The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer!

by Jean de La Hire

  Narbonne sat down in his usual place. After a moment’s meditative silence, he said, very gravely: “Dormoy, my friend, what has happened is extraordinary. Listen.” With minute care, he related the facts, omitting no detail of his movements and gestures.

  Dormoy, utterly astonished, went to examine the interior of the safe, whose door was still open. As he came back to resume his seat, the physician murmured: “You amaze me, Mathias! If I hadn’t known you for 30 years, and hadn’t known André since he was born, I’d think both of you were mad. I’d think that André had stabbed you in the hand with a dagger he’d since thrown out of the window... but I know you both. You tell the truth. In which case...”

  “In which case?” Narbonne said, impassively.

  Dormoy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I have no idea...”

  There as a dull ringing noise. André reached out over the desk and pressed one of a dozen ivory buttons fitted into a crystal plaque.

  One of the study doors opened and Michel came in, bearing a tray on which letters and newspapers were piled up. “One registered letter,” he said. “The postman’s waiting.”

  The receipt-book was on top of the pile of envelopes and newspapers. André took it, opened it, and signed the name Mathias Narbonne in the necessary place. He picked up the registered letter, emptied the tray and returned the postman’s receipt-book. Michel went out.

  When the door had closed, André slit the envelope of the registered letter, brought out a piece of paper, unfolded it and–without looking at it–placed it on the blotter in front of his employer.

  Narbonne looked at the unfolded letter and immediately exclaimed: “By thunder! What’s this? André, Dormoy, come and see!”

  The young man and the physician came to stand to either side of their master and friend and leaned over. They looked at one another in stupefaction over Narbonne’s bowed head. Then they turned back to the piece of paper.

  This is what they had seen, and read:

  To M. Mathias Narbonne,

  Rue d’Orchampt, Paris.

  May 6,

  If the postal service is efficient in Paris, this letter will reach you a short time after an invisible dagger will have pierced your right hand. It would have been just as easy for me to deliver this blow straight through your heart. That is what I shall do at midnight on June 10 if you have not, in the meantime:

  1. Made a formal decision, definitive and irrevocable, without any loopholes, to cease all your benevolent works and to put an end to your philanthropic career.

  2. Deposited at the Swiss-Russian Bank in Geneva, in the name of M. Eiger Nott, the sum of 100 million Swiss francs, which M. Nott may then withdraw without impediments, on demand, with only sufficient proof of his identity (birth certificate and passport).

  Understand that any attempt at trickery, or the arrest of M. Nott, my representative, will be severely punished. There is no lack of places on the human body where a trenchant instrument can be buried to a greater or lesser depth.

  Midnight, June 10–do not forget!

  Lucifer.

  III. The Vestal of the Rue Favart

  Elsewhere, in the course of the morning of May 6, an unexpected occurrence upset the management and staff of the Opéra-Comique and filled the hearts of the most intimate admirers of the marvelous La Païli–a singer of genius and one of the prettiest women in the world–with anguish.

  At 9 a.m. precisely, Monsieur Lerond, the director of the Rue Favart’s Temple of Music, went into his office and said to the office-boy: “Bring Monsieur Lysor in as soon as he arrives. I’m also expecting Mademoiselle Païli; don’t keep her waiting for a second–it’s unnecessary even to announce her.”

  Octave Lysor had been the composer in fashion for six months. The idol of the great concert-halls, having had two simultaneous prodigious successes at the Monnaie in Brussels and La Scala in Milan, he had written a score for the Opéra-Comique based on a posthumous libretto by Edmond Rostand, which the cognoscenti had praised to the skies. Scarcely 30 years old, he augmented his glory with the triple prestige of youth, virile beauty and vast intelligence. The harshest critics did not contest his genius. He was called the “French Wagner,” to signify the immensity of his talent rather than to indicate its quality, for his music had nothing in common with that of the god of Bayreuth.

  A year before, a star of the first magnitude had dazzled the theatrical and musical sky with an incomparable brilliance. In the course of an audition granted to a few candidates by Monsieur Lerond, a divinity of the stage and song had been revealed, whom no one had previously seen or heard: a beautiful young French girl, born to a Parisian father and a Florentine mother, who had been signed under the name Laurence Païli. Three months later, she was universally famous as “La Païli.”

  With a voice of crystal and gold, an innate sense of stagecraft, a curious and cultured mind, a dark beauty of disturbing magnificence and the supple slenderness of a figure worthy of Diana, La Païli had only needed to appear three times at the Opéra-Comique to be worshipped as a divinity. Immediately, a legend had grown up around her–a legend which, extraordinarily, was exactly true. Rich, by virtue of a fortune left to her by her father–who had been killed in a car accident–and proud, with a heart as noble as it was delicate, she did not, and never had had, a “friend.” She lived in virginal purity with her mother, an excellent woman and the mistress of a well-ordered household comprised of a cook, two chambermaids, a chauffeur and an old Italian manservant who played the role of factotum.

  The existence of this actress was as pure, as simple and as transparent as that of any earnest young girl of an upper-middle class household. The newspapers, whose business is to make jokes, thus designated Laurence Païli as “the vestal of the Rue Favart,” “the Diana with the soft smile,” “the white star” and other virginal paraphrases. A great respect surrounded La Païli everywhere–a respect as sincere and profound as the authentic admiration which no one could help feeling when they had once seen and heard her.

  Sitting down at his desk, Monsieur Lerond set about opening the daily correspondence, which he annotated rapidly with a pencil, divided into four piles, and threw into a basket. He had devoted five minutes to this work when the office-boy announced Monsieur Lysor, stood aside to let him enter, then went out and shut the door.

  “Bonjour, my dear director,” the composer said, throwing his light overcoat on to a chair. How goes it? I was afraid I might be the last to arrive.”

  “Faith,” replied Monsieur Lerond, laughing and shaking Lysor’s hand, “I thought the same three seconds before you were announced. Our diva is usually so punctual! We said 9 a.m.–it’s six minutes past. I’m astonished that she isn’t here. We’ll all have lunch together, maestro!”

  “Ah!”

  “Yes–are you free?”

  “If I wasn’t, I shall be.”

  “Naturally. One isn’t often lucky enough to have lunch in town with La Païli. We can get a table at midday, and we’ll have all the time until 5 p.m. to get everything organized. I haven’t had any news of Laurence for two days, but she’s a woman of her word. She must have studied your score. The matter will be settled this afternoon. Tomorrow, we’ll be able to get La Carmélite under way. What a pity that Rostand is dead! He would have eaten with us–and what a glorious trio I would have had at my table: La Païli, Edmond Rostand and Octave Lysor!”

  “A quartet, you mean,” said the smiling composer, “for Madame Lerond...”

  “That would, indeed, be true,” said Monsieur Lerond, simply. “By virtue of her talent, her beauty and her intellect, my wife is, as you opine, worthy of such artistic peers. She is visiting her family for a few days... business matters... oh, nothing serious, but her presence was indispensable. There will only be Laurence and you at my table. God! There’s the telephone! Why, it’s 9:15 a.m. Can our diva possibly...?”

  Monsieur Lerond had unhooked the receiver, and he modified the tone of his voice. �
��Hello! Hello... Yes, it’s me... on behalf of whom...?”

  After a pause, he resumed: “Madame Païli? Yes, I’m waiting for her.” He turned his eyes towards Lysor, and murmured anxiously: “There isn’t a hitch, I hope.” Immediately recalled to the telephone conversation, he smiled, saying: “Yes, of course, my dear Madame, it’s me... Good day... Yes, I’m can hear you very well...” There was a pause, then: “Hello! No! You don’t say... It’s not possible... No, no, I haven’t seen her... and Monsieur Octave Lysor is here, waiting with me... Oh...! No...! You’re imagining things... Should we come?... Both of us...? Very well! Immediately!... Yes!... Yes!”

  As he progressed through this sequence of replies, Monsieur Lerond had changed his tone, his expression and his attitude. To the attentive and astonished eyes of the composer, he represented first surprise, then bewilderment, then anxiety, then anguish. After the second “yes,” Monsieur Lerond, still standing up, replaced the receiver mechanically. Pale and agitated, he said in a dull voice: “Quickly, quickly, my dear friend. Let’s go! Is your car downstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s make haste.”

  “Give me an explanation!” pleaded the young maestro, as he took up his overcoat.

  “I don’t have one myself! I’ll tell you what little I know in the car. Where are my gloves? Oh, there they are. Let’s go!”

  In the car, which sped as rapidly as possible towards the Rue La Fontaine in Auteuil, where La Païli lived, Monsieur Lerond could offer no more response than this to Lysor’s questions: “Laurence disappeared yesterday evening. Her mother, a decent woman, doesn’t know what to think.”

  “But how can such a thing have happened?” the young composer persisted.

  “I don’t know any more than you! Nothing more was said on the telephone.”

  It seemed to the two men that the Rue La Fontaine was very far away, so long was the route and so great their impatience. Finally, though, the car came to a halt. “Follow me,” said Monsieur Lerond.

  Lysor had never been to La Païli’s home, having only had one conversation with her, a week previously, in the director’s office at the Opéra-Comique. He followed Lerond. They went up three floors, and pressed electric bell. A distressed lady’s maid with tear-stained eyes appeared; they passed through a hallway to a large drawing-room, where they waited for three minutes. Then a handsome brunette woman of 45 appeared, plainly dressed, her face distraught, although her manner was determinedly calm.

  “Octave Lysor, Madame Païli,” murmured Monsieur Lerond, politely, before immediately adding: “Well, my dear Madame, was it really you that I spoke to on the telephone? I haven’t gone mad? Mademoiselle Laurence...”

  The mother, who had already sat down soberly, began to speak in a contained voice while the two men took their seats: “I’m determined not to lose hope, and yet... You’ll give me advice as to what to do? This is the situation: for four days, Laurence has seemed to me to be depressed and agitated at the same time, with a kind of terror in her eyes, all of whose expressions I know. To my questions, she replied: ‘Leave me alone, Mother. A touch of spleen... It’s nothing!’ She was studying your work, Monsieur Lysor, La Carmélite–about which she was, at first, passionately enthusiastic. The day before yesterday, though, and especially yesterday, she interrupted herself continually to fall into somber reveries. Does she dislike it, after all? I asked myself.

  “Yesterday, at 4 p.m., a messenger brought a telegram for her. I was here, next to the piano, at which Laurence was sitting. She read the message–then, screwing it up into a ball, she threw it in the fire and burst into tears. She wept...”

  Tears sparkled in Madame Païli’s eyes. She paused and wiped her eyelids with a handkerchief that she was holding in her left hand. Passing the fingers of her right hand across her forehead, she made an effort and continued; “I was upset, as you can imagine. ‘What on Earth is it, Laurence?’ I asked. ‘Nothing, Mother,’ she replied, ‘nothing... It’s not worth the trouble... It will be over soon... Leave me alone, I beg you.’

  “I left the room, to hide my own tears from my daughter. I went to my room to pray to God. I stayed there for an hour with the door closed, alone, racking my brains between my prayers, trying to understand...

  “It was 5:45 p.m.–I glanced at the clock as I went in–when I returned to the drawing-room. Laurence was no longer there. The score wasn’t on the piano. I went to my daughter’s room; there was no one there. In the bathroom, in the whole apartment–no Laurence. I summoned the cook, the two chambermaids, the chauffeur–no one knew anything. No one had seen my daughter go out.

  “Then, I had a moment of panic. I searched everywhere. There was no note addressed to me, but the beaver-fur hat and wrap that Laurence sometimes wore over her interior furs for professional journeys–which is to say, to go from here to the theater where she keeps all her stage costumes and evening gowns–had disappeared.

  “I made an effort to calm myself. I got dressed and came down, as if to go out. As I passed the lodge, I engaged the concierge in casual conversation. He had seen Laurence go out. There you are, I said to myself, she’s at the theater.

  “I took a taxi and hastened there. There was no one in her dressing-room, to which I have a key. The concierge at the stage entrance had not seen her. I was on the point of asking to see you, Monsieur Lerond, but it occurred to me that I might be acting too precipitately, and that my questions might compromise my daughter. Was she not free to do as she pleases? Myself, I have nothing; I live on her fortune and her earnings. She is the sweetest of daughters. I had never had the least complaint against her. What right had I to meddle in her secret life–since it was now obvious that she did have secrets? I conquered my apprehensions, my dread, my terror, and resolved to wait. I went back home.

  “Our servants–all four of them–are like a family. I did not hide my anxieties from them. We spent the night waiting, they at their posts and me in my room. Nothing. Finally, this morning, a short while ago, this is what I received... And it was then, in desperation, that I telephoned you...”

  So saying, the mother extended her right hand towards a little table and took up a folded piece of blue-tinted paper, which she held out to Monsieur Lerond. She was unable any longer to retain her tears, which ran down her cheeks and were lost at the corners of her lips or fell on to her bosom. The composer leaned forward and both men read what was written there in a sorrowful stupor. They recognized the highly original handwriting of a great artist. It said:

  My beloved mother,

  I am obliged to undertake a journey which will last some considerable time. I cannot tell you any more on pain of profound misery for both of us. In my writing-desk, to which you have a key, you will find my checkbook. The checks inside are all signed; you have only to write in the sums to obtain the money you need. Pay compensation to Monsieur Lerond, if he demands it.

  Give my apologies to Monsieur Lysor; I have taken his score with me. He has a copy, so he will lose nothing. He must search for another interpreter, alas!

  Mother, do not doubt your daughter. I love you, and you alone. I do not love any man; this is not an adventure motivated by my own will. Oh, I cannot explain–that is forbidden. Keep my departure secret, and when it is necessary to speak to them, demand that Messieurs Lerond and Lysor keep it too.

  La Païli is still your little Laurence. I will come back, mother, I promise you. Wait for me, without ceasing to love me and respect me.

  Mother! Mother! Oh, what distress...

  Laurence.

  IV. The Nyctalope

  On that same morning, Leo Saint-Clair was suddenly taken by the idea of going to lunch in a restaurant in the Parc de Saint-Cloud. The weather was delightful, with a clear sky studded with light clouds, gentle sunlight and a breeze perfumed with all the aromas and languid with all the sensuality of spring.

  Leo Saint-Clair alias the Nyctalope! Who in the world does not know that name and its reputation? Officially sanctioned, but fr
ee to act on his own initiative, he had organized, at his own expense, an expedition that had forced the surrender of the last dissident warlords in Southern Morocco. He had discovered and rescued the King of Spain, who had been abducted and imprisoned by a gang of terrorists. In China, accompanied by 30 volunteers, he had captured and killed a triumvirate of brilliant but insane masterminds who had been planning to turn their vast Asiatic empire into an hellish anarchist’s haven, subject only to their bloody and barbaric whims. For these deeds, and others no less peremptory, he was famous throughout the world–but he was more famous still because he merited the strange title of Nyctalope.

  He was of medium height, slim and muscular, wiry and athletic–a complete and consummate athlete. His face and profile were Gallic, but without a moustache, like a clean-shaven Vercingetorix.3 His features were handsome and clean-cut and his expression virile. He had incomparable eyes, which were most often brown, but sometimes green and sometimes yellow. In poor light, the irises of these eyes dilated, for Leo Saint-Clair could see in complete darkness, not as well as in sunlight, but as well as any man might in the evening twilight on the Algerian coast in summer, when a clear sky surrounds the Moon and the swarming stars–well enough to read, without difficulty, the printed text of a newspaper. In semi-darkness, Saint-Clair could see much better, with a more precise perception of details, than in the light of noon. For this man, therefore, darkness did not exist, so long as he had is eyes open. It was largely to this nyctalopic faculty that Saint-Clair owed his success in his mad enterprises–in which it had amused him, more than once, to risk his life.

  May 7 was Leo Saint-Clair the Nyctalope’s 35th birthday.4 He had a habit of saying, and thinking, that the most intense sensual experiences are to be found in solitude–entirely alone, if one’s heart is free; in the company of one other, if one is prey to amorous passion. Saint-Clair had returned from the Sudan only ten days previously and had not yet made an appearance in his various circles of acquaintance, having departed 14 months and a half before that to flee the place where his beloved mother had died of pneumonia; he still had grief in his heart, and had no appetite for any other company than his own. This is why, on that particular morning, when he had woken up with a powerful sense of renewal and serenity–as if the dear dead woman herself had wished that life would return to the forehead she had kissed while rendering her last sigh–Saint-Clair thought of taking a walk in the Parc de Saint-Cloud.