The rain had ceased and a chill wind had arisen, but Crochard did not seem to feel it, as he walked slowly toward the quays, his head bent in thought. An ironical smile curved his lips, as he pictured Lépine off upon the scent first to the Prefecture, then to the post-office. He would follow it well, of course; he would run it to the end. He would discover, no doubt, the identity of the two travellers; that would not be difficult. Crochard himself had pointed out the way.
But what then? Even if they were found to be men high in the German service, that was of small importance. It proved nothing. They were at liberty to visit Toulon, if they wished to do so; and, after all, their arrival at the quay five minutes before dawn might have been an accident; they might have lingered for a last look at La Liberté without any suspicion of what was about to occur. Such a coincidence, if not probable, was, at least, conceivable; and such, of course, would be their explanation, if an explanation was ever asked for. There was no way to disprove it.
As to the yacht on which they had embarked—well, that, too, may have been an accident—a boat belonging to a friend whom they had come upon unexpectedly and upon which they had been persuaded to take a cruise. Suspicious circumstances—yes, many of them; but no proof, no absolute proof. And nothing, absolutely nothing, to show that the explosion had been caused by any outside agency.
Arrived at the water-front, Crochard walked on until he was opposite the wreck. There he sat down, with his legs overhanging the quay. Two or three searchlights were still focussed on the ruin, but the rescue parties had been withdrawn, and only a few sentries remained. He could see how that formidable monster of a ship had been torn and twisted into an inextricable and hideous mass of iron and steel. One turret remained above the water, blown over on its side, its great guns pointing straight at the zenith; but the rest was a mere tangle of metal.
Such destruction could have been wrought only by the explosion of the magazines; no mine or torpedo could have done it. And as he gazed at the mass of wreckage visible above the water, he perceived a certain resemblance to photographs he had seen of the wreck of the Maine. The Maine's forward magazine had exploded; but Crochard knew, as well as M. Delcassé himself, what had caused that explosion.
Perhaps history was repeating itself, as, proverbially, it is supposed to have a way of doing. But Crochard shook his head. If the catastrophe was not an accident, then it was the result of some agency far more subtle than mine or torpedo. And, also, if it was not an accident, those two men who had waited in the shadow of the doorway back of him for the deed to be accomplished, must have had an accomplice. They could not destroy the ship merely by staring at her! Somewhere, somewhere, concealed but not far distant, that accomplice must have awaited the first beam of the rising sun as the signal to hurl his thunderbolt, to loose his mysterious power!
What was that power? How had the thing been done? Those, Crochard felt, were the questions to be answered. As to who had done it, or why it had been done—that could wait. But if there existed in the world a force which, directed from a distance, noiseless, invisible, impalpable, could destroy a battleship asleep at her anchorage, then indeed did it behoove France to discover and guard against it!
At last, his head still bent, Crochard arose, crossed the quay, opened the door of Number Ten, and entered.
No doubt it would have interested both him and M. Delcassé to know how nearly parallel the channels of their thoughts had run!