The problem had become complicated. At the outset, it consisted solely in establishing speedy machines, stable and controllable, appropriate to the pursuit of pirates. Now, the question of altitude had abruptly and completely changed everything. And what an altitude! Fifty kilometers! They were admirable, these pirates who maintained their den 50 kilometers up in the air, in an environment reputed to give hardly any lift, in an atmosphere so poor that science recognized it as a near-vacuum as good as any that could be obtained with a pump! Admirable, in truth! But who could match it? Who would be equally admirable? Who would duplicate their work and permit honest men to rise up to where a few scoundrels of genius had perched their hideout?
While awaiting the solution of that problem, it was judicious to employ observation balloons and airplanes to get closer to the patch, and to apply all the latest improvements to them. Equipped in that manner, they would at least be able to evade the phantom dirigible, or—according to some—attack it.
Unfortunately, prudence was lacking. The reader will remember the bold professionals going up in aerostats, biplanes or rudimentary monoplanes, having already committed the generous recklessness of circling around the suspect regions. From July 9 on, their number increased day by day. The atmosphere had never been so dangerous, and never had so many machines been seen confronting the Great Deep. Wooden hangars surrounded Bugey with a girdle of barracks. At every moment, a new searchlight shot up. Flights of balloons rose up into the sky like bubbles of gas in a champagne-flute. The aeronauts and aviators took expensive binoculars with them. Some of their names were famous. Notorious foreigners left their homelands and withdrew from the most attractive competitions in order to come and explore the air above Mirastel. Highly paid individuals, wishing to honor their own glory, took to the air incessantly with sublime determination. Day and night, the State’s finest units—its military aeronefs, as yellow as pointed silkworm-cocoons—passed back and forth, policing the skies and mounting investigations in the house of Uranus.
All things considered, it was no more than an altitude contest dramatized by the circumstances. The winner would be the person who got close enough the square patch to distinguish it more precisely. And they climbed, and climbed….and climbed…as far as the frightful regions in which they had to inhale provisions of oxygen and live an artificial existence, with the assistance of chemical artifice. Thanks to strange helmets and breathing-apparatus, they passed the limits at which illustrious martyrs had met their deaths. They surpassed 10,800 meters. That was the record.
The most skillful, therefore, had remained more than 39 kilometers from the patch; they had only made out a vague square, dark and checkered, formed of opaque rectangles and transparent lines, which were simply breaks in continuity between the parallelograms. Occasionally, these lines were partially sealed by a dark point…
All that was already known.
It was also known that climbing higher could not be done—but such is the ardor of sportsmen that they try to realize the impossible performance anyway. It required the catastrophe of the Sylphe to cool it.
The Sylphe, a large spherical balloon belonging to the Aéronautique-Club, departed from the camp at Valbonne and was driven toward Bugey by a rather brisk wind. It immediately gained a considerable altitude; nevertheless, it was followed for some time. With binoculars, it was possible to see the four voyagers—two astronomers and two aeronauts—busy with their observations. Night fell. The balloon disappeared. It was never seen again. It did not land anywhere. Impetuous automobiles scoured the frightened zone, where it might have come down. They did not find the Sylphe. The reclusive Bugists, interrogated through closed doors, reported that nothing terrible had happened for days. As they no longer went out, the sarvant, for want of prey, seemed to have given up hunting.
The automobilists might have been surprised at this juncture that the sarvants had not extended their circle of havoc beyond the depopulated territory...but they were only concerned with the Sylphe. The day after their return, several ascensions were cancelled. An amazed consternation weighed upon the hangars. Orders were posted by committees prohibiting the use of free-floating balloons and instructing that people were only to take to the air in airplanes, helicopters and aeronefs whose maneuverability, endurance and speed had been proven.
In spite of the authorization required by dirigible machines, four or five daredevils ventured forth. You will still recall the Antoinette 73, which suddenly fell out of the sky in the twilight, like a javelin, and ended up floating in the Saône with its wings extended. Its pilot had not bailed out. He was one of the kings of space. Immobile in his bucket-seat, his straps still buckled, with the legendary cigarette stuck in his bloodless lips, he was dead, with a big hole in his skull and two savage claw-marks, one on his throat and the other on the nape of his neck.
In the midst of the despondency, however, exchanging blow for blow, two other news-items burst like bombs of enthusiasm. The Duc d’Agnès and the pilot Bachmès, his chief mechanic, had just “brought out” a marvelous monoplane: a lightning-fast aircraft furnished with an atmospheric electricity captor and a stabilizer as ingenious as was imaginable. Simultaneously, the State’s aerial squadron was enriched by a new unbreakable cruiser, astonishing in its agility and submissiveness.
The French public is always the same. An abrupt turnaround directed its attention to these two actualities. It enveloped them with uniform admiration, and uniform pride, even though it regarded them as rivals—rivals because one was heavier than air and one lighter than air; rivals because one was publicly-owned and one privately-owned; rivals because they were two conquerors of the same element, two candidates for the same victory by the same means: speed. In the mind of the public, it was indispensable that one would defeat the other; a contest was inevitable.
The government seized the opportunity to channel the popular excitement towards the sporting contest, and thus to create a diversion from the anguish of the Blue Peril. It instituted, for the month of September, a prize of 400,000 francs for a race between an airplane and a dirigible, over a distance to be determined—settled in advance by the two champions that everyone recognized. It begged the journalists to whip up excitement until the day of the race. Covertly, meanwhile, it gave orders to its engineers and the council for special enterprises to study how it might be possible to get up to the sarvants’ lair. It secretly promised fabulous prizes for altitude, and solicited the experts of every nation and race by means of personal letters.
These letters reached the most diverse destinations, under roofs white with snow or scorched by the Sun; some received them in autumn, some in spring. After having read them, everyone set to work. Little yellow men bent over silken pieces of paper and painted delicate geometries; tall blond men went to their blackboards, chalk in hand. And all of them drew the same figure in the same fashion: a circumference representing the Earth, and then another circumference, larger than and concentric with the first, which delimited the atmospheric layer above which there was nothing but vacuum. Above that second circle the brush or the chalk placed a point—the patch—then drew a straight line from the patch to the Earth, in the direction of the center: the distance to be crossed.
Fifty kilometers! thought the scientists. And then, recalling the tenor of the letter, and what they were required to invent, they shook their heads. This one said something curt and hoarse, that one something long and soft, another something melodious—but all these speeches had a single meaning, and there was no jargon so mediocre that it did not contain the relevant term—for in every language, no matter what proverbial wisdom may say,24 the adjective impossible has its equivalent.
IV. A Message from Tiburce 25
(Item 502)
Duc François d’Agnès,
40 Avenue Montaigne, Paris
France, Europe.
Nagasaki, July 20, 1912.
Ante-scriptum. Before anything else, be reassured; I conserve the greatest optimism with regard to catc
hing up with the fugitives. That being well-established, I shall render an account of my work—succinctly, for I shall soon be taking the ferry to Singapore, via Canton.
My dear friend,
I am out of prison. I spent a week there.
Before my last cablegram, I had crossed America from New York to San Francisco in pursuit of four individuals who were several days ahead of me. In these four individuals—four men, according to the information given—I had easily recognized Hatkins, Henri Monbardeau, Madame Fabienne Monbardeau and Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse Le Tellier, traveling in disguise and in drag.
In San Francisco I learn that the steamboat to Nagasaki had raised anchor on the eve of my arrival. I scent something, I bribe an employee of the company, and as best I can—for I can only speak French, alas—I work out that a group of six passengers has embarked on the aforementioned steamer. None of their names corresponds to any of those of the quartet for which I am searching, but of these six individuals, four have descriptions diametrically opposed to those of my fugitives. Are you with me? It. is, therefore, them, too well disguised. It is them, with a pair of additional accomplices.
There is no hesitation; I embark in my turn.
I arrive in Nagasaki. I visit all the hotels, one by one, and after a thousand difficulties, occasioned by my ignorance of Japanese and English, I succeed nevertheless, by an accumulation of dearly-bought confidences, in acquiring proof that a French couple resembling the Monbardeaus is staying in one hotel and that another couple, who must be Hatkins and Mademoiselle Le Tellier, is in the hotel next door. The scent continues to guide me. I take a room in the hotel where I suspect that Hatkins and Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse are hiding under the aliases of the Reverend James Hodgson and his daughter. I reserve a table near to the one they are due to occupy at dinner, with the aim of making certainty of their identity, then I put on my own disguise.
At the first stroke of the gong, Tiburce was no longer anything but an old Italian priest—you will not be unaware that this is the favorite disguise of my master, Sherlock Holmes; I have brought a dozen complete transformations, but that soutane seemed to me to be appropriate. Ah, without flattering myself, I may say that my wrinkled face, my aquiline nose and my white wig created an illusion. Fine make-up!
As I was going down the staircase leading to the restaurant, however, a respectable lady who was coming up looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. Other people did the same and, on the threshold of the dining-room, the manager of the hotel, alerted by one of these imbeciles, asks me to go into his office.
My disguise has been penetrated—I have no idea how! I try, in spite of everything, to counterfeit Italian speech, but I don’t know any Italian. Then we go up to my room. My luggage is searched. Because of my unusual wardrobe, I’m initially mistaken for Fregoli in the process of doing some impression.26 In the depths of my fifth trunk, however, they discover the burglar’s kit that no serious detective is ever without. I am no more than a crook. Procedures are instituted; I am locked up. Thanks to the French consul, my detention only lasts a week; everything is cleared up—but I have all the trouble in the world avoiding being repatriated under guard.
In this interval, I am informed that the day after my release, the pseudo-Reverend Hodgson and his so-called daughter departed for Singapore, via Canton. Subito—as the old Italian priest would say27—I make arrangements enabling me to follow them this evening, unfortunately leaving behind, in the hands of the authorities in Nagasaki, my tool-kit, my costumes and my make-up: all my precious Sherlockery!
I wonder whether the Monbardeaus are accompanying the fake Hodgsons. I shall find out in Singapore. At any rate, this series of precipitate departures is indicative of flight; and since they’re on the run, it must be them.
Adieu, my friend. Don’t forget to mention me to Mademoiselle d’Agnès. Regards,
Tiburce
Post-scriptum. Busy, never ceasing to plan my tactics, I can’t write often. Forgive me. I’ll do so whenever I can. Above all, remember me to your sister.
V. It Rains… It Hails
Let us return to Mirastel.
Monsieur Le Tellier, having returned from his trip to Paris and Saint-Genis-Laval, found no other change among his relatives but a sustained amelioration in his wife’s condition, and from July 8 to August 3—which is to say, from the day of his return to the day that we have now reached—existence at the château was depressingly uniform. The observation of the immutable and impassive patch was the principal business: a sterile task, and a source of irritation.
Some days, it is true, the spectacle of Lebaudys and Clément-Bayards, Libellules and Demoiselles28 competing on high amused the gaze in spite of the conscience. In the wake of the misfortunes of the Sylphe and the Antoinette 73, however, the atmospheric arena seemed to change its role. Despondency descended again. Monsieur Le Tellier felt an urgent need for diversion.
While Madame Arquedouve and her elder daughter devoted themselves to domestic responsibilities and took care of Madame Le Tellier, Dr. Monbardeau bravely went out to bring succor to suffering and sequestered unfortunates. Monsieur Le Tellier decided to accompany him. They were the first Bugists to resume regular circulation in an automobile. It was claimed that “there was nothing so very courageous about that, given that no automobile had ever been attacked and that the sarvants had taken no more prisoners for some time.” Agreed—but please remember that before the Sylphe, no balloon had ever been attacked either, and no airplane before the Antoinette 73. You will note, too, that if the sarvant was no longer taking the earthbound, it was only for lack of finding them within its range, out of doors and within the incomprehensible cabalistic circle whose outline it did not seem to want to cross. There was, therefore, on the contrary, a good chance that it might hurl itself upon the large white automobile that emerged every day from Mirastel, and stopped at every door, thus offering itself to the strikes of an aggressor that impatience must have been emboldening.
One day—it was August 3—the doctor and the astronomer were chatting beneath the sunlit canvas canopy. The car, coming from the château, was about to go into Talissieu. The physician was complaining about the unrelenting heat and drought, and the pestilence that one breathed in without cease; he was expressing his fears on the subject of a probable epidemic when he interrupted the conversation in amazement.
“Look! It’s raining! That’s hard to believe!”
Large drops were falling on the canopy, visible through its translucency. Monsieur Monbardeau put his open hand outside but uttered a cry of alarm when he brought it back moistened with red liquid.
“Stop!” commanded his brother-in-law. “Are you hurt, Calixte?”
“No—it just fell!”
“What? That’s not possible!”
They got out in front of the first houses in the village, facing the cross and not far from the stream. Several droplets were bloodying the canopy and the footplate. Others were reddening the dust at the place where the automobile had passed through the crimson downpour.
The mechanic’s eyes widened. “Is it birds fighting in mid-air?” he asked. “That’s been seen before.”
“No,” his master replied. “Look!”
All three of them had instinctively raised their heads. One might have taken them for three of the damned escaped from Hell. There was nothing to be seen: nothing but the blue, the blue of the Peril; nothing but a few small birds—sparrows and swifts—all of whose blood combined would only have made one of those droplets.
“Is this the phenomenon known by the name of the rain of blood,” asked the doctor, “which is produced by particles contained in the water?”
Poor doctor? Why was he playing the encyclopedist, while his lips were trembling? To reassure himself, or to reassure Monsieur Le Tellier? And why did the poor astronomer feel obliged to reply, between his chattering teeth: “No, no, there’s no cloud; it’s not rain. Besides, a shower wouldn’t be limited to such a small area…”
/> Through his folded-up pince-nez, serving as a magnifying-glass, Monsieur Monbardeau examined the madder-red stain that was drying on the back of his hand. “It’s definitely blood,” he said, after a minute. “Really blood. It isn’t coagulating normally, I admit…but it’s blood all the same. Let’s go back; I’ll analyze it and…I’ll tell you if it’s…human or animal blood.”
“I don’t have the slightest doubt that it’s blood!” murmured Monsieur Le Tellier. “Before going back and carrying out an analysis, though—which will be interesting—I want to put a few remarks on the record here, with both of us as witnesses. Look at the drops on the canopy; they’re elongated, in the form of exclamation marks. That’s explicable by the movement of the automobile while the shower was falling on it. Now come here—look at these drops on the ground; they’re star-shaped, like the rowels of spurs. If you consider that there isn’t the slightest wind, you’ll easily conclude that the blood has fallen to the ground perpendicularly, from an immobile location situated at the zenith of its point of arrival.”
“From the square patch!” declared Monsieur Monbardeau.
“No, it’s not from the square patch, because that isn’t directly above the place where we’re standing. Mathematically, it’s at the zenith of Ceyzérieu, since it’s seven degrees to the south of Mirastel. Above us there’s nothing. Do you understand, Calixte: NOTHING. Then again, think about this: at a height of 50 kilometers, there can be no liquids, given that it’s an almost perfect vacuum, unless science is in error.
“There’s another thing: how do we explain that the blood isn’t desiccated, if it’s covered 50 kilometers in free fall? These drops would inevitably be a residuum. All the blood of a man, reduced to a few tears…of a man, or a woman…or an animal…”
The Blue Peril Page 18
