"Yes, for the moment."
"You can't imagine any theory?"
"No."
"Still, you saw? You have no doubts?"
"I certainly saw. I saw first three strange eyes that looked at us;
then I witnessed a scene which was the murder of Miss Cavell. That is
what I saw, just as you did, uncle; and I do not for a moment doubt
the undeniable evidence of my own eyes."
He held out his hand to me:
"That's what I wanted to know, my boy. And thank you."
* * * * *
I have given a faithful account of what happened that afternoon. In
the evening we dined together by ourselves, Bérangère having sent word
to say that she was indisposed and would not leave her room. My uncle
was deeply absorbed in thought and did not say a word on what had
happened in the Yard.
I slept hardly at all, haunted by the recollection of what I had seen
and tormented by a score of theories, which I need not mention here,
for not one of them was of the slightest value.
Next day, Bérangère did not come downstairs. At luncheon, my uncle
preserved the same silence. I tried many times to make him talk, but
received no reply.
My curiosity was too intense to allow my uncle to get rid of me in
this way. I took up my position in the garden before he left the
house. Not until five o'clock did he go up to the Yard.
"Shall I come with you, uncle?" I suggested, boldly.
He grunted, neither granting my request nor refusing it. I followed
him. He walked across the Yard, locked himself into his principal
workshop and did not leave it until an hour later:
"Ah, there you are!" he said, as though he had been unaware of any
presence.
He went to the wall and briskly drew the curtain. Just then he asked
me to go back to the workshop and to fetch something or other which he
had forgotten. When I returned, he said, excitedly:
"It's finished, it's finished!"
"What is, uncle?"
"The Eyes, the Three Eyes."
"Oh, have you seen them?"
"Yes; and I refuse to believe . . . no, of course, it's an illusion on
my part. . . . How could it be possible, when you come to think of it?
Imagine, the eyes wore the expression of my dead son's eyes, yes, the
very expression of my poor Dominique. It's madness, isn't it? And yet
I declare, yes, I declare that Dominique was gazing at me . . . at
first with a sad and sorrowful gaze, which suddenly became the
terrified gaze of a man who is staring death in the face. And then the
Three Eyes began to revolve upon themselves. That was the end."
I made Noël Dorgeroux sit down:
"It's as you suppose, uncle, an illusion, an hallucination. Just
think, Dominique has been dead so many years! It is therefore
incredible . . ."
"Everything is incredible and nothing is," he said. "There is no room
for human logic in front of that wall."
I tried to reason with him, though my mind was becoming as bewildered
as his own. But he silenced me:
"That'll do," he said. "Here's the other thing beginning."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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