“Your name, monsieur?” It was I who asked.
“Minard.”
All were ready to see the strange fellow leave, except Pierre. “I want to know more about Rosier,” he said abruptly.
Minard eyed him with a sparkle of mischief and a shadow of enigma. “In that case you shall have to search hard, my friend, because I have told you all I can. Though if ever you go to the Blue Cat, especially on a Friday night, you might see me there.”
Pierre warmed at the information. “Of course I know it — I’ve even played piano there to earn a few drinks.”
Minard nodded with quiet satisfaction. “Then we shall meet again, my good pianist.” And with that he left, the conversation quickly turned to matters of a kind I need not report to a lady such as yourself, and the toper with his fake coin was soon forgotten by all of us.
All, that is, except Pierre. It was many weeks later when he reminded me of the incident, and told me something else. He had been to the Blue Cat and had seen Minard not once but several times, plying him with cognac paid for by his sweet, nimble fingers; oh yes, mademoiselle, our beloved artist was playing music-hall songs or Schubert melodies in order that he could nourish the mercenary tongue of a fantasist. Let me assure you, moreover, that no other item attracted his attention in the insalubrious haunt he had come to patronise, save the smooth-tongued, fast-drinking engineer in his tattered coat, with his false gold piece flicking on his thumb.
Minard’s ancestor, Pierre told me, had been entrusted with papers cursed by their own inflammatory outrageousness; the manifesto of a world transformed, the ground plan of a society turned upside down by revolution, disdainful of logic as much as morality; the atlas of an alternative universe God rightly chose not to create. The Rosierists, if any still existed, were dedicated to its creation here on Earth.
My fear, when Pierre told me this, was not that he might fall into the hands of underground fanatics, since I felt sure those masked fiends lived only in Minard’s fairy-tales. No, my fear was that Pierre was being seduced by lies, and that by dipping his toe into the mire his wily chum inhabited, he risked finding his foot stuck, then his leg and waist, until eventually his head would disappear into the filth. Forgive me for being so blunt, mademoiselle, but I have seen good men go bad before, and Pierre of all people must, I felt sure, be saved from such a fate.
I told Duchêne; we followed Pierre to the Blue Cat and saw him in conversation with three men — Minard was not among them. We had to be circumspect in our observation, but the briefest of glimpses was enough to satisfy me that these companions of his were no philosophers, no architects of Utopia. If there was anything I would have expected that group to plan, mademoiselle, it wouldn’t be an ideal society — more like a terrorist atrocity. I tell you it as plainly as I can: they looked like assassins.
Soon afterwards Pierre disappeared. I knew at once that he must be in danger, though no one at the Blue Cat could tell me where he was, nor see reason for concern. One regular put a name to my description of the most memorable of the conspirators, a man whose long grey hair and blackened teeth identified him as LaForge, an old Blanquist, though it was said he had long ago given up revolution in favour of science, and was often heard expounding paradoxes about the laws of thermodynamics and the statistics of chance. A harmless crank, in other words, just like Minard — or so I thought, until I heard of the ghastly incident at the park, when all my worst fears were confirmed.
This LaForge, I have learned, says each person’s life is really a path through a branching labyrinth of possibilities; an idea that would surely have appealed to a sweet romantic such as Pierre, though we can only guess what other dark inferences the plotters must have reached from such outlandish premises. They are anarchists not just politically but also, even worse, intellectually, disdaining all logic and reason, and this, I maintain, is the explanation of Pierre’s senseless death. They took an innocent man, seduced him with lies, put him up to some kind of spectacular outrage, a manifestation of their perverted philosophy. Now they laugh while we must weep.
The letter is unsigned; with its tales of hoaxes and delusions it has itself the stagnant air of fraudulence. Yvette has heard of troubled people who take sinister delight in taunting the bereaved; she worries that Louis Carreau might be another of those parasites. But then at last he calls on her, bringing both the precious key and the manuscript it has protected.
Madame Courvelles is with her when she receives him; Yvette explains to her the mission Monsieur Carreau has undertaken, and the sheets of music are passed between them for inspection.
“Are you a dealer?” Madame Courvelles asks the polite, smartly dressed young man who strikes her as looking more like a bank agent with good prospects.
“Neither a man of commerce nor at all musical,” he tells her. “I’m a philologist.”
That sounds good enough for Madame Courvelles; here is a decent fellow of the right age and class to lift Yvette out of her depression. Once she is satisfied of Carreau’s honest principles, she allows them some time alone together.
“How ever did you get hold of it?” Yvette asks him at once.
“I bribed a servant. No one else knows of this work’s existence.”
The pages of music are in her hands, densely inscribed, impossible to imagine. Completely appropriate to the hieroglyphic enigma is the title: The Secret Knowledge.
“Pierre had many friends,” she says. “Tell me what you know of them.”
Despite this and all further oblique enquiries, applied with the subtle and well-aimed pressure one might employ against a stubborn limpet, Yvette is unable to lift from beneath Carreau’s suave carapace the smallest evidence that he knows of Minard, Duchêne, LaForge, or anyone else mentioned in the letter. Pierre, she realises, lived in many worlds; he was like the comet that visits Earth briefly, gloriously, then flies to another sphere. Wait long enough, she thinks, and the comet may return.
“I owe you great thanks for the service you have done me, Monsieur Carreau. At the very least, I should repay your expenses.”
With a wave of his hand, a whiff of cologne, he dismisses such concerns. “I did it for Pierre, and for yourself. I know how much he loved you — and I can easily see why.” A new gravity attaches itself to him. “You must be very careful.”
“What do you mean?”
“The forces that surrounded our friend were powerful and dark. Conceal the music score and keep it safe, a precious relic, show it only to trusted eyes and say he gave it to you before he died.”
“Of course, I shall never allow myself any indiscretion that would compromise you…”
“Allow me the honour of being your protector.”
Though said sincerely it sounds improper. “I’m not aware I require any protection of a kind my family cannot provide.”
“I’m sure Pierre would have said the same thing, but consider what happened to him.”
“You think I’m in danger? The police should be told.”
“That would not be wise. I have taken a personal risk on your behalf, as you kindly acknowledge, and all I ask in return is that you do not shun my offer of assistance, for this is a matter of common concern and mutual interest. Through involvement in those sinister powers that killed Pierre, we may both find ourselves placed in danger.”
Had she not previously read the letter about which she remains silent, she might have dismissed Carreau’s words entirely. Instead she understands their significance, coded like the score she holds, and thus it is in a mood of foreboding that she concludes this interview with the man who will become her husband.