“In fact, Henri’s trail clearly concludes with the normal placid trampling of a tourist at rest. It’s like a dead end. Fabienne’s trail is different; we discover, departing from the trampled spot, four footprints heading toward Henri—and that’s all. A second dead end. Let’s take note, nevertheless, with regard to those four footprints, that the distance between them is evidence of long strides. My cousin Fabienne must have been running when she made those four prints—running toward her husband. Besides, in the middle of the stationary trampling, we discover the mark of a sole forcefully dug in, which testifies to an abrupt departure by means of an energetic leap.
“Marie-Thérèse’s trail—the one on the right—is more complicated. Coming from the trampled spot, a sequence of precipitate steps heads for the cross—but suddenly, a meter away from it, they turn sharply to the right, and those steps begin to descend the slope on the Rhône side at top speed. We count six prints, which are veritable leaps. It’s a hectic run down an awkward slope, which suddenly stops at the sixth print. The last dead end.
“There was, therefore a moment when Fabienne and Marie-Thérèse were running in the same direction, which was, for Fabienne, toward Henri, and for Marie-Thérèse, toward Fabienne and Henri. An unknown cause prevented the former from reaching her husband and made the latter change direction. It was doubtless the same cause that spirited all three of them away.”
“It was certainly not effected without a struggle,” aid Monsieur Monbardeau. “That broken stick…it’s definitely Henri’s stick; I recognize it.”
“Whether it’s Monsieur Henri’s or someone else’s,” Robert replied, “The most important thing is that it’s the walking-stick that Monsieur Henri was using on Saturday. Its steel tip can only be fitted to the imprints on the left.”
“What I don’t understand,” muttered Tiburce, “is that it’s so far away from Henri Monbardeau’s tracks.”
“Precisely,” Robert went on. “Gentlemen, I beg you to take note of the significant position occupied by that cane: close to the cross, between the ascendant track of Madame Henri Monbardeau and the place where Mademoiselle Le Tellier’s track changes direction—which is to say, about seven meters from the trampled spot that manifests, for the last time, Monsieur Henri’s presence…his calm presence, I mean.”
“He could have thrown it from there?” proposed Monsieur Monbardeau.
“No. I thought of that. It isn’t possible—for then he would have thrown it in the direction of the two women, at the risk of hurting them, and your son is not a man to have lost his head to that extent.”
“But how do you know that the two women were there when the cane was thrown?” Garan objected. “Perhaps they’d already moved away…”
“Let’s be clear. I contend that they were stationary in their places while Monsieur Henri was at his, equipped with that stick, whose tubular mold is there beside the traces of his own pause, for it was in moving towards him that they left these tracks here, one of which stops dead and the other turns away before disappearing no less totally. But I also contend that did not throw his stick from the spot where he was standing, firstly because he might have hurt his companions, and secondly because the snow around the fallen stick does not present any scuff-marks—which proves that the stick did not strike the ground at an angle, but vertically. It was, therefore, thrown from above.”
Tiburce, who was chewing his lip ardently, interrupted. “Henri Monbardeau could have thrown it up into the air, and it fell back…”
“No, Monsieur. Firstly, I repeat, he would not have risked any action perilous to his companions. Secondly, look at the break. It would have required a sharp blow to produce it, and the person who broke that stick in that fashion must have been holding it in his hand. Such an effort, on the part of a man, similarly requires a point of support, or at least wedging it underfoot. Now, you will find no trace of that among Monsieur Henri’s tracks. That stick has been broken somewhere between the place whether its owner was standing and the place where you see it embedded in the snow, to which it is molded like the setting of a gem. And if we examine the stick at closer range we observe that the break, which is made almost at right angles, can only have been the consequence of a violent impact on an extremely hard corner. I point out to you that the cross is constructed from fir-wood covered with a sheath of white-painted sheet-metal, cylindrical at the top, but rectangular at the bottom. One might therefore suppose that the stick was broken on one of the four corners of the inferior section—but that is not so. There is no dent in the sheath, and the stick conserves not the slightest trace of white paint. See for yourself. It’s conclusive. On what, then, was it broken? On something that was there at the time, but is there no longer—something suspended in mid-air.”
“You’re very good,” said the inspector, with a mocking laugh.
The Duc d’Agnès intervened. “I’m wondering why we’re bothering with all this intricate reasoning. Isn’t it obvious that the missing persons have been abducted by means of a balloon?”
“Or an aeroplane,” added Tiburce.
“Oh, not that!” retorted the Duc. “There is no airplane sufficiently advanced to pluck three people from ground level in succession, nor any powerful enough to carry them off, along with the equipment that such a complex operation would require.”
“Abducted…abducted?” Monsieur Le Tellier said to himself. “But with what purpose? If someone has abducted them, we would already have received news, threats, offers of…how do I know?”
“It’s not possible!” shouted Monsieur Monbardeau, raising his eyes heavenwards.
“It can only have been a dirigible,” Tiburce declared.
Monbardeau, however, pointed to the soaring eagles. “You might as well claim that it was colossal eagles that took our children!” he said, in a bizarre tone.
Tiburce smiled.
“Don’t laugh,” said Robert. “Baroque as the idea is, it occurred to me. Certainly, the hypothesis can be ruled out a priori—but it would explain almost everything! For a dirigible, Monsieur d’Agnès, would be seen arriving; it’s an object that attracts the eyes. And if the kidnapers had approached in an aeronef, our friends would have been alerted and their footprints in the snow would indicate movements of retreat—but none of that is the case.”
“That’s true,” said the Duc.
“Eagles, on the other hand, are always to be seen around the summit of the Colombier. No one pays any attention to eagles. Now, I defy you to measure the size of a bird passing almost directly overhead, because you cannot estimate the altitude of its passage. It is necessary to know one of those factors to deduce the other, and if…”
“Quite right, Monsieur.”
“…and if fabulous eagles, far from any object of comparison, were soaring 1000 meters above the three excursionists, the latter would have taken them for common eagles situated within rifle-range. Given that, let us suppose that one of these chimerical raptors let itself fall upon Monsieur Henri Monbardeau. It takes him by surprise; it lifts him into the air. Madame Fabienne Monbardeau races to her husband’s aid, but a second eagle dives and carries her off. Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse runs forward to help her cousin, but perceiving a third eagle descending upon her, she takes flight recklessly, until that one…”
“Shut up!” whispered Monsieur Le Tellier, pointing to Monsieur Monbardeau, whose eyes were wide with terror.
“It’s only a means of making my point, Master. Collect yourself, doctor, and forgive me. It’s an absurd and fantastic hypothesis. I only formulated it to add substance to our reflections. If the conjecture were credible, the story of the walking-stick would prove it wrong. It would be necessary to imagine beaks of bronze sufficiently unbreakable to be able to break wooden staves. And there are no more beaks of bronze than there are vultures capable of carrying off seventy kilograms of human flesh.”
Monsieur Monbardeau wiped his forehead, and said in a hoarse voice: “Birds, no...but…flying men? Look down
there…Seyssel, Anglefort…and remember the statue stolen therefrom…”
“Hey, Uncle!” protested Maxime. “Please don’t confuse the misfortune that’s overtaken us with all that tomfoolery!”
Robert bade him be silent, though. “That’s another apparently lunatic hypothesis—and yet that one too occurred to me, for I reckon that there is nothing better than the study of false hypotheses to lead the mind to the truth. In science, sometimes, as in grammar invariably, two negatives are equivalent to an affirmation. When I know than something isn’t here, I suspect that it must be elsewhere. And then, by virtue of elimination, one ends up gaining ground. Console yourself, doctor. The thieves of men—if there are any thieves—are not airborne sarvants…if there are any sarvants. To bear away a single person into the sky would require the alliance of three individuals flying with the strength—proportional to their size—of the most vigorous condors. It would therefore have required nine accomplices to execute Saturday’s kidnapping. Now, although eagles, even enormous ones, would not be noticed because of the reasons I’ve given you, a flock of nine ornianthropes could not pass unnoticed! Our friends would have retreated as they approached, and once again, the tracks show no sign of any sidestep, recoil or flight before the attack on Monsieur Henri, who was the first to be assailed. No, no…the dirigible, the eagles, the flying men….none of those hypotheses stand up.”
Monsieur Monbardeau clenched his fists. “What, then? They didn’t evaporate! Nor did they dissolve in the air like sugar-lumps in water, I presume! No lightning-bolt has sent them to the Devil! They haven’t escaped from the summit of the Colombier like an electric discharge from a spike. They haven’t ascended to Heaven like the prophets, have they? What, then? What? What? It’s idiotic, in the end!”
Robert made an evasive gesture. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”
“I beg your pardon!” replied Monsieur Le Tellier. “The snow will continue to melt. I’ll make a sketch of all these imprints.”
In that regard, Tiburce announced that it would be better still if he were to take a photograph of the snow from the top of the cross—but the intrepid Sherlockist had over-estimated his agility. He could only get half way to the intersection, and it was Maxime, remembering the masts and yard-arms of the Borda, who succeeded in the enterprise.
While Maxime was sitting astride the arms of the immense gibbet—designed, it seemed, to crucify some Titan—the inspector asked him to check whether the zinc bore any mark and the coating any scratches that might be attributed to the friction of ropes.
“None,” he reported.
Unfortunately, when Tiburce tried to develop the precious photographs on his return to Mirastel, he found that he had forgotten to put film in the camera.
X. Deliberation
That same evening, all those who had participated in the search gathered in the drawing-room at Mirastel to hold a council. Henri Monbardeau’s broken walking-stick lay on the table, in the middle of the circle, and the diagram of the footprints made by Monsieur Le Tellier was set before Madame Arquedouve. Each item had been punctured by Maxime with the point of a pin, in order to render the representation of the astonishing and terrible event sensible to his grandmother’s fingers.
Monsieur Le Tellier wrote a detailed account of the session (item 197), which we shall summarize.
Monsieur Garan, who made no secret of the fact that his mind was almost made up, recognized nevertheless that a discussion might be useful. “Before asking ourselves where the missing person are,” he said, “who is holding them captive and how they were abducted, it’s necessary to know why.”
Logically, in any case, the abduction hypothesis could only be adopted after the elimination of the hypothesis of a voluntary disappearance. That elimination could only be made when the cases of the three absentees had been examined successively, and the conclusion reached that none of them could have removed themselves from the world spontaneously, nor allowed themselves to be abducted. In the course of the discussion, however, when Monsieur Monbardeau affirmed that his son Henri had no reason to go into hiding, Monsieur Garan asked him whether he was aware that the young man received poste restante letters at Artemare.
“I conducted a little enquiry there yesterday evening,” he declared. “On the very morning of the incident, Monsieur Henri Monbardeau presented himself at the post office counter and took away a letter bearing the initials H.M.”
Monsieur Monbardeau’s astonishment gave way to anger when Maxime, in order to disabuse Monsieur Garan, was forced to reveal that the letters bearing the initials H.M. came from Suzanne Monbardeau, and that the poor girl corresponded secretly with her brother. When the policeman persisted, it was necessary to tell him, in front of everyone, the sad story of Suzanne Monbardeau. No one could take any pleasure in it, inasmuch as Doctor Monbardeau took advantage of the digression to rail against the sinner and reproach her—he who had exiled her!—for not having shown her relatives the slightest sympathy in the wake of the disappearances.
Then the abduction hypothesis was returned to the floor.
Who might benefit from the triple capture?
Here, Monsieur Garan put forward the suggestion that Mademoiselle Le Tellier might have been abducted by one of the numerous aspirants that her father had refused. Being responsible for the safety of foreign residents in Paris, he had attended the inauguration of the Hatkins telescope in that capacity. Nothing had escaped him at that celebration or in its aftermath—a circumstance that had led to his being chosen to follow the present affair when the Duc d’Agnès had presented himself at the Prefecture on Monsieur Le Tellier’s behalf.
The latter declared that he had only received three formal requests for marriage and, in consequence, had only had to issue three categorical refusals: to Lieutenant Pablo de Las Almeras, the Spanish military attaché; to Mr. Evans, an attorney from Chicago; and finally—he excused himself for having to make allusion to such buffoonery—to the Turk Abdul Kadir Pacha.
Monsieur Garan knew all three. They were, in his view, three trails to be abandoned. The Spaniard had just got engaged, the American had gone back to America a week before the disappearances, and the Turk had embarked at Marseilles for Turkey with his 12 wives on the morning of the unfortunate incident, under the inspector’s own surveillance—which had, in fact, been the cause of the Duc d’Agnès’ delay, the latter being obliged to await the arrival in Paris of the Côte-d’Azur express before being able to set off for Bugey.
Once it was proven that Marie-Thérèse Le Tellier had not been abducted for herself, a similar conclusion was reached concerning her cousin Fabienne. No one had any interest in kidnapping her, except perhaps for her former suitor, Monsieur Raflin, who was incapable of such an exploit, in view of the fact that he had been confined to his bedroom in Artemare for six months with a compound fracture of the leg.
There remained Henri Monbardeau. Had he been the primary objective of the fishing expedition?
Suddenly inspired, Monsieur Monbardeau then claimed, to everyone’s amazement, that if anyone had taken his son captive, that someone could not be anyone other than Mr. Hatkins. “Yes, Hatkins the philanthropist, Hatkins the telescope-donor, Hatkins the billionaire!”
Henri Monbardeau, in pursuing his bacteriological research, had recently isolated, cultivated and attenuated the bacillus sclerosans; thanks to him, a cure for arteriosclerosis was close at hand. Now, Hatkins had offered five millions for his discovery—five millions disdainfully refused. Although Monsieur Garan was sure that the billionaire had left on a world tour, traveling via New York, several days before the kidnapping, and although Mr. Hatkins’ honorability was not in doubt for the majority of those present, Doctor Monbardeau did not want to eliminate him from consideration. And Tiburce supported him in this paradoxical belief, suggesting that Mr. Hatkins might only have left France to establish and alibi, after having instructed a whole gang of accomplices to carry out the kidnapping.
They returned there
after to the more serious idea of an association of criminals, skilled in terrorizing their peers and extracting ransoms from them. At this point in the conference, however, a violent quarrel developed between, on the one hand, Maxime and Robert, and on the other, Monsieur Garan—who, letting loose the dogs, accused them both of having faked the footprints on the Colombier, given that they had been alone on the summit of the mountain for some time before taking anyone else there.
Monsieur Le Tellier calmed his son and his secretary down. Then, to create a diversion and cut things short, he asked. “In the final analysis, what have we decided, Monsieur Garan?”
“Oh,” said the other, “I don’t want to say any more.”
“All right. What about you, Robert?”
“I can’t say anything, my dear Master. Nothing more, at least.”
Seeing the inspector smile at the evasion, Monsieur Le Tellier was quick to say: “What about you, Monsieur Tiburce?”
“Hatkins! Hatkins!”
“Bravo!” said Monsieur Monbardeau, provoking indignant protests.
“What?” retorted Tiburce. “Before anything else, let’s look for simple, possible, natural explanations. Let’s not go beyond the natural.” Citing one of his authors, he continued: “I have long held to the principle that, when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable it might be, must be the truth. Now, ‘that which remains,’ in my opinion, is the brigand hypothesis and the Hatkins hypothesis. And the latter, being the less complicated, must be preferable.”
The Blue Peril Page 8
