He fled directly through the sloping wood, for the best path was too much of a detour, in his view. The wretch hurtled down the precipitous slope, stumbling, rebounding, grabbing hold of trees, sliding over flat rocks and provoking falls of stones—which preceded him, accompanied him and followed him, with the result that his flight became a landslide.
Beneath him, however, the roofs of Mirastel grew visibly larger.
He arrived soaked in sweat, livid and shivering, with bloody scratches, bare-headed, and his clothes in tatters. He ran into a room where his relatives and Robert were gathered around a samovar, and while they all ran to meet him, he collapsed and started sobbing, mortally ashamed to have been so conceited and so cowardly.
He was sat down in an armchair. Madame Le Tellier put her maternal arms around him—but he could not distinguish anyone.
He made gestures of powerlessness and pity, and repeated hectically, in the midst of his tears: “Marie-Thérèse! Oh my God! What have they done to her? Where is she? Oh it’s frightful!”
His father made him drink a cup of tea generously laced with rum.
“Come on, my lad—what’s happened? Tell us.”
Maxime told them. He finished up by admitting his cowardice—and then gave way to despair, as before. He struck himself on the forehead with a feverish fist, saying that he wanted to go out again, to rush to the aid of the little Jeantaz girl…
Monsieur Le Tellier forbade him, and ordered that five peasants and four servants should be sent to accomplish that duty.
“We were hidden…hidden by the foliage,” gasped the piteous Maxime. “That’s why we weren’t attacked!” Then, under the combined influence of rum and sadness, he said, tearfully: “She was gone, my God, like a popped cork! A poor little cork—my God! And her poor little voice, which was strangled…and suddenly broke off, so abruptly! And I did nothing! Oh! Nothing…!”
Above his head his parents exchanged anxious glances.
Finally, Monsieur Le Tellier came to a decision. “This is no time for weeping,” he said, severely. “It’s a matter for discussion and understanding. This disappearance is identical to that of your sister and your cousins—let’s work on that basis. Firstly, are you certain that it was an abduction?”
“Yes, yes! She fought. She resisted. And if it had been a blind force, César and I would have felt it too…”
“Good. But you mentioned a cork just now. Was the child really launched by an impulse originating on the ground?”
“No, no…it came from the air.”
“Indeed, the snow on the Colombier revealed nothing of that sort…”
“She was lifted up,” said the young man, mollified by alcohol and compassion. “She was lifted up like a poor terrified little holy Virgin, like a poor little puppet extracted from a Punch-and-Judy show by a string…”
“Yes, but you didn’t see any string…any cable…?”
“There was nothing. Not even a thread.”
“Very well…hmm! Strictly speaking, everything might be explicable… The sarvants’ balloon must have been hidden in the clouds, where we know it likes to float without being seen. It’s not difficult to imagine that they possess a means of seeing through them, probably with the aid of a tube—a simple tube piercing the layer of cloud beneath them, which must be too narrow in diameter to be seen from below… As for the capture at a distance…”
“I wonder, Papa, whether it breathes its victims in? I noticed a great tumult in the cloud, which might well have been caused by a vehement breath…a current of air traveling vertically upwards…”
“Did you feel it?”
“No, you’re right. I didn’t even feel the breeze, this time. I don’t get it…oh, when one’s seen such a…!” He became emotional again.
Monsieur Le Tellier hastened to occupy his son with other more or less fantastic possibilities. “The arrival of a projectile as large as a human body suffices to explain the tumult to which you alluded. It isn’t that. It’s better to suppose, not that the sarvants suck up their victims, but that they attract them by means of a special kind of magnet, in the same way that a true magnet attracts iron. Animal magnetism means something, after all! Moreover, there’s something about the property of magnetic attraction—an occult something-or-other, and a tyrannical, active will—which always troubles the mind. They employ this method to draw up people, animals and anything that isn’t fixed to the ground, you see. For the rest, they make use of the chisel, and they make their descents by night.”
“Wasn’t there a forester who claimed to have heard the chisel in broad daylight?” recalled Madame Arquedouve.
“Yes, mother—but it was in a solitary location, on the far side of a curtain of fir-trees.”
“In any case,” said Madame Le Tellier, “the mysteries are cleared up now, or at least reduced to one: all the abductions, including that of the unfortunate flying men, who were among the tormented rather than the tormentors…and the eagle and the fish too!”
“Exactly,” Monsieur Le Tellier went on. “Géruzon and Philibert must have mistaken what was happening, the former to his Piedmontese and the latter to his pike. Otherwise, they’d have seen them rise up more steeply into the cloudy sky. Our adversaries possess a special electromagnet, and they maneuver it above the clouds—that’s what’s happening. But they’re not imbeciles, damn it! To have found the animal magnet…”
“Accursed clouds!” cried Madame Le Tellier. “Without them…”
“Without them,” the astronomer replied, “we would have seen even less than we have, for the sarvants would only operate by night.”
Robert was pacing back and forth, maintaining a stern silence. Monsieur Le Tellier searched his secretary’s physiognomy in vain for some sign of approval; he found nothing there but concern.
“But why?” said Madame Le Tellier, taking her head in her hands. “Why are they carrying out these abductions?”
“And what becomes of the prisoners?” Today it was Maxime who moaned that.
“Where are they?” added Madame Arquedouve.
Without taking his eyes off Robert’s face, her son-in-law hazarded: “Oh, they can’t be far away—doubtless in some retreat in the Alps or the Jura. The relative narrowness of the haunted zone seems to indicate that the sarvants don’t stray far away from Bugey.”
“We must find it!” said the blind woman.
“But how do we track them down? They’re ungraspable, transient; one hardly even hears them…”
“Listen!” cried Maxime, haggardly. “Listen! The hum!”
A similar frisson ran along everyone’s spine.
“My poor child!” said the grandmother. “It’s a hornet you can hear through the open window.”
Madame Le Tellier mopped Maxime’s brow with her handkerchief. “Talk about something else, I beg you,” she implored. “It’s impossible to rest taut nerves…”
“We must find it!” repeated the secretary, as if in a dream, marching furiously.
Madame Le Tellier stopped him in his tracks and woke him up, saying: “Doubtless, with his airplanes, Monsieur d’Agnès will be able to catch sight of these bandits and pursue them to the entrance of their cave or their fortress! We’ve just received a letter from him, and…”
“That’s true!” said the astronomer, with feigned joviality. “The letter even encloses an indescribable telegram from that Monsieur Tiburce… Here, read this, my boy. That will change your mind. My word! That Monsieur Tiburce is the silliest Nigaudinos18 there ever was!”
Maxime read.
XVIII. A Letter and a Cablegram
(Item 397)
Letter from the Duc d’Agnès to Monsieur Le Tellier
40, Avenue Montaigne.
June 9, 1912.
Dear Monsieur,
It was a month ago, to the day, that I left Mirastel, leaving you so desolate. I have worked hard since then, but it was not until yesterday that I finally became sufficiently hopeful to have the courage to confi
de in you.
Assuredly, I am not without anxiety on the subject of this legendary dirigible that Maxime has, you tell me, seen in the fog and which does not seem to require aeronauts. Your description reminded me of telemechanical torpedoes: those little vehicles of catastrophe that can be successfully steered from a distance without wires. Why, indeed, should there not be analogous balloons, whose various mechanisms are controlled at a distance by a captain above suspicion? That would complicate our task—for, assuming that we might take possession of the deserted balloon, what indications would such a capture give us as to the identity and domicile of the sarvants?
Fortunately, nothing is certain. Besides, the machine that we are about to build—our hunting airplane—will, I hope, be quite remarkable. It is, alas, no more than a hope. This is how things stand, though: yesterday, my chief of construction, the pilot Bachmès, had a meeting with an engineer who claims to have discovered a motor powered by atmospheric electricity. To capture this potential of nature, to extract the all-powerful volts from its vast source, is a chimera that has been pursued for a long time, as you know; it would reduce fuel consumption almost to zero, the machinery to a negligible weight, and would, above all, produce a miraculous velocity.
If the invention is not a hoax, and if it is really sufficient to turn a propeller and stabilize a current-transformer, we shall buy the patent, and we shall construct it immediately. That will be done quickly, I think—but what is “quickly” when one is anxious? What is happening to the missing individuals? Thirty-four days! Where is Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse? Oh, my dear Monsieur, how I wish I were at my post as an aerial scout, to find out where, how, who and why?
What a terrible thing waiting is. I spend my day in the workshops of Bois-Colombes, where I have made so many fruitless experiments—and I stay there, pawing the ground, conscious of the time wasted. Would you believe that I sometimes envy the fate of Tiburce? He, at least, has a precise goal, vain as it might be, and he is ceaselessly employed in trying to attain it. He has the solace of action…but the cruel disappointment that is waiting for him will drive him mad! I enclose herein a cablegram from him, which I’ve just received. It’s not the first news he has sent me; he sent me a Marconigram from mid-ocean, the day after his departure, simply to notify me of it. Since then, I’ve received nothing. Perhaps seeing so much foolishness packed into in so few words will plunge you into an astonishment that will make you forget momentarily the precariousness of our situation. It is, unfortunately, the only advantage we can obtain from the enclosed dispatch.
I beg you, dear Monsieur, to give my good wishes to Madame Le Tellier, etc.
François d’Agnès
P.S. A considerable effervescence is rife in all the airplane construction-yards, especially those of the State. There is a search going on for an apparatus appropriate to this new mission: the pursuit of aviators uncatchable by virtue of their speed. Rumor has it that some of them are departing on reconnaissance flights over Bugey with presently-existing, entirely inadequate machines—famous names are cited. We shall do better than that. Have patience and courage.
F.A.
(Item 398)
Cablegram from Tiburce to the Duc d’Agnès
San Francisco, June 6, 1912.
All well. Have not yet caught up with H but am certain M-T is with him. Have learned that H accompanied only by men. Deception. Crude stratagem, anticipated. Besides, indisputable calculations prove M-T with H, as is HM. New fact: evidently went with him voluntarily. Why? Mystery. Clarification soon. Have departed for Nagasaki. Am embarking this evening for Japan. Their precipitation suspect. Your stupid sarvant stories have reached here. Are making San Francisco smile. Respectful homage to your sister.
Tiburce
XIX. The Tragic Hornbeam
The discovery was made about three hours after dinner.
It was June 19. Madame Arquedouve and Monsieur Le Tellier had gone to visit Dr. Monbardeau in the automobile. Robert Collin was in Lyon, making purchases that he considered to be urgent. Madame Le Tellier had stayed at Mirastel with her son.
Maxime’s nervous state still required a good deal of care; he refused, moreover—with an unhealthy obstinacy—to leave the grounds. In the beginning, he had not even wanted to go out of the château, and now it was only on the insistence and the prescription of his uncle that he consented to take a little fresh air and exercise. Twice a day, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., he went for a walk on his mother’s arm, taking 100 paces beneath the hornbeams. That way, he said, they were sheltered from the Sun. The truth was that they were sheltered from the sarvant, the vault of foliage hiding the strollers from any sky-based gaze. Such precautions might have seemed childish, since there was no longer any cloud, and since the walks were also taken in the broad southern daylight in a populous place—but those who laughed at Maxime had not seen the Assumption of the little Jeantaz girl.
And so it was that Madame Arquedouve and Monsieur Le Tellier were returning from Artemare, having raised the canopy for reasons of prudence and traversed the deserted countryside in that fashion. They arrived home. The automobile turned, went through the gate, and was engulfed by the gallery of verdure, shady and pinpricked by sunlight.
It suddenly came to an abrupt halt, with a squeal of brakes and a skidding of locked wheels.
“Eh? What’s up?” said Madame Arquedouve, huddled in the back seat.
Thrown forward by the sudden stop, Monsieur Le Tellier saw Madame Le Tellier collapsed on the ground in the middle of the avenue, two meters from the front bumper, staring at him with the eyes of a madwoman. She looked like a simple-minded beggar-woman. Hatless, her bodice ripped beneath her arm, she had not budged as the automobile approached; nor did she budge as her husband got out. When she was lifted up, supported by him and the chauffeur, she remained limp and tremulous.
Monsieur Le Tellier carried her to the car.
“It’s Luce, Mother,” he said. “She was there. I don’t think she’s hurt, but she’s extremely upset…”
From the sound of his voice, although he attempted to keep it level, Madame Arquedouve grasped the gravity of the situation.
“Who are you?” stammered Madame Le Tellier. “Maxime…is no longer here, you know. I have no more children…no more, no more…”
Until they reached the perron, no one had the strength to speak. They were devastated by this new disaster and by its effect on the mind of the unfortunate mother. The astronomer sent someone to fetch Doctor and Madame Monbardeau, and then the invalid was put to bed.
Prostrate as she was, Madame Le Tellier soon became painfully overexcited. She babbled incoherently, made incomprehensible gestures, and spoke continuously about her son and an inexplicable “calf.” From time to time, she put her hands to her sides or threw them out in front of her, as if to escape from a grip or defend herself against an attack.
“The calf! The calf that glides!” she murmured. “Ha! Don’t squeeze me! Don’t squeeze me! Who’s squeezing me? Who’s squeezing me, then? Let me go! Maxime, get away! Ah! Aaaah! We have to get away. This is what we have to get away from! Quickly! We’re covered up here…yes, my child, well-covered beneath the hornbeams… Like Marie-Thérèse… He’s with her, in the sky. It’s the calf that carried him off. It’s not an angel—it’s a calf!”
Monsieur Le Tellier, bewildered by this wandering, and fearful of the disturbance that must be fomenting in the mind that was giving birth to it, tried to obtain at least a semblance of rational progression. He asked questions, but one might have thought that Madame Le Tellier did not hear them. God only knows, however, how desperate the astronomer was to discover something, for this abduction from beneath a hornbeam plantation, in broad daylight, from a cloudless sky, in a busy park, and the subsequent salvation of Madame Le Tellier—a favor granted or attempt failed, so contrary to the sarvants’ habits—were veritable phenomena.
“Come on, Luce—what calf are you talking about?”
“It’s gone! It’s gone!
” the crazy woman moaned.
“You say that it was gliding, this calf. How?”
“Let me go!”
“Yes, you’ve been rudely grabbed…your blouse is torn as if by fangs, to the right and the left…but there’s no one here any longer. Calm down. Don’t keep making that gesture, my dear Luce—there are no more sarvants.”
“Maxime! Maxime!”
“Well, how did Maxime go? Through the leaves of the arbor, wasn’t it? As if drawn into the sky? Did the foliage prevent the dirigible balloon from being seen? How did Maxime go?”
“It’s a calf!”
Monsieur Le Tellier stepped back, alarmed for the first time by the problem of the madwoman confronting him. Alas, there was nothing more of his wife in the bed than a poor soulless body, a miserable half of a human being.
The scientist looked at her from the depths of his thought, and said to himself: Science knows no more about the minds of the insane than it does about the prisoners of the sarvants. They are both atrocious disappearances. And yet, since human beings have souls, they accept, with neither fear nor blasphemy, that—by one means or another—one of these souls might be stolen by an immaterial thief, just as those of my children seem to have been. In the same way that every day brings further abductions in Bugey, every day brings new psychic abductions to the world. Where are they all? Some of them might come back. Where is Lucie’s? Where are Marie-Thérèse, Maxime, and all the others…and will they ever come back?
The doctor arrived, and quieted his sister-in-law by means of some drug. Madame Monbardeau took up a position beside her. Before replacing her for the night at the invalid’s beside, Monsieur Le Tellier was able to discuss the event with Robert Colin, who had just come in, bringing back several well-wrapped packages from Lyon, about which no one thought to interrogate him.
Shattered by the double abomination, the secretary opined: “Any significant items of information we can get from Madame Le Tellier will be precious. At the risk of tiring her slightly, we must try…in everyone’s interest. The hypothesis of some sort of magnet, which you advanced the other day, wasn’t implausible, but the place occupied by Monsieur Maxime and his mother, under the hornbeams, has just falsified it. They were invisible to individuals situated above them…individuals of any sort, it seems to me…unless…”
The Blue Peril Page 14
