“Mother, I’m asking you whether you think they’ve gone…or, at least, whether…the force is no longer there….if the fluid has risen up again…if the action of magnetism has ceased…”
“There’s nothing more, so far as I know.”
“What!” said Monsieur Monbardeau. “They’ve abandoned Maxime? Oh! It’s because he’s dead, then! Quickly, let’s go see! He must be dead. They’ve only made a corpse of him, those vivisectors! That’s why they’ve released him.”
All together, they walked to the prostrate form.
“Oh, damn it! Damn it!” said the physician, in a low voice. “Full in the head. Straight into the skull! Oh, damn it!” Then he exclaimed: “No! Not dead! He’s breathing! Alive, but he looks like a dead man. Oh, the blackguards! They can’t see that from up there, with their telescopes! That’s not surprising, from 50 kilometers!”
“Alive?” Madame Le Tellier came out of the wood. “Alive? Maxime? He’s still with us, and I haven’t killed him?” The dear, benevolent lady burst out laughing; she kissed her son’s inanimate face—and her unbound hair, part-red and part-white, spread out bizarrely.
Already, without any distinction of sex, the old manservants and the young housemaids were drinking the alcohol the follows emotional experiences. And it was on that day, on August 11, that the south-east wind30 began to blow.
VII. From August 11 to September 4
To shoot her son, Madame Le Tellier had made use of an old hunting-rifle that had belonged to her late father, Monsieur Arquedouve. In the moldy game-bag she had only found a single live cartridge, with a round bullet. That the shot had actually gone off, therefore, was only of those catastrophic misfortunes that one would not dare to put in a novel; it is the only implausibility in this actual history.
The antiquity of the weapon and the deterioration of the powder had ensured that, instead of transpiercing Maxime’s head, the lead bullet had lodged in the bony thickness of his skull, behind the ear. They were able to extract it from the wound that same evening. It would take a long time to heal, though; and at that time the victim had not recovered consciousness. They could not count on him to unveil the mystery of the square patch. The doctor, anticipating the young man’s awakening, forbade any over-exciting conversation.
Madame Le Tellier promised to keep silent, along with the others. It was she who looked after Maxime—and it must be said that she acquitted herself admirably. She had recovered her reason. A fright had caused it; another fright had suppressed it. Sometimes, it seemed that the madness had departed before the rifle shot, and that Madame Le Tellier had taken that action quite consciously. She spoke without remorse about what she had done, and said that she was ready to do as much for Marie-Thérèse if the opportunity should present itself, declaring that death was preferable to “such shameful treatment.” It was a defensible theory, and Madame Le Tellier would not have hesitated to sustain it even more heatedly if she had know about the “rain” and “hail” of August 3 in all its atrocity. Her husband and brother-in-law had, however, kept that secret, and they hoped to keep it longer, although such dissimulation became more difficult every day.
More difficult? Why?
Because often, in the middle of the night, in the darkness warmed by the south-east wind, sinister whistling sounds were heard, which the doctor and the astronomer recognized. Madame Arquedouve was violently disturbed by them. She was told that they were falling aeroliths. The fact that St. Lawrence’s Day marked the beginning of a season of shooting stars supported the lie.31
At dawn, Monsieur Monbardeau and Monsieur Le Tellier went out, with heavy hearts, to search for the fallen objects—they no longer fell in daylight—and never left the environs of Talissieu without having discovered as many objects as there had been whistling sounds. They found carefully-worked detritus belonging to all three realms of nature. The animals and humans sometimes bore singular stigmata, significant of total or partial asphyxia, compression and decompression, or more refined tortures.
After having identified the cadavers negatively—that is to say, after acquiring the certainty that they were not those of Marie-Thérèse, Henri Monbardeau, his wife, Suzanne or Robert—they consigned them to their graves. When they recognized a torture-victim as someone from the neighborhood, common sense advised them to keep quiet about it. Rumor of the truce having spread, however, other helpful Bugists began, like them, to go from town to town in motorized ambulances, serving as nurses and food-suppliers. They also perceived that it was hailing dead men in Talissieu, and spread the news. Soon, the terror was renewed in that lethargic region, where a near-tranquility had gradually been restored to the negative life of the country folk.
During their morning investigations, Monsieur Monbardeau and Monsieur Le Tellier encountered men and women who were undertaking similar funerary labors. They were the relatives or friends of missing persons. Intolerable anguish had driven them from their fortified hovels, at the risk of being abducted in their turn. Some came from far afield. Reclusion had made them jaundiced; broad daylight made them blink their eyes continually. They wandered unmethodically, and sometimes aimlessly. Strong sunlight struck their ivory-white heads, shaded for so long; sunstroke killed them, or made them kill themselves. The ardent south-east wind set other hanged men swaying.
Because of this, and rabid dogs, foxes and wolves—even a few bears, it was said—and because of diseases of every sort, there were even more deaths in Bugey between August 11 and September 4. It is proven, however, that the sarvants did not contribute to that in any fashion, even though the contrary has been maintained by a host of obsessives.
Monsieur Le Tellier did everything he could to oppose these murderous excursions, which died out of their own accord. The era of their cessation coinciding with a sensible improvement in his son’s coma, the astronomer decided to accept a pressing invitation that the Duc d’Agnès had made in the course of a letter dated August 22 (item 618) and to spend a few relaxing hours in Paris—which, incidentally, allowed him to express a little sympathy and gratitude to the Duc.
We shall not reproduce that letter; it is rather long. Monsieur d’Agnès informs Monsieur Le Tellier therein that the contest of speed between his airplane and the State dirigible has been fixed for September 6. He reiterates the name of his machine, the Epervier, and gives that of the aeronef—the Prolétaire—furnishes technical information about the race, and urges Monsieur Le Tellier to come and watch the contest and judge for himself the modern hippogriff on which his daughter’s kidnappers are to be pursued. He says that his monoplane can do more than 180 kilometers an hour, but that its rapidity is nothing compared to its stability. It is not yet automatic equilibration, but already “something roughly similar…based on the principle that, if an aviator could see the vagaries of the wind in the same way that a navigator can see the waves of the sea, it would be easy for him to steer against them—Bachmès has devised a stabilizing apparatus whose purpose is to render aerial waves perceptible to a pilot; light antennae radiate around the aircraft; by means of electrical sensitivity, they respond to the slightest moment up to thirty meters away from their points, and communicate their indications to a gauge set before he eyes of the interested party.”
The start of the race was to be in the heart of Paris, above the Esplanade des Invalides, where the finish-line would also be located; this measure was intended to avoid the displacement of an excited multitude. The two competitors were to double the cathedral at Meaux and come back, covering 24 kilometers.
Monsieur Le Tellier left on September 4, at 10:29 p.m. as before.
VIII. The Red Notebook
The day of the race arrived. The weather was fine. Monsieur Le Tellier perceived that when the concierge came to open the shutters and serve his chocolate. The worthy scientist detested hotels, which he called “fussy,” so he was staying in his own house, without a manservant.
The weather was fine. The sun illuminated the apartment, stripped of its curtains and ca
rpets, with its chandeliers and its furniture swathed in dust-covers, filled with a odor of camphor, vetiver and pepper. The window-panes were coated in Spanish white and envelopes hid the renowned water-colors in the drawing-room: the Harpignies, the Fillards and the Le Nains.32
The weather was fine; the race would be excellent.
As he got dressed, Monsieur Le Tellier went over what the Duc d’Agnès and he had agreed. The starting-gun would be fired at 10 a.m.; at 9:30 a.m., an automobile belonging to the Duc would be waiting at Monsieur Le Tellier’s door, would take him to the Invalides to witness the first act of the trial, and would then immediately set out to take up a position at the entrance to Paris, in order that he might see the vicissitudes of the final kilometers. A special insignia would serve as a priority pass for the vehicle.
The weather was fine. A crowd of people was walking along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, part of a black host moving in the same direction, from the left bank to the right. For the moment, the entire swarm of the capital was heading for the line of the course, which the newspapers had advertised.
Well, it’s nearly time, thought Monsieur Le Tellier. He took up his watch in order to put it in his waistcoat pocket. Exactly nine-thirty.
Just then, the sound of a bell resonated in the antechamber, as if to sound that half-hour, for want of the clocks that had all stopped. Smiling at the coincidence, Monsieur Le Tellier opened the door himself—and the smile vanished from his suddenly colorless lips.
Monsieur Monbardeau was standing there, in traveling costume, looking at him sadly.
“What’s the matter now? Is it serious?”
“Don’t worry. All those you left at Mirastel are well. However…”
“Marie-Thérèse…?”
“No, no! Robert is dead, old chap!”
“Ah! But how do you know? And why have you left Maxime, who is still so ill, alone with the women? Couldn’t you have written to me or sent a telegram?”
“I have my reasons, believe me. Listen: the night before last—that of your departure!—I was woken up by the whistle of a fall. As usual, I went out the next morning—yesterday—in the required direction. Madame Arquedouve had said to me: ‘An aerolith fell last night between Aignoz and Talissieu.’ That’s in the marsh.
“After three hours, aided by a few men, I was able to recover it…it was in an extremely muddy spot; we went forward on planks, which we had to take up behind us and extended before us. At the bottom of a kind of puddle hollowed out by the violence of the impact, a shapeless mass was slowly sinking into the mud. We pulled it out, at the expense of incredible efforts. Something told me we shouldn’t give up…
“I saw immediately that he hadn’t been killed by the fall, but well before. The impact had only crushed a cadaver. He had died of asphyxia…primarily of asphyxia. His face was swollen, his lips thick and black, like the rest of his face, his eyes extraordinarily dull, his mouth full of coagulated blood. I thought I could also see that he had been subjected to various pressures. When we subject animals to a vacuum, by way of experiment, they suffer the same effects as Robert. A brief autopsy demonstrated to me that his body had swollen up and become bloated, that blood had come out of the epidermis like spurting sweat…that he had, in a way, exploded. Certain anatomical remains had already borne analogous marks, but much less accentuated. He hadn’t been vivisected—no, no, that hadn’t been done to him.”
“What an abomination! But that doesn’t tell me why you’ve come.”
“I came to carry out his last wish.” From his pocket, Monsieur Monbardeau took a red notebook with copper clasps, which the astronomer remembered having seen before somewhere. “I’ve come to give you this manuscript. Robert carried it beneath his clothing, secured by a belt, next to his skin. Read what’s written on the label.”
To be delivered as soon as possible to Monsieur Le Tellier, Director of the Observatory. If he is dead, to Doctor Monbardeau of Artemare. If he is dead, to the Duc d’Agnès. If he is dead, to the Head of State.
On seeing Robert Collin’s handwriting, Monsieur Le Tellier could not hold back his tears. He opened the clasps with a hand made clumsy by impatience, and said: “Dear, dear victim of his devotion! Poor boy! Alas, it’s two months since he was abducted. Two months of captivity for love of Marie-Thérèse! Alas, for the beautiful dream that he had! And to think that that dream would never have been realized!—that Robert, undoubtedly, would never have had that which is reserved for the Duc to recover…if my daughter is ever returned to us! For him, is it not better to be dead? Let’s see what he has to say to me…eh? Who’s there?”
“Excuse me, Monsieur,” said the concierge, who had just come in. “There’s some gen’men downstairs who say they’re waiting for you.”
“Ah—the car! That’s true! You see, Calixte, that I’m absolutely forced to go to this race…and I’m already late…hold on! You can come with me. I’ll take you. We’ll read the notebook on the way. Come as you are—come on…. My poor little Robert! What a loss! What a loss!”
Amid the crowd of pedestrians, a hundred idlers were forming a circle around the automobile. The sumptuous four-seater intrigued them, being so long and so low-slung, painted mouse-grey like a torpedo-boat, manned by two chauffeurs in khaki livery wearing tricolor ribbons on their arms, and having two flashes in the colors of the Aéro-Club—the sporting organization of the day—in the guise of headlights.
The chauffeurs doffed their caps. One of them gave Monsieur Le Tellier the white armband of an official steward. “Let’s hurry, Monsieur,” he said, in a respectful tone. “We’ll miss the start, and no mistake.”
But Monsieur Le Tellier, for the moment, judged the race to be of secondary importance. While the car set off briskly with the brio of a 90-horse-power engine, driven by a mercenary who had no pity on the tires, he began to read to Monsieur Monbardeau what Robert had written for him in pencil—in a neat and regular script, at least in the first few pages.
He had reached the fifth line when one of the men in khaki turned round.
“I don’t think it’s worth the trouble of going to the Esplanade. The crowd’s mad, and no mistake…we’ll never get there. If Monsieur wishes, we could take the Concorde and the Rue Royale, then go along the great boulevards. That way, we’ll see them pass over, and we’ll arrive all the sooner at the exit from Paris…and no mistake.”
“Do as you wish,” said the astronomer—and he resumed his interrupted reading.
IX. Robert Collin’s Journal
What we shall read in Robert Collin’s journal is what Monsieur Le Tellier read to Monsieur Monbardeau in Monsieur d’Agnès’s automobile, in the midst of the population of Paris:33
July 4, 3 p.m. Twenty-four hours have gone by since my abduction. Until now, I’ve had too many things to observe to be able to write. I intend to make a daily record of what I’ve seen, and to get it to whoever might be able to make use of my information to free the prisoners. To get it to them! How? I don’t know… So, it was yesterday (Wednesday July 3), at 3 p.m. that I became a victim of the sarvants, voluntarily. I had already been exposing myself, alone, for some time. It seemed that they did not want me. Finally, yesterday, as I was crossing the Forestel—a meadow half way between the Grand-Colombier and Virieu-le-Petit—I heard the customary hum approaching, descending toward me.
The trilling of grasshoppers was as loud as the hum. It seemed distant. I looked up into the air, but saw nothing. My heart was making more noise than the sarvants and the grasshoppers. The long-awaited moment frightened me. I had an idea about what to expect, but it was vague. I knew that I’d be taken up into the air, very high—I was entirely dressed, in consequence, in garments of the warmest sort. I was expecting a sensation of suction or attraction, which would lift me up to a balloon or some other machine hiding in the distance, when I felt myself seized brutally from behind, about the torso, and lifted as if by a gigantic, hard and violent fist.
Mad gestures. Attempt to turn around to face th
e aggressor. Waste of effort. I struggled. During this time whatever was holding me drew me backwards, to itself and released me—except that I did not fall. There was a gap of several centimeters between my feet and the ground. An inexplicable click resounded. The hum became louder, and was confused with other sounds, but that was all I could hear—no more grasshoppers, or anything else. I tried to save myself then, cursing my temerity, mad with fear. Incontinently, though, I encountered a resistance, a rigidity without appearance. I bounded in the opposite direction: the same rampart. It was as if a hypnotist had ordered me to believe that there was always an obstacle in front of me; as if the air had solidified around me while remaining as transparent as ever. I thought about the power of suggestion, especially as a cause of levitation, which reminded me of experiments in spiritualism, previously assessed as fraudulent.
All of that took a second.
Then, suddenly, an incalculable force originating from below launched me into the air: an inexorably hectic rise due to some unknown pressure whose action I felt abruptly beneath my feet. One might have thought that the Earth had hurled me into the sky. I was projected like some sort of cannonball…
And I was alone in mid-space, rising up vertically, faster and faster. Below me, the pastureland of Forestel was already no more than the paltry center of an immense, incessantly-growing circle, and the Colombier appeared to flatten out to the same level as everything else. Because of my rapid ascent, the circle—the Earth—was like a moving funnel, all of whose points were being precipitated toward the middle, breathed in by a central cupping-glass. Sensation of nausea above that vertiginous basin, atrociously gut-wrenching. Vertigo paralyzed me. At first, I had gesticulated like the men at Châtel, trying to escape. Now, the terror of the gulf petrified me, the fear of falling back into it, if the mysterious force were to be switched off.
The Blue Peril Page 20
