The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer!

by Jean de La Hire

  The man and the woman stood up, letting their apples and paring-knives fall to the ground. Turning to the back of the room, they waited respectfully. In a loud voice, and very distinctly, in a Wurtemburg accent, the man said: “Thy servants are ready, Our Lord!”

  Exactly a minute went by. Then, without the slightest noise, the enormous and heavy dresser rotated from left to right, its right-hand side forming a pivot and disclosing a cavity smaller in its dimensions than the item of furniture. At the back of this cavity, an invisible door silently opened, abruptly displaying a rectangular patch of light brighter than that which was spread by the electric bulb suspended from the ceiling. In that lighted rectangle, a human form was silhouetted in black. Then, the door must have closed again, for the brightness vanished, and a man came forward into the room, while the enormous dresser slid back into place.

  The two peasants bowed deeply, and said: “Welcome, Our Lord Baron.”

  “Good evening, Zucht; good evening, Adelheid. Where are the boys?”

  “Out hunting, Our Lord,” Zucht replied. “But they’ll soon be back.”

  “I hear them, Our Lord,” said Adelheid.

  The sound of footsteps was, indeed, audible outside.

  The exterior door opened and two hearty fellows appeared, one immediately after the other, their rifles in their hands and their game-bags slung over their shoulders. The second closed the door behind him while the first, on seeing who was present, bowed and said: “Welcome, Our Lord Baron.”

  “Welcome, Our Lord Baron,” his brother repeated, bowing in his turn.

  They raised their heads again and waited in the same respectful attitude as their parents.

  Baron Glô von Warteck, Lord of Schwarzrock, was dressed in an elegantly-tailored formal jacket made of fine black velvet, trousers whose creases described a straight line all the way to his black suede shoes and a white silk shirt with an abundant collar and flounced sleeves. His skin was only a little less pale than his shirt. He was perhaps a little too tall and a little too thin, but his appearance would have been more attractive if he had not had the harsh and wretched face of a sly and savage Mephistopheles.

  He had a large bony head, thickly sewn with thick, matted red hair that no comb could ever have straightened for more than a few minutes. His face was transected mid-way by a long and bushy red moustache. It was the face of a pirate or a Kalmuk, with jutting cheekbones and distorted features.10 It was a terrible and diabolical face by virtue of the eyes, which were green and yellow, cruel and viperish, dark and sparkling at the same time, set deeply in their orbits beneath long red eyebrows. It was a unsettling face, which must have easily turned repugnant on occasion, first because of the rictus sardonicus formed by the lips, and then because of the strange stillness of those same lips–which were as thin as if the mouth had been cut by the slash of a razor, but sometimes swelled to the point of making the jaw seem fleshy. They were set above a chin that was too long, too pointed and curved like the chin of one of the three witches in Macbeth.

  All that made Baron Glô von Warteck a fearsome presence as he confronted Zucht, his wife and his sons. His green and yellow eyes, cold and commanding, expressed a will so powerful that he had had no actual need to formulate the question he had asked, perhaps automatically, a few minutes earlier, as to the whereabouts of the sons. As his eyes fixed themselves, by rapid turns, on Zucht and Adelheid, then on Franz and Berthold, the peasants trembled.

  “Yes, yes, Our Lord Baron!” said Adelheid, in a terrified voice, clasping her hands together in supplication, answering the Baron’s next, unformulated question. “Yes, Minna will be docile. All of us–her father, mother and two brothers–have begged and prayed for the sake of our peace. She consents! Your sacred desire will not need to be imposed. Minna will come to Your Lordship’s castle of her own free will. I have only to alert her to your presence...”

  Baron von Warteck stood stiff and motionless in front of the pleading woman and the three petrified men. Despite his singular thinness, he would have given a spectator to this scene the impression of comfortable, easy and unlimited physical power.

  Adelheid fell silent, bowed and ran to a door set in the wall to the left of the bed. She opened it and called: “Minna! Minna!”

  A soft voice replied: “I’m coming down, mother.”

  The sound of footsteps, muffled by thick indoor slippers, was heard in the attic, then on a staircase whose wooden steps creaked. A young woman appeared on the threshold of the door, which her mother had left open when she returned to her husband.

  The Baron ceased projecting his will-power then, for Zucht, Adelheid, Franz and Berthold stood at ease, though still respectfully. All four smiled in an amicable and contented manner at the graceful Minna. She was a pretty German girl of 18, blonde, rosy-cheeked and innocent, with candid blue eyes. She was of medium height, plump and much more refined and well-groomed than the peasants of the Black Forest usually are. Her hair had been very thoroughly combed and she had been carefully dressed in the multicolored costume which is considered in the theater to be traditionally Tyrolean.

  With a slight smile and a troubled expression, Minna came timidly towards the Baron, curtsied, and said in a child-like voice: “I am entirely at the service of Our Lord Baron.”

  Glô von Warteck’s eyes glinted. For a second, his face expressed an indefinable cruel satisfaction. He raised his right arm and held the hand above the blonde head, as if he were taking possession of the young woman.

  “Embrace your mother, father and brothers, Minna,” he said, in a strangely sonorous fashion, dry and metallic at the same time, “and get a cloak.”

  Four times over, the child was seized, hugged and kissed, in a very restrained and bizarre fashion, sad and joyful at the same time, full of regret but nevertheless proud: an emotion as indefinable as the satisfaction expressed by the face of the formidable Baron.

  Then, Minna went to a corner of the room and unhooked a hooded cape. She threw it over her shoulders and put up the hood. She bowed down again before her master and waited.

  “Farewell, my faithful servants,” the Baron said to the family. He put his hand on Minna’s shoulder and added: “Come, child.”

  With her, he marched towards the cavity that had been uncovered again by the half-rotation of the dresser. The door opened in front of him and the couple advanced into the rectangle of light. Noiselessly, the door closed and the dresser slid back into place.

  The Baron and Minna walked, more rapidly now, through a large subterranean tunnel devoid of woodwork or masonry. The rock was bare, oozing damp. If human hands had played any part in making the tunnel, it must have been several hundreds of years ago–but it could only have been a few years ago that galvanized iron brackets supporting electric lights had been fixed to its walls, to the right and to the left, and parallel grooves etched in the rocky floor to channel the trickling water.

  At first, the tunnel was level, then it began to climb perceptibly; then there was a succession of staircases, inclined planes, curved to a greater or lesser degree, and large flat areas whose walls bore black doors, reinforced with iron and enormous locks. Masonry, some ancient and some recent, some intact and some repaired, now alternated with bare rock, dry or slick, with no more irregularities or oozing trickles of water. Then there were walls, some made of rock and some contrived, covered with neatly-carved and polished oak panels, evidently maintained with daily care. There were no more brackets, but wrought iron chandeliers with numerous electric lamps, which lit up automatically as the Baron approached and were extinguished in his wake.

  Minna, visibly impressed with admiration, but bewildered, slightly afraid and disorientated, was still moving at a rapid pace, as if drawn along by the hand that still rested on her shoulder, occasionally clenching momentarily.

  Finally, the Baron stopped.

  They were in a large vestibule where the wall-panels were partly dressed with loose tapestries. The huge central table, sturdy and polished, wa
s surrounded by ceremonial chairs of the sort used by burgraves.11 Only four of the 50 or 60 lamps held by an immense chandelier were lit.

  The Baron and Minna had halted in front of a tapestry with two sections, one falling in wide straight pleats while a double-stranded cord lifted the other. In the gap, between two fringes of gold, was a white-painted door.

  After standing still for a moment, Warteck put out his right hand and opened the door. He went through it, with Minna close beside him. The man and the young woman matched strides, passing through a small room decorated in white and gold, in which two electric lights sustained by gilded bronze Cupids lit up to either side of the fireplace as they entered. Another door stood open, and Warteck paused on that threshold.

  If little Minna had been capable of making an observation, she would have noticed that the Baron’s left hand, which was still resting on her shoulder, was trembling continuously–but the girl was in no condition to notice such a small detail. In her mental confusion, she did not even take full account of what she saw: a room decorated in blue and silver, fully-charged with luxury in its carpets, tapestries, furniture, statues, cushions and its canopied bed. Electric wall-lamps gave out a soft, filtered light.

  At the back of the room, on a low divan, between two pairs of immense curtains, which must have masked windows, a young brunette woman in a long white dress had just stood up abruptly, assuming a defiant and combative attitude. Her head was thrown back proudly; her eyes were cold.

  Shoving Minna abruptly into the room, Baron von Warteck said, in a tremulous voice: “Madame, here is what I promised you.”

  He stepped back, closed the door, turned round, crossed the other room at a rapid pace, went along one side of the vestibule, and suddenly disappeared; one of the tapestries had lifted up in front of him, and had then fallen back, leadenly.

  II. The Overhanging Turret

  Outside on the mountain-slope, at the same moment, the Nyctalope came to a halt.

  “Careful, Pilou! A crevice... Two meters wide. If we jump it, we risk making a noise.”

  “A bridge, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Pilou was a former gymnast of the first rank. The life that he led with the Nyctalope had not allowed him to get rusty. The night was not so dark that one could not see the ground three meters ahead. Twenty centimeters from the edge of the crevice, Pilou stood up straight, lifted his arms in parallel, made his entire body stiff and fell forward. The tips of his toes did not moved forward an inch; on the other side of the crevice, his forearms struck the rock, his flat palms pressing down with all the force of his taut muscles. Thus Pilou made a gangplank, by which means Saint-Clair and Corsat crossed over the precipice in two rapid steps.

  The Burgundian seized the Provençal’s wrists; ten seconds later, they were standing side by side–and the three adventurers continued their descent of the pathless mountain slope, with Saint-Clair in the lead.

  There were so many rocks, bushes and clumps of firs that their progress was slow, but when they finally reached the grassy plain on the concave valley floor, they advanced with strides that were large, rapid and regular. They made no noise, heading straight for the foot of the monstrous crag supporting the castle. They arrived in less time than it had taken them to descend the mountainside flanking the vast natural basin in at whose center Schwarzrock loomed up like the jet of a fountain.

  Saint-Clair sat down; his two companions did likewise. For their benefit, the Nyctalope spoke in an even voice, without stressing any syllables, so quietly that it was imperceptible to any ears but those very close by and accustomed to hearing it.

  “While we were walking,” he said, “I studied the castle from a decreasing distance. I noticed an overhanging turret, so vertiginously attached to the main tower that any thought of reaching it from outside would seem like madness. When he installed his electrical defenses, Lucifer cannot have given the slightest thought to including that turret within his system. That’s point one.

  “Point two is that the turret is occupied; its three mullioned windows,12 which are disposed in such a way that their base-line forms half of a hexagon, were all lit up for a few seconds. I’ll wager that it’s a woman’s bedroom or sitting-room, because I could make out ribboned curtain-loops through the transparent lace curtains. Then other, opaque, curtains were drawn, for the windows to the right and left were totally obscured; only the window in the middle retained a thin vertical line of light–the interval of two curtains that do not quite meet.” He paused, then continued in the same tone: “My friends, we must climb straight from here to that overhanging turret, which is directly above our heads.”

  After another pause, Pilou said: “How high?”

  “I’ll calculate,” Saint-Clair said, in an assured tone. “There’s between 65 and 80 meters of rock, with a flat section formed by the spiral stairway at about the 38th meter. Parenthetically, the question of using the spiral stairway is not even worth raising; Kroon specified that certain steps, whose numbers he did not know, are tricked out with electrical circuit-breakers; when a foot touches them, a signal immediately sounds in the listening room. To resume, 80 meters of rock with a flat section, which must be avoided, at about the 38th meter; 20 to 25 meters of wall to the sculpted supports of the corbel–which is to say, to any one of the three windows. That gives a maximum total of 105 meters to scale...”

  “Vertically,” said Corsat.

  “Perfectly,” said Pilou.

  “And silently,” the Nyctalope reminded them.

  After another pause, Pilou said: “That worries me, naturally. Our three lassos each measure about 60 meters from end to end. That’s fine for you and Corsat–but I have to attach the cord.

  “Yes,” the Nyctalope said, simply.

  Of the three, while Saint-Clair was capable of almost anything and Corsat excelled in operations of strength, Pilou took the principal role whenever the abilities of a first-rate gymnast were indispensable.

  “To begin with,” Saint-Clair went on, “you have a cleft in the rock over there to your left.”

  “Height?”

  “About five meters.”

  “And after that?”

  “A meter or so to the right of the top of the crack, there’s a ledge. That’s all; above that, I can’t see anything but smooth rock, which even overhangs slightly. But I’ll be damned if you can’t find anything more–at that distance, rock like this always looks as smooth as a hand.”

  “Right.”

  “On your way, then!”

  “And if something should happen–what’s the signal?”

  “None,” said Saint-Clair, curtly. “Any signal, whatever it might be, would be overheard by others. The order of the day is conquer in silence–or die.”

  “OK, boss. Pass me the rope, Corsat.”

  Corsat had been busy. He gave Pilou the three silken lassos with the leaden weights, tied end to end in such a manner as to make a single long rope rolled up into the least possible volume.

  Pilou attached it to the back of his belt. “The night’s pitch dark,” he grumbled.

  “So much the better,” said Saint-Clair.

  “I won’t be able to see any better on that rock than in a tunnel.”

  “You can smell, you can touch, you can guess...”

  “It’ll be OK, damn it! I won’t fall.”

  Pilou always grumbled and complained, in seeming reluctance, before undertaking anything genuinely difficult or perilous–but then, having given that Platonic satisfaction to his spirit of independence and natural indolence, and having estimated the real difficulties that he had to surmount, he got to work with all the more coolness and resolution, jubilant in advance with the triumph he would enjoy when he had done his part. The brave lad was gloriously naïve, his vanity so puerile that it became touching. He took off his boots and suspended them around his neck, saying, “I’ll do it, then, damn it.”

  “I don’t see any alternative,” Saint-Clair said, impassively.

/>   “That’s true. Goodbye, boss! Goodbye, old boy!”

  Pilou’s hands were seized by Saint-Clair and Corsat, who were certainly more emotional than they would have seemed, had their faces been visible.

  Pilou moved to the left, to the fissure that the Nyctalope had mentioned; henceforth, as one might imagine, all his movements were acrobatic, executed with passionate attention. Corsat saw nothing but a shadow that was gradually lost in the darkness, fading and disappearing into the opaque black mass of the rock supporting the sinister castle.

  Negotiating the fissure was child’s play to Pilou. The two sides of the cleft could have been as smooth as the edges of a gash in a slab of butter and Pilou would have climbed it, buttressing his limbs and entire body between the walls of the crevice. In fact, the cleft, like all those produced by weathering in the mass of a rock, was irregular, its edges riddled with cracks. Child’s play!

  Having reached the upper extremity of the cleft in 20 seconds, Pilou supported himself, with his right hand on a projection and his left knee in a hollow, while he searched to the right for the ledge the Nyctalope had mentioned. He found it, hooked himself upon it by the right hand and tested its solidity. Ten seconds later, he was standing upright on it, his belly and breast pressed to the rock.

  There the difficulties began.

  Pilou could see absolutely nothing. Although the sky was clear, the night was very dark; besides which, a mist had formed. The rock was a black wall, which lost itself in the bizarrely blurred darkness of the vapor.

  Pilou put the fact that he had eyes out of his mind.

  “Damn!” he muttered, between his teeth. “I’d never dare look the boss in they eye again. I know full well that this woman he loves–but whom I’ve never seen–is in the castle. So I have to get up there and attach the rope, or I might as well let myself fall and be crushed. No matter! It’d be the first time, all the same, in the course of an adventure, that there’s nothing we could do.” While he indulged in this monologue, his arms were above his head and his groping fingers were searching blindly. “Ah! A hole. Ugh! Not very big. I can hardly get two fingers into it–but that’s enough for a foothold, to search higher up. Let’s go!”