But there was nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing visible on those accursed crags or the dryness of the earth. Nothing anywhere! Nothing but hoarse shouts rebounding from rock to rock, sometimes mingling with the noise of a cataract traversing the dark gorges into which the forest plunged, only to rise up again, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow, but always taciturn and secret.
Mist rose up from the depths. The sky blackened.
Madame Le Tellier, who was in company with her sister, her husband and Bornud, let herself fall on to a mound on the upper edge of the woods; she could go no further. From that place, they could finally see the summit of the Grand-Colombier. It was a gigantic bare saddle-back, carpeted by glistening grass. Its hostile slope prohibited climbing. Three humps undulated its crest; they were white with snow, and on the highest one—the middle one—a monumental cross loomed up, infinitesimal in the distance.
They raised their eyes.
A man was climbing up toward the cross, with frequent pauses and slips.
Monsieur Monbardeau made a visor out of his hands. “It’s Robert Collin,” he said.
A groan answered him. Madame Le Tellier, harassed by fatigue and hunger, was fainting. She came round, but they could no longer think of continuing the search. What good would it do, anyway? The light was fading. Clouds were heaping up overhead. And had they not completed their task? Had they not explored the entire mountain, from the bottom to the deserted crest where Robert was?
The return journey was difficult, accomplished in a silence heavy with thoughts. The Monbardeaus and the Le Telliers had not eaten for 12 hours; hunger increased their anguish. At the inn, where Madame Arquedouve had ordered dinner, the lamplight illuminated exhausted faces, which interrogated one another anxiously.
Nothing. No one had found anything—and everyone had returned, with the sole exception of Robert. He had said to Maxime: “Don’t wait for me before going back. I can take care of myself. No one need worry about me.”
“Well, my boy?” said Monsieur Le Tellier, with a discouraged gesture. “What do you think?”
“Me. Well…that it’s necessary to inform the authorities…”
“You don’t believe there was an accident?”
“My God…yes and no…but the authorities…”
A knowing smile creased the lips of the peasants.
“The authorities have already been alerted,” stammered Monsieur Le Tellier confusedly, in a low voice. “I telegraphed the Duc d’Agnès this morning; he’ll bring policemen with him…”
Maxime, amazed, saw him lower his eyelids.
“If it’s not an accident,” cried Monbardeau, “what can it be? A flight? That’s unthinkable.” He hesitated momentarily. “An abduction, then?”
“I’m beginning to believe so,” said Monsieur Le Tellier. “I’m expecting to receive a letter demanding a large ransom in exchange for Marie-Thérèse…”
“Undoubtedly,” Maxime agreed.
There were some forty mountain-dwellers there, forming a circle. They shook their heads incredulously. Madame Monbardeau did likewise.
Monsieur Le Tellier stared at them, one after another. “Do you have an opinion, my friends?” he asked. “If you do, tell us.”
Bornud answered on behalf of all of them, in the soft accent of the region. “Oh no! Definitely not! We don’t know anything!” But the terror of the sarvant was hanging over them.
Rain suddenly began to fall violently. It was like the patter of a thousand tiny feet dancing from tile to tile above the heads of the company. A few shoulders shuddered at the noise.
Monsieur Monbardeau went to his brother-in-law and whispered: “Do you understand now why the theft of a statue and a manikin had such an effect on them? Do you see the progression?”
“Let’s be frank,” admitted Monsieur Le Tellier. “Have we been thinking of anything else—you since yesterday, me since this morning?”
“How stupid!”
VII. The Wait and the Arrival of Reinforcements
The following morning, at 8 a.m., they met as usual in the dining-room at Mirastel. Monsieur and Madame Monbardeau were there; the horror of being alone had gripped them as soon as they got back to the house in Artemare, and Madame Arquedouve had given them shelter until further notice.
It had been a bad night. Extreme tiredness and anguish had prevented all of them from sleeping. The rain was still falling. They cursed it for coming too late and rendering the ground susceptible to footprints at the wrong time. There was no news. Robert Collin had not returned; the Duc d’Agnès had not arrived, and the post had not brought Monsieur le Tellier the ransom demand for which he was waiting—for which he was hoping!
They talked a great deal, for fear that silence would give too much latitude to imagination. Madame Le Tellier, to increase her chagrin, felt extremely annoyed that Marie-Thérèse had disappeared at the very moment when the Duc d’Agnès had solicited the honor of becoming her son-in-law. She became excited, sobbed, and said, in a tone which mingled despair and bitterness: “I’d rather…oh, I’d rather have married her off to the Turk than not know where she is at this moment!” And she wept more copiously, before proffering other extravagances.
Maxime, disturbed by Robert’s prolonged absence and irritated by the unanimous indifference with regard to such devotion, retired to his laboratory in order to obtain a little calm there. The fish in his aquaria no longer interested him, though. Oceanography annoyed him. His brushes and paints seemed to him to be playthings, fit for children who had no worries. He ran a distracted eye over the display-cases of his collection, suspended around the rotunda, and despised himself for having once thought so much of them.
They contained some curious things, though. Once, he had diverted himself by capturing animals of all kinds whose form and color were so exactly adapted to their supports or their environments that their enemies could no longer perceive them. He had also trapped creatures that made every effort to resemble other creatures, either to frighten their adversaries or to deceive the mistrust of their victims. In a word, it was a collection of mimicry.
Wanting to ease his anxiety, Maxime tried to recall the difficulties of his puerile hunts, in which the prey was all the more valuable as it concealed itself more perfectly. He remembered, sadly, the joy he had obtained when he could place some new insect under glass, poised on the leaf, the branch or the stone with which it confused itself. Many a time, to give him pleasure, Marie-Thérèse had set forth in search of mimics. Poor, dear, pretty sister!
Come on! Solitude and inaction were decidedly worthless. Much better to buckle on his gaiters and set forth to find Robert.
Having informed Monsieur Le Tellier of his intention, Maxime set off up the mountain.
The rain had stopped.
At Mirastel, they waited, and the time passed with desperate slowness. Monsieur Le Tellier strode up and down the corridors of the château and the garden paths. Monsieur and Madame Monbardeau tried to read the newspapers, which covered the event from every angle. As for Madame Le Tellier, she went up to her daughter’s bedroom with Madame Arquedouve, and one of them tried ingeniously to rediscover Marie-Thérèse in the sight of her intimate possessions, while the other lovingly breathed in the floral odor that lingered there.
A few visitors called at the main gate. They left cards with expressions of their sympathy. Only Mademoiselle de Baradaine, the sole relative of Fabienne Monbardeau-d’Arvière, was allowed in. She poured out her overfull heart in a prodigious tirade of abundance and banality. The general consternation increased.
At 4 p.m., Monsieur Le Tellier was on watch on the terrace, on the lookout for the arrival of the Duc d’Agnès by air or overland, when he heard Maxime calling to him from the window of his laboratory. Robert was standing next to him. Monsieur Le Tellier ran to join them.
“My friend, my dear friend!” he said, on perceiving his secretary overwhelmed by exhaustion. “How grateful I am to you…!”
Robert stopped him. �
��I spent the night and the early morning on the Colombier,” he said, “but don’t complain on my behalf—only a few drops of rain fell on the place where I was. And that was more fortunate than one might have expected.”
“You know something!”
Robert and Maxime looked at one another.
“Yes, Papa, there’s news. But waited to catch you alone in order to tell you, because the others, if they knew that, would not let up until they had heard every detail—and we’re convinced that it’s better not to describe what Robert has discovered.”
“What? Why?”
“Oh, don’t worry—his discovery isn’t terrifying. Far from it, since it puts a trump card into our hand. But Robert and I prefer that the thing should be seen rather than listening to a description of it, in order that everyone can make up their own minds about it. You know how suggestive the most neutral language is; you know how a speaker’s opinion betrays itself, in spite of him, in his choice of expressions. Every statement is a judgment, however impartial one supposes it to be; to express a fact is, at the same time, to offer a critique of it. Now, it’s a matter of an indication so extraordinary and inexplicable, of a problem so arduous, that it’s absolutely necessary to gather the greatest possible number of opinions, without any of them being subject to the influence of the others.”
“So be it. Can you take me there immediately…?”
“It’s on the summit of the Colombier,” Robert said. “We’ll go with the policemen tomorrow. I expected to find them here.”
“Isn’t François d’Agnès here yet?” asked Maxime. “That’s surprising.”
Monsieur Le Tellier was drawn out of the meditation into which this conversation had plunged him by the roar of a distant automobile. He went to the window and saw a racing car coming along the road like an engine of destruction. In a fusillade of crackling, the increasing thunder of a machine-gun, it rushed forward to attack the slope. It leapt up it, climbing the hillside in zigzags more rapidly than an avalanche could have hurtled down it. It skidded madly around the bends, with impetuous squeals—and through the splashes kicked up by its passage, four rubber-clad men were visible, crouched uncomfortably in two bucket-seats amid suitcases and spare tires.
Monsieur Le Tellier was dumbstruck with admiration. Every turn was an acrobatic feat. The Duc d’Agnès took the last of them on two wheels. A second later, the furious series of explosions filled the hornbeam plantation and the smoking steel monster, stained with muddy streaks left by its hectic journey, stopped in front of the perron.
Monsieur Le Tellier went down to greet the newcomers.
Relieved of the waxed blouse and the waterproof jacket that gave him the appearance of a sea-lion, the Duc d’Agnès appeared, slender and lithe. The squalls and deluges had reddened and swollen the skin of his face in vain; his windswept eyes had wept in vain; he was so young and handsome that one would have taken him for a fairy-tale prince newly delivered from some frightful metamorphosis.
He explained his lateness. “I would have liked to have left yesterday, immediately after receiving your dispatch, Monsieur, but the Prefect of Police wanted to send some of his men with me, who were not free until today. May I introduce Monsieur Garan and Monsieur Tiburce.”
Monsieur Le Tellier offered his hand to the two men. The first shook it firmly, but the second seemed to belong to some secret society, for he stroked the astronomer’s fingers and palm in a most indiscreet fashion. It was almost indecent. Monsieur Le Tellier, blushing, pushed the travelers in the direction of his study.
Without losing a moment, he told them everything he knew about the disastrous adventure, taking care not to omit the conversation he had just had with his son and his secretary. They listened religiously. However, when he started on a list of hypotheses, one of the strangers, Monsieur Garan, interrupted him.
This individual, of medium plumpness and a martial bearing, had a tanned complexion, bluish cheeks and short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. A black moustache, much too threatening and infinitely too large for him, looked like two bison horns beneath his nose. Large eyebrows of the same color were reminiscent of another moustache gone astray above his eyes—and this quadruple kiss-curl turned up its ends toward the sky. “Excuse me,” he said, “if I stop you there. At the prefecture, we’re familiar with the story of the Bugeysian depredations, and I told these gentlemen about them on the way. As for the suppositions that you might have formulated, I prefer not to know them. Let me first take account of what is. It’s necessary to elucidate the mysterious item on the Grand-Colombier. Afterwards, we’ll discuss it. It’s the most respectable method.”
“Pardon me,” said the Duc d’Agnès. “I forgot to mention that Monsieur Garan is an inspector in the Sûreté.”
Monsieur Le Tellier, stung by impatience, pointed to the other unknown man, who was profoundly absorbed in studying the room, and said to Monsieur Garan: “Is that also the opinion of your colleague?”
The policeman smiled behind his horned moustache. “Monsieur is not my colleague. I have not had the honor…”
“Tiburce is one of my friends,” explained the Duc d’Agnès, not without a certain embarrassment. “He might be useful to us…yes, really…useful. He’s an old schoolfriend of Maxime and myself.”
Enveloped in a huge checkered Inverness cape, the sallow-complexioned clean-shaven young man with rounded eyes and features as rigid as those of a classical statue —whose scarlet mouth was perpetually open, standing out within his face like a tomato on a white cheese—presented a typical specimen of anglomania. He would doubtless have made a genteel Frenchman, simply by letting his blonde beard grow and giving birth on his ultra-violet lips to the smile that constantly solicited them. Perhaps, if dressed like you or me, Tiburce might actually have been indistinguishable from you or me…but there it was; Tiburce played the Englishman. He surrounded his French presence with London cloth, covered his Parisian physiognomy with a Britannic mask. That was why, instead of being august, in the fashion of a lord, he had the appearance of a clown.
“My friend,” the Duc d’Agnès went on, “is a…”
“I’m a Sherlockist, and nothing more.”
Monsieur Le Tellier had eyes like organ-stops. “I beg your pardon?”
VIII. Tiburce
Tiburce attempted to attain the heights of phlegmaticism and to look his interlocutor full in the face. “I said that I’m a Sherlockist,” he repeated—but then he blushed so deeply that his lips disappeared into the radiance of his entire face. “Sherlockist…or Holmesian, if you prefer…as one says Carlist or Garibaldian…”
At that moment, Monsieur Garan was the very image of irony, the Duc d’Agnès of annoyance and Monsieur Le Tellier of incomprehension. Seeing this, Tiburce went on: “Surely you must have heard mention of Sherlock Holmes, Monsieur?”
“Err…is he a relative of the Augusta Holmes who composes music?”13
“No. Sherlock Holmes is a virtuoso, but a virtuoso detective. He’s a detective of genius, whose fantastic exploits have been related by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
“Eh? Monsieur, in the present circumstances, to the Devil with novels, and away with your Shylock Hermes!”
“Sherlock,” Tiburce corrected. “Sherlock Holmes.” And he continued, without turning a hair: “Well, Monsieur, I am the living emulation of that imaginary hero, and I apply his incomparable method to the difficulties of real life.”
Perceiving that Monsieur Le Tellier was getting increasingly irritated, the Duc d’Agnès timidly hazarded: “I affirm…in truth…that Tiburce will be a great help to us.”
“Listen to me for a few moments,” Tiburce added. “If you lack faith, it’s because you don’t understand. Let me explain. You see, Monsieur, my vocation was decided in the era when I was formulating my philosophy—not during the day, when I was poring over one of those scholars whose works I ought to have been cherishing, but one evening when I read Voltaire’s story Zadig, or Destiny. One finds there, Monsieur, a c
ertain passage that is a sort of prototype of all detective mysteries, in which Zadig, although he has never seen the queen’s dog, nevertheless gives a striking description of it to the chief eunuch, thanks to the traces it has left during its passage through a little wood.
“Reading that opened my eyes, and I decided to cultivate my own disposition to perspicacity—which was, I felt, imperious and rich. I say that without any false modesty. Sometime after that, the tales of Edgar Poe fell into my hands. I marveled at the sagacious mind of the detective Dupin. Finally, in recent years, an entire genre has begun to flourish in the wake of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget and my vocation became clearer and clearer. To tell the truth, Sherlock Holmes dominates this produce as Napoleon dominated the history of his era, but every one of these works nevertheless has its importance and forms a breviary for the investigator or mysteries. Their collectivity, reinforced by several treatises on logic, composes the library of the amateur detective—and that library, Monsieur, never leaves me.”
As he pronounced these words, Tiburce opened a suitcase that he had hidden under his Inverness cape and extracted from its depths a set of sturdily rebound volumes. One by one and side by side, he deposited on the polished desk-top Aristotle and Maurice Leblanc, Mark Twain and John Stuart Mill, Hegel and Gaston Leroux, Conan Doyle and Condillac, juxtaposing The Perfume of the Lady in Black with the first three volumes of the Spectator, and The Adventures of Arsène Lupin with Inductive and Deductive Logic. “Here are my masters,” he said, pompously. “But don’t get the idea that the study of these books is my only labor. I slog away enormously, Monsieur, and in every genre, in order to acquire the universal knowledge of the great Sherlock Holmes. I only set aside a manual of algebra, carpentry, medicine or cattle-breeding to run to the criminal court, the boxing club, the gymnasium or the riding-school, and I employ my vacations in applied logic, in order to pass from principles to practice, from theory to active service. Well, what do you say to that? I am pleased to see, Monsieur, that you have taken back your first impression. Come on! Come on! I shall recover your daughter—and it’s me who says so. Hold on—I want to convince you even further!”
The Blue Peril Page 6
