As soon as the powerful, hairy chest became visible through the half-open shirt, there was a collective shudder. What caught everyone’s attention was a large bloodstain where the heart was. The floor, also, was covered with a slick of blood at the same spot. The face was striking to see. The eyes were still wide open, and there was an expression of horror on the face which captured all of us for a moment.
The professor leant down and pointed to an almost imperceptible hole with the tip of his finger:
‘A bullet to the heart, just like the others. He must have woken up, seen his enemy (the light was still on), and tried to get up. He was almost upright when the bullet hit him. He was struck down. The killer was at least one metre away, close to the door.’
The security service took photographs, after which the professor, taking a pair of thin pliers from his bag, extracted the bullet. He was red in the face and seemed very upset. The armaments expert who had joined us took it, wiped it, and examined it through a powerful magnifying glass.
‘I shall have to verify it at the laboratory, but I’ll bet a thousand to one that it was fired from the same pistol. The thirteenth in the series.’
A long silence followed. No one had any doubt that it was the same killer, but the tangible proof of it left us stupefied. The professor straightened up:
‘Have you finished, Jannin? Very well. Take the body to the medical laboratory. I’ll just make a few observations before I leave to perform the autopsy.’
‘Do you think that death could have been caused by something other than the bullet?’
‘I’ll tell you later. But, for the time being, I can affirm the following: when the bullet struck the heart, the man was still alive. The amount of blood spilt proves it.’
After the body was removed, Richard started to forage everywhere. But he was unable to find any more than the security service employees.
He left, and we accompanied him to the postern gate, where he exclaimed, almost joyfully:
‘Do you believe in miracles, messieurs? Well, believe it now, because what we have just witnessed is not explicable otherwise.’
After his departure, Jannin and Bob continued the investigation by questioning the sentries. They had heard nothing and seen nothing. The moonlight had made surveillance easy. But a revolver shot inside the closed bunker could not have been heard.
A phone call to the Gouverneur Militaire de Paris confirmed that the second key had not left its place inside the special safe.
Finally, expert sounding of the walls showed that nowhere in the masonry was there a fissure large enough to allow a bullet to pass, let alone one where a man could have got in. Examination of the rust on the bolts determined that they had not been drawn since they had been closed the previous day.
On the way back, and before we got to the office, Bob went to see the professor. The latter was in the operating theatre, just finishing the autopsy. My friend went there alone, for I am not particularly fond of that kind of spectacle.
‘Any conclusions?’
‘There’s no doubt. Look at the heart. It exploded from the shock. The man was alive, and death was instantaneous.’
‘Time of death?’
‘As you said: between midnight and two in the morning.’
Then the professor, whilst finishing his work, summarised the evidence. The punctuating grunts demonstrated his dissatisfaction. As he pulled off his rubber gloves, he drew Bob’s attention to a sealed medical jar.
‘I’m sending his internal organs to the toxicological institute.’
‘For what reason? Death was by a bullet to the heart. That’s been confirmed.’
‘The whole business is too mysterious for us to neglect any clue. Even the certainty that the analysis is negative is useful. Rest assured that the strangest possible explanations will be suggested.’
Suggested! What an understatement. What a bombardment of theories, each more outlandish than the next, would await us the next day.
SECOND PART
____
______________________________
TWELVE ROOMS
XIV
THE USEFULNESS OF ENGLISH DOCTORS
Monday, December 27
For three weeks, the police conducted numerous investigations. Bob, for his part, committed himself to visit all the towns where the man in grey had struck.
When he returned, he was thoughtful. On the morning of December 27th, he told me:
‘I’m going to make some phone calls. Whilst I’m doing that, try to use your cortical layer and find me a guiding principle.’
I was obliged to listen to him making the calls, in such a way that at no time had I any ideawhat he was thinking. I was bursting with impatience and curiosity. A veritable torture of Tantalus. My friend’s first call was to the general secretary of the French railways, eastern division, to request Eberhardt’s medical file. Then he called Truffier’s optician in Le Mans. The conversation remained unintelligible to me, but my friend seemed happy, and I learnt that the rag-and-bone man suffered from a visual defect. But which?
He had hardly replaced the receiver when the French railroad representative called back. Once again, the information seemed to satisfy him. I was becoming more and more irritated.
Then, it was Richard’s turn to call Bob who, smiling ironically, held out the receiver so I could hear:
‘Good morning, Professor. Tell me, do you recall the observations concerning the victims at Nancy, Orléans, Arras, and Le Mans?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t they suggest anything?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll go further: the Nancy victim was unable to work as a chauffeur because he refused a medical examination. The Orléans victim painted pictures... have you seen them?’
‘Yes. Not bad, except maybe for
