It was a violent blow. The truth suddenly appeared to me in all its brutal nakedness. This man, this shady and wily individual, was Bérangère's father; and he had come in the name of the two accomplices, working in their interest and placing at their service the powers with which circumstances had favoured him.
"Her father?" I murmured. "Can it be possible? Are you her father?"
"Why, yes," he replied, with a fresh outburst of hilarity, "I'm the girl's daddy and, as such, the beneficiary, with the right to draw the profits for the next eighteen months, of Noël Dorgeroux's bequest. For eighteen months only! You can imagine that I'm itching to take possession of the estate, to complete the works and to prepare for the fourteenth of May an inauguration worthy in every respect of my old friend Dorgeroux."
I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my forehead. He had spoken the words which were expected and foretold. He was the man of whom public opinion had said:
"When the time comes, some one will emerge from the darkness."
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WHO EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS
"When the time comes," they had said, "some one will emerge from the darkness. When the time comes, some one will remove the mask from his face."
That face now beamed expansively before me. That some one, who was about to play the game of the two accomplices, was Bérangère's father. And the same question continued to suggest itself, each time more painfully than the last:
"What had been Bérangère's part in the horrible tragedy?"