‘But that was the day before yesterday!’ exclaimed Bernès.
The professor responded briefly in the affirmative.
The document stopped there. There was a long silence. Each of us reflected on what he had just heard.
‘It’s not amusing,’ grumbled Bernès. ‘We have all the elements to hand, but once again we’re too late to use them. Forty-eight hours earlier—.’
‘I know,’ cut in Richard. ‘The deciphering was completed yesterday at nearly midnight. I drew your attention to the fact that it was a particularly delicate operation.’
‘Think about it. If the Cairo police had been notified on Saturday at midday, we could have arrested the bandit that same evening, at sundown.’
‘Don’t be silly, Romain. You can’t believe that it was the man in grey who took such steps. The calculations can’t be done by just anyone. Only an astronomer could do it.’
‘Duroyer wanted to go there!’
‘Maybe he was deluding himself.’
‘But we still have a chance. Whoever it is, the man there is only at the start of the trail. We have to do something.’
‘At five minutes after midnight, I knew the contents of the message. At half-past, despite the late hour, I was in contact with the Egyptian authorities. The local police are ready.’
XVIII
BOB SLOWMAN’S INTUITION
Monday, January 17, 1 o’clock
Romain Bernès shrugged his shoulders. After waiting a moment, he replied:
‘And you consider that an achievement? What a triumphant air for such a little story. What do you expect me to do with your archaeological-mythological hotchpotch? You can’t possibly think I’m going to make a statement about it to parliament tomorrow. What would I say: that there’s a secret that would give the one who found it such riches that the finances of whole countries would be destabilised, and prodigious power to boot... but that unfortunately we missed the boat once again? If there is one story in the world I wished to bury, it would be that. All you’ve brought me, in fact, is an extra burden.
‘And, to cap it all, the mystery of the bunker remains unsolved. I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, with all the analysis of which I’m capable. Yes, I know you’re going to say that’s not much, but even you must admit I do have a certain amount of common sense. And it’s all about common sense. The problem is clear: a man is murdered in a bunker, he couldn’t have been killed outside, and nobody went in. So there’s only one solution: the murder was impossible. A number of witnesses, obviously, must have lied. And what’s worse is that we’re talking about officials and members of the policeforce.
‘That’s the prime reason for this conference today. We have to cleanse the wound. Before we leave today, we have to determine exactly who could have done it. You, who were on the spot, should know. You must know who was in a position to give orders, to open the door, or cause it to be opened, and kill the victim. And, also, impose silence. No more attempts to dazzle us with this miraculous death. You’ve only succeeded in muddying things to the point that even the most naïve of the electorate is obliged to acknowledge the incredibility of the event and proclaim that the mystery about which you have made such a fuss is basically an impossibility.’
‘Oh!’ intervened Bob—and the comment, pronounced so very softly in the middle of a profound silence, produced a strange effect—‘I’ve just spent thirty hours solving it.’
He continued quietly, and I noticed that, unlike the others, he did not stand up.
‘You see, Monsieur le Président, what we forget to teach people is how to reason. Oh, I know very well you’ve studied logic and you think you know how to apply it perfectly. Allow me to say that, on that point, you’re mistaken. The proof is that you’ve been in possession of the same elements as me. I have reasoned on that basis, without any new facts, or any discoveries unknown to you.
‘To solve a problem of this nature, we must determine exactly what we know and stick to it, discarding all hypotheses. Now, what we know can be stated briefly: a man enters the bunker alive at half-past five. He’s alive when the door is closed. The next morning, at nine o-clock, when the door was re-opened, he was dead. We also know that the door was not opened between those times.All the complicities in the world won’t change anything. The two bolts shot from the inside are an indubitable proof of that.
‘Let us ask ourselves what changed materially between those two times. You will tell me right away: the man was dead. Materially, that makes no difference. A body, at least in the earlier hours, does not differ from a living human. And, if you want to bring in the soul, I will have to say that the soul is not material.’
‘You’re surely not going to say, with all your sophistries, that nothing happened.’
‘A sophistry is an intellectual argument made by one person and refuted by another. I haven’t got to the point of my questions, which is this: was there something more or something less in the bunker, when the door was opened, than when it was closed?’
‘Because a man’s life doesn’t count for you, I would have to say no.’
‘I don’t agree with you. I made a rigorous inventory of the bunker, before and after and, although I didn’t find anything missing, I did find something extra.’
‘Amazing! Nobody saw it. Or, at least, nobody mentioned it.’
‘On the contrary! Everyone saw it, and everyone talked about it. It’s just that, as always, one overlooks the obvious.’
