“Let’s be clear, Robert. Your behavior, in all this, remains secretive. I don’t doubt for a moment the excellence and the purity of your speculations…but in the final analysis, do you know anything? Have you deduced anything? If so, for pity’s sake tell me—has today’s frightful episode confirmed your hypotheses or not?”
“I can’t say that it has crippled them. It has no bearing on the essential question—which is to say, the identification of the sarvants—whose solution I have glimpsed very vaguely. Given that my knowledge is even vaguer with respect to the method of abduction, I wouldn’t be at all displeased to acquire supplementary indication on that matter. As for the sum of my conjectures…it’s so nebulous that I lack terms specific enough to explain it. It’s so terrible, too, that I dare not say anything until I’m certain…and in order to be certain, it will be necessary to go and see. I’m sure, too, that such an experiment will bring many surprises of the nastiest sort. In any case, Master, even if it’s to the detriment of her health, try to obtain some precise information from Madame Le Tellier…”
“If you think it’s so important…I’ll ask Monbardeau whether it’s a superfluous cruelty. She’s asleep now.”
“Leave it until tomorrow,” Robert conceded.
Before dawn, however, he knew what there was to be known.
Monsieur Le Tellier is watching over his wife. By the attenuated glimmer of a candle, the astronomer observes the malevolent sleep that shakes the invalid with the effects of nervous discharges.
Two o’clock sounds.
She turns over, wails, utters inarticulate noises, stammers the ghosts of lugubrious speech-acts that are the soliloquies of nightmare. Her eyelids open on dilated pupils. She tries to get up, and does so, haggard and tremulous, sitting upright though still asleep.
Monsieur Le Tellier goes into action. He tries to make her lie down, to make her rink a spoonful of medicine. She looks at him, and says: “Maxime!”
“Come on, my love—it’s me, Jean!”
“Maxime, are you coming for a walk in the hornbeam plantation?”
“Lie down and go to sleep, dear Lucette. It’s time, it’s night…”
“It’s time for your walk, yes, Maxime—two o’clock chimed just now. We’ll be fine in the shade. Give me your arm, and let’s go for a walk in the wood while the wolf—oh, no, not the wolf!—while your grandmother and your father are at Artemare.”
She seizes her husband’s arm. She tries to get up again. In spite of the violent suffering he is experiencing, Monsieur Le Tellier would like to take advantage of the odious opportunity that is offered to him to find out—but he does not want the somnambulist to suffer at all.
She is still trying to get up.
Then, an inspiration leads him to say to the unfortunate, whose voice is choking: “Mama…it’s me, Maxime—and we’re underneath the hornbeams…”
Now, there is nothing more to do than listen.
“It’s nice to go for a walk,” says the sleeper, moving her legs beneath the bedclothes. “Here we are at the end of the lane, near the gate. Let’s go back. Half a turn…look, Maxime, how pretty it is, that green nave, so cool and vast, with that dazzling hole at the end, that portal ‘mad with brightness.’ Yes, you’re right, ‘tunnel’ is more accurate than ‘nave.’ The hornbeam grove has the dimensions and the shade of a tunnel.
“Ah! What’s that, at the far end, in the sunlight, coming toward us? A calf? You say that it’s a calf? Hey—how quickly it moves! But Maxime, its feet aren’t moving...in fact, they’re not touching the ground. It’s gliding through the air. Oh! It’s coming toward us at top speed, this calf! There’s no need to be afraid? You say that, but you’re as white as a sheet. Here it comes!
“It’s charging us! Without moving! It’s frightful! Aaaaaah! Let me go! Something’s got hold of me, Maxime! From behind…it’s squeezing me… Oh, it’s let me go…what’s got hold of you? What’s wrong with you? It’s that calf, that motionless calf! Oooooh! Don’t scream! Why those disordered movement? No, no, don’t scream, my little one, my little one…!
“Finally, you’re not screaming any longer…finally. Thank you. Why are you hanging on to that creature? Aaaaah! It’s lifting you up! The calf…! Fleeing backwards under the hornbeams…stop! Stop it! Scream, then, Maxime! Scream! Call for help…! Nothing…ah! Down there in the sunlight, he’s turning round… Help! Help!
“Disappeared…like Marie-Thérèse!
“Who are you? You know, Maxime…he’s no longer there. I have no more children…no more, no more, no more…
“The calf! The calf that glides!”
Madame Le Tellier struggled desperately. The noise she made brought her sister and the doctor, who had stayed at Mirastel, running to her bedside. Monsieur Le Tellier left it to them to watch over the lamentable delirious creature, who could no longer do anything but repel phantoms as she saw that frightful scene again in disconnected fragments. Without losing a moment, he went to Robert’s room.
In order not to be surprised to find his secretary still awake at such an hour, as the light of dawn filtered through the shutters, Monsieur Le Tellier truly had to be sunk in the uttermost depths of his being. At the time, he scarcely noticed that Robert hurriedly closed a glass-fronted cupboard, or that the cupboard was full of objects that presented the appearance of an optician’s equipment, or that that floor of the room was buried by a profusion of recently-undone wrapping-paper.
Robert turned to him with an embarrassed expression. Uncomfortably, he stroked a large red ledger with copper latches, which was brand new.
Already, though, Monsieur Le Tellier was telling him how his wife had just re-enacted the abduction.
The little man heard him out without saying a word, then collected himself for a few minutes. “What incomprehensible things!” he said finally. “The sarvants are never inconvenienced for long! At 2 p.m.! That’s impudent. The domestics must have heard them…”
“They say that they didn’t—but I’m convinced, myself, that they’re lying. Fear must have petrified them, when their duty was to go to the aid of my wife, who was crying out. That’s what they refuse to admit, and that’s why they deny having heard anything at all. We’ll never get anything more out of them.”
Robert Collin reflected again, and asked: “Was there anyone in the fields who can tell us what the state of the sky was at that precise moment?”
“No one. On the other hand, in Artemare, I took note of the extraordinary sight of the deserted road and the abandoned crops. We were the only ones outside—but Madame Arquedouve no longer has her sight, and the extended canopy completely blocked the view of the sky, for the chauffeur as well as me.”
“That’s regrettable. Ah! Which dress was Madame Le Tellier wearing?”
“A black one, very simple, with no pattern,” the astronomer replied, slightly taken aback.
“No hat?”
“No.”
The secretary took out his notebook, consulted it, and said: “Master, everything’s clarified with regard to the abnormal liberation of Madame Le Tellier. She has hennaed hair, and she was dressed as if in mourning; her appearance was therefore similar to that of Mademoiselle Charras, abducted on the eleventh of June in Chautagne, who had reddish-blonde hair and had just lost her mother.”
“What do you mean about the similarity? For the love of God, tell me what you know. All this confusion! This calf that carried off my son! I’m losing my mind too!”
“Well,” said Robert, compassionately, “I suppose…but then again, hold on! Really, I can’t! Put yourself in my place: I only have vague suspicions. I told you that, Master: I won’t speak until I’m certain of everything. But then, it’s more than probable, other considerations might well prevent me from speaking…for fear of spreading panic…”
For fear of spreading panic? Monsieur Le Tellier said to himself. Lucie’s appearance confirms to the description of Mademoiselle…Something? Ah! This is a supremely incoherent discourse, da
mn it! Is it, by chance…hang on! What about that arsenal I glimpsed in the cupboard? And all this activity at three o’clock in the morning? Damn! Damn! Is he going mad in his turn…?
He left the room in the midst of these disagreeable reflections—and we have to recognize that Robert’s actions were increasingly giving him grounds to think that he might have lost his mind.
XX. Insanity
Two days later, Doctor Monbardeau—whose medical skill is justly renowned—certified that his sister-in-law’s recovery was a mere matter of time and patience. Madame Monbardeau took up residence at Mirastel again in the capacity of nurse; and, although Madame Le Tellier manifested excessive sensitivity, although the slightest surprise electrified her and although five minutes could not go by without her making reflexive gestures as if to push someone away or talking about the inexplicable calf, a gradual but evident amelioration justified the doctor’s prognosis.
It was an unexpected stroke of luck; the cerebral disturbance had been the final violence. Supplementary proof of that was obtained when, the invalid’s hair having grown slightly, it was perceived that the new growth was white. All of her hair must have turned white, but until now the dye had prevented anyone from noticing. To accelerate the patient’s convalescence, it was necessary that she, too should get some fresh air. While admitting that she needed it, however, no one would have permitted it during those detestable days—for, since Maxime’s abduction, which had been perpetrated with a boldness, cynicism and skill as yet unrevealed, the Bugists no longer went out in the open without taking infinite precautions.
Even Monsieur Le Tellier forbade his relatives to go out. He was subject then to a second loss of morale, and abandoned himself to interminable meditation, less occupied with penetrating the mystery than considering his own distress. Once, when Madame Arquedouve asked him if he had discovered anything, he replied: “I’ve discovered that one should always love one’s nearest and dearest as if they were destined to die imminently.”
Robert’s extravagances had ended up exhausting him. He was showing incontestable signs of mental alienation. By this time, fear had already disturbed his mind considerably. Was a contained and concealed terror beginning to ruin that splendid intelligence? One might have thought so.
His insanity had begun with an explosion of joy, an expression of constant and singularly inappropriate gaiety. After that, he visibly buried himself in somber recollections. Under the influence of an obsession, he undertook another journey, not to Lyon but to Geneva, and came back from Switzerland, on one of the hottest days of 1912, carrying a heavy fur cloak under his arm. From then on, nothing prevented him from going out every morning for long and alarming walks, which kept him out of doors until nightfall. He came in at 7 p.m. precisely, but the monomaniac vanished again immediately after dinner, then reappeared the following day.
And how he dressed! A burlesque equal to that of Tiburce himself! Clad in the costume of a tourist, with an extremely warm woolen fleece, with knee-length boots of thick leather, he set off with all manner of portable apparatus of the sorts carried by explorers. A little hunting-knife was suspended at his hip. A revolver-holster comprised a belt and a polished leather shoulder-strap. Crossed over his breast, the straps of a water-bottle and a game-bag overlapped those of a Kodak and an imposing pair of prismatic binoculars. On his back he had a green canvas rucksack, stuffed with mysterious objects, and an intriguing elastic band hung down from the sack. An otter-skin cap topped off his hairy sweat-suit, and the fur cloak only left his right arm in order to warm his left.
Thus harnessed, the pitiable weakling left Mirastel dressed as if for a polar expedition, and strode along the dusty roads beneath a Sun that might have pumped the ocean dry. The roads were no longer being maintained. Robert ceaselessly roamed their pot-holed terrain, only encountering a few carefully-sealed carriages and a few automobiles in a hurry to be elsewhere. Sometimes he had to jump over columns of ants, which were crossing the Republic’s macadam, and sometimes he had to go around stony debris fallen from the mountain, which had been left in the middle of the road.
He often went to climb the Colombier and to wander there like a soul in torment or a stray poet, a lover of forests and summits. He seemed particularly careful to admire the views. His gaze went from one to another with remarkable celerity; none of the beauties of time and space escaped him. The Colombier had been the mount of snows, then of narcissi; soon it was the mount of strawberries. It was also that of grasshoppers, and Robert’s footsteps prompted their strident leaps, like fugitive gymnastic vaults from here to there, this one red and this one purple. But the strange wanderer did not like that buzzing stridulation, which covered the meadows with a musical carpet, and he muttered periodically: “Oh, my God! Nothing but grasshoppers! A plague upon grasshoppers! Accursed grasshoppers!” Or some other monologue of that sort.
Impenetrable and serene, punctual and smiling, he came into the château’s dining-room at the second stroke of the bell. At table, he made no reply to remonstrations and seemed quite happy about his pranks and whims. He was not seen again until the evening meal.
Monsieur Le Tellier noticed that he also went out at night, and wanted to confine him to the house—but the other warned him respectfully that he would escape at the first opportunity, never to return. Monsieur Le Tellier gave in. The poor man had begun to doubt his own judgment; he no longer knew whether he or Robert was the more reasonable, or whether duty compelled an incessant patrolling in search of the sarvant, however madly and randomly, with a thousand ridiculous, burdensome and theatrical—in a word, Tiburcian—eccentricities. The astronomer had to limit himself to quaking with fear during his secretary’ absences; and he would have quaked even more if he had known that Robert possessed a method of deceiving the sarvants by means of a certain similarity of dress, but that his comic-opera costume bore no analogy with any of those that he would have been able to imitate!
Every time Robert went out, Monsieur Le Tellier wondered whether this would be the evening when he would not return—and the evenings were very slow in returning, although they returned just the same…as did Robert.
On Wednesday July 3, however, at 7 p.m., they started on the soup without him. His place remained a dramatic void between the blind woman and the madwoman. Monsieur Le Tellier, the doctor and his wife were exchanging taciturn glances when the butler gave the astronomer an unstamped letter.
Monsieur Le Tellier frowned, and went very pale. “Robert’s handwriting!” he said, in a strangled voice. “Hold on…let’s see…. My dear Master, don’t expect me for dinner. I’ve gone to the sarvants’ lair. I’ll bring you news of your daughter, whatever the cost. Count on me. Robert Collin. The poor fellow! He’s got himself abducted!” Then he asked the butler: “Who gave you this letter?”
“It was Monsieur Collin, Monsieur, a week ago. He told me that the first time he was late for dinner, even if it were only for a second, I was to give it to Monsieur.”
The letter shook in Monsieur Le Tellier’s fingers. “He’s got himself abducted—voluntarily!” Madame Le Tellier began to get excited. Madame Monbardeau instructed him to be silent with a gesture. “He wasn’t mad,” he went on, paying no attention.
“What about that cloak, then?” asked Dr. Monbardeau. “Those furs?”
“Perhaps he thinks that the sarvant’s lair is in the glaciers,” suggested Madame Arquedouve.
“Undoubtedly,” said Monsieur Le Tellier, thoughtfully. “The sarvants…”
The visionary stood bolt upright. “The sarvants!” she cried. Oh, who’s squeezing me? Maxime!” Horrified, she strove to extract herself from the remembered hands that had gripped her under the hornbeams. She clenched her own arms in the places where the grip had bruised her through the torn fabric.
“There!” said Madame Monbardeau, reproachfully. “What did I tell you? Shut up, Jean.”
But as he saw his wife indefatigably reproducing the scuffle of June 19, Monsieur Tellier reminded himsel
f with a shudder that Robert had run into unparalleled danger of his own accord. Oh, the brave man, the hero! He had thrown himself, gladly into the grip of the formidable mystery; day after day and night after night he had had the superhuman courage to persist in his heroism and wait patiently for the infernal attack!
“He has no family, has he?” the doctor asked.
“No,” said Monsieur Le Tellier, with a tear in his eye, “He only had ours…or rather, he only had a dream. Alas, I’m already talking about him in the past tense!”
Two days later, the Bugist postmen having been on strike since the visitation of Orges, the two brothers-in-law went to fetch the mail from the Artemare post office.
Monsieur Le Tellier unfolded the Nouvelliste de Lyon, addressed to Madame Arquedouve, and read:
(Item 417)
Members of the Alpine Club, who set out yesterday to climb Mont Blanc, discovered a long streak on the side of a long wall of snow, which seemed to be due to the friction of an enormous and resistant cylindrical object. One might have thought, they said, that a metal-clad automotive aerostat of the Zeppelin type had passed that way, brushing the wall in question. Might it be the track of the famous sarvants? Might it be the imprint of the mysterious dirigible twice sighted by the unfortunate Maxime Le Tellier? It is permissible to suppose that it might.
“There it is,” said the doctor. “That’s where they’re based, Jean.”
“But Calixte, how the Devil did Robert deduce that?”
The Blue Peril Page 15
