benvenuto.

"The human body is a marvel," cried M. Morin, "a marvel, Messieurs," and he held forth for several minutes upon the wonderful construction of this marvel. His enthusiasm was shared, moreover, by the young men and Dr. Erwin, who listened intently. Bernardet, ignorant and respectful, felt troubled in the presence of this renowned physiologist, and congratulated himself that it was he who had insisted on this experiment and caused a member of the Institute to hold forth thus. As for M. Ginory, he left the room a moment, feeling the need of air. The operation, which the surgeons prolonged with joy, made him ill, and he felt very faint. He quickly recovered, however, and returned to the dissecting room, so as not to lose any of the explanation which M. Morin was giving as he stood with the eye in his hand. And in that eye an image remained, perhaps. He was anxious to search for it, to find it.

"I will take it upon myself," Bernardet said.