"It's no use whining, you blasted fool! I've had enough of messing about. Will you speak? No? Then die, you scamp!"
And I heard him snarling between his teeth:
"Perhaps I shall manage better with the other one."
In point of fact, he turned to the left, that is towards the part of the house where the door was:
There was an ejaculation. And then I heard nothing more from that direction.
What had happened? Had Velmot knocked against the wall, in the dark, or against an open shutter?
I could not see him from where I stood. The table and chair were faintly outlined in the gloom. Beyond was the pitchy darkness from which came Massignac's muffled whimper.
"Velmot is on his way," I said to myself. "A few seconds more and he will be here."
The reason for his coming I did not understand, any more than the reason for trepanning me. Did he think that I knew the formula and that I had refrained from denouncing Massignac because of an understanding between him and myself? In that case, did he mean to compel me to speak, by employing with me the same methods as with his former accomplice? Or was it a question of Bérangère between us, of the Bérangère whom we both loved and whose name, to my surprise, he had not even mentioned to Massignac? These were so many problems to which he would provide the reply:
For, after all, he was not there; and there was not a sound in the house. What was he doing? For some little while I stood with my ear glued to the door by which he should have entered, ready to defend myself though unarmed.
I went back to the window. There was no sound on that side either.
And the silence was terrible, that silence which seemed to increase and to spread all over the river and into space, that silence which was no longer broken even by Massignac's stifled moaning.
In vain I tried to force my eyes to see. The water of the river remained invisible. I no longer saw and I no longer heard Théodore Massignac.
I could no longer see him and I could no longer hear him. It was a terrifying reflection! Had he slipped down? Had the deadly, suffocating water risen to his mouth and nostrils?
I struck the shutter with a mighty blow of my fist. The thought that Massignac was dead or about to die, that thought which until then I had not realised very clearly, filled me with dismay. Massignac's death meant the definite and irreparable loss of the secret. Massignac's death meant that Noël Dorgeroux was dying for the second time.