She took his arm in order to go and mingle with the crowd of her guests. The Baron followed passively.
Already, the orchestra had opened the ball from the height of the stage in the dining room. It was only playing tunes of Japanese inspiration, adapted to the rhythm of Oriental dancing, with the result that the profanation in question was engendering singular foxtrots, polkas and waltzes.
Nevertheless, the young people were enjoying themselves. Intrigues were born between ladies and demoiselles with natural visages and gentlemen with faces immobilized in laughter or malevolence. Everyone was attempting to penetrate the incognito of everyone else, and a noisy gaiety was developing. Betty, having now abandoned Professor Tornada, was passing from one arm to another. She recognized some of them and slipped pleasantries into their ears. She would have liked her select crowd to have the freedom of a barrière dance-hall.
Tornada, approached by his intimate friend Félix Vion, had recognized him immediately. He drew him to the buffet and ordered two glasses of champagne. As they clinked glasses, he said. “Is all well, then, superb warrior?”
“My God, yes. And you?”
“Like a man worn down by work.”
“Your operations?”
“No, something else. Digging into the brain as much as the other, though.”
“I don’t understand.”
“May Heaven ensure that you never need to understand.”
“You’re quite bewildering, old Nada.”
The scientist accepted his friend’s opinion as a compliment. In order not to push his confidences any further, he pulled the dagger recently detached from the panoply out of Vion’s belt. He took it out of its sheath and examined the blade at length.
“Is it yours, this jewel?”
“Hardly!”
“Did you hire it along with the costume?”
“It’s too great a rarity not to belong to the Sasoitsu collection.”
“Did he give it to you?”
“No, it was Betty.”
“How sharp it is! I could use an implement like this for my most delicate interventions. How many little yellow folk it must have cut into!”
“Without a Tornada being there to repair its work.”
“Irreparable with that dagger. Oh, if it could talk, what it could tell us about the mores of that pleasant land!”
“Master! Would you care to return that to Félix! It’s a sacred deposit!” Betty’s voice cut in from behind him.
As Tornada, intent on his admiration, did not obey, it was she who replaced the weapon in Vion’s belt. She had come to in search of him for a waltz.
Abandoned, Tornada raised his glass to the height of his eyes. He associated his thoughts with the gilded waves of the liquid. Then he swallowed, draining the glass to the last drop.
At midnight exactly the orchestra stopped in order for its members to take their refreshment in the outbuildings of the house. A battalion of servants brought little tables, ready-set, into the dining-room. A hundred place-settings were disposed in that manner.
On the stage, similarly occupied for the supper by all the most honored guests, the Baronne had already retained as neighbors the Japanese ambassador and Tornada, while the Baron had the ambassador’s wife to his right and the wife of the chairman of his board of directors to his left.
Betty imposed silence.
“And now, as the Messieurs might not otherwise be able to appreciate this meal brought directly from the birthplace of the man whose wife I have the honor of being, permission is given to them to take off their masks—it being understood that they will replace them after supper for the spectacle that will follow. Now, take your places—no more protocol! Let everyone sit where they please.”
Her voice was drowned by the hubbub. The male faces were revealed. Couples came together, at the whim of chance combinations formed during the dancing. The waiters went into action. People ate heartily and drank their fill of an excellent extra-dry. The sparkling liquid washed down, primarily, fish caught in the depths of the lakes and bays of the Empire of the Rising Sun: the ayu, which, in the breeding season makes its way up torrents to fertilize the eggs laid by females in fissures in the rocks; the unagi, or freshwater eel; and koi-no-arai carp from Lake Biwa. Their succulence lit up gazes and brought forth compliments. The ambassador was obliged to moderate, with a discreet gesture, the ardor of his young attaché Janai, who was showing excessive gallantry toward Mademoiselle Christiane de Viseuil, a young Parisienne, heir to a great aristocratic name.
Ordinarily a drinker of water, Tornada had definitely acquired a taste for champagne that night. He also filled Betty’s glass recklessly. While caressing his beard, he told her the story of a certain escapade of his student days, when, one night, on emerging from a ball like this one, he and his comrades, costumed as birds, with feathers stuck to their semi-naked bodies, had engaged in battle against a company of chairs that the waiters of a café, on the point of closing, were trying to take back inside. It was the epoch when the khrumirs21 were in the news and, as the chairs were the savages, it was necessary to tame them before civilizing them. Fearful for his property, the owner of the establishment had called the police. Taken to the station and kept there all night, the nocturnal warriors were punished far more by the cold than the remonstrance of the Commissaire before their release. A joyful era!
“What! You, Doctor—you, the highly-reputed scientist, the researcher, the incomparable inventor—were able to participate in those reckless children’s games? I find that hard to believe.”
“But Baronne, I was once young, like everyone else, before my beard compensated for the deficiency of hair of my head.”
“Why do you allow your beard that extravagant development?”
“In order not to resemble my fellows. One can distinguish oneself by ugliness as well as by beauty.”
“On that subject, didn’t you tell me just now that you’ve found a means of embellishing faces? Will you reckon with wrinkles?”
“Wait until you have some, Baronne!”
“But I have! Look.”
“I don’t have my magnifying glass.”
“I can trust you to keep my secret, doctor: forty is lying in wait for me, alas!”
“I would have thought that it was thirty.”
“I would like so much not to appear to pass it! I only manage to maintain the appearance my means of daily massages, which exhaust me. So, if you can, by some surgical procedure...”
“It’s no longer a question of surgery in this case. As I told you, I operate exclusively by means of rays. That is how science progresses, thanks to natural forces. They will soon replace all the action of the scalpel. I’ve even begun to transform my lab into a new kind of beauty parlor. If you ever begin to age, you can seek me out. I’ll retrieve your spring-time, my dear Baronne.”
“Thank you, Master. To your health!”
“I drink to the perenniality of your delightful features!”
After looking at her while drinking the toast, however, he qualified his opinion privately: Tee hee! It’s true, in fact, that there’s a little nascent wrinkle...
After a cup of coffee, for those who did not fear its effect on their imminent slumber—it was two o’clock in the morning—Betty, rising to her feet, gave the signal for the end of the supper.
“Masks!” she commanded. “The smokers may remain uncovered long enough to have a cigarette in the library, but they must hurry; the performance is about to commence.”
The orchestra was reinstalled for the ballet. The tables were swiftly removed..
Abrovici was helping with that, but Betty ordered: “Go back to the cloakroom; you’re not needed here any longer.”
She went over to her husband. He was waiting in a melancholy mood for the end of a celebration to which he had only consented to please her—as always.
“You seem tired, Tani.”
“Not at all, Betty.”
“But yes; your eyes are becoming
weary. As what’s about to happen has little interest for you, why don’t you go take a little nap?”
“What would our guests say!”
“Let me suggest, then, that you rest for a moment in the library, which will soon be deserted.”
“I really have no need, Betty.”
“Do as you’re told, my dear. You know how worried I am about your health.”
He resigned himself to it. He went to the prescribed place. The smokers, after a few more puffs on their cigarettes, were already abandoning him to return to the performance. He soon found himself alone. He took off his mask, sank into a copious armchair and listened from there to the harmonies that were accompanying the ballerinas.
It was, in fact, a delightful distraction that the six dancers, in fiery red damask robes decorated with dragonflies, were providing on the temporary boards: the slow and graceful movements of the Japanese choreography, in which fans supported the serpentine undulations, evoking some romantic history unknown in the West.
Their performance impassioned the assembly. The only one who was uninterested was the young embassy attaché Janai. He had drawn Mademoiselle Christiane de Viseuil into the first of the drawing rooms—the one connecting via an open door to the library. He was flirting with her through his mask, with sufficient pleasure that they scarcely paid any attention to Baron Sasoitsu, whom Betty had sent to take a rest; they did, however, notice that someone had just approached him; by his disguise and his terrible mask they recognized the banker’s associate. But was it credible that business had such a hold on them that they would discuss it now, and even that, in order to remain in peace, they would isolate themselves completely, Félix Vion taking care to close the door through which someone might have come to disturb them?
“They’re shutting themselves away!” said Janai. “Oh, these financiers!”
Nevertheless, for the young people it served as an advice to less intimacy; they went to watch the end of the performance.
It was late; Tornada reclaimed the Baronne in order to bid her adieu. Betty indicated to him that he should go into the library. Tornada headed in that direction, but he found the door locked.
He went back to Betty. Surrounded by a large crowd, she was gathering compliments on the reception.
He took her to one side. “Is the Baron inaccessible, then?””
“What do you mean?”
“His study is locked.”
“He was tired, but not to that degree…let’s go and see.”
They went back to the door. They shook it and knocked on it in vain.
“Let’s go round the other side,” said Betty.
They left the large drawing room to go through the hall, from which access could also be gained to the library, via a door under the staircase. They noticed as they went past that several guests were at the cloakroom, reclaiming their garments from Abrovici. Very busy, always impeccable in his suit, he was serving the Japanese ambassador at that moment. On perceiving Betty, the ambassador left his wife to put her coat on and came toward her.
“May I thank your husband, Baronne?”
“Certainly, Prince.”
The three of them, therefore, went to the other library door. That one was not locked; Tornada was able to open it. Complete darkness reigned within.
“What does this signify?” said Betty, astonished, as she pressed the electric light switch.
The light caused the Baron to appear, still plunged in his armchair, his body limp, so deeply asleep that he did not raise his head when his visitors came in.
“Poor Tani!” said Betty, sorrowfully. “He works too hard. He’s exhausted.”
“Don’t wake him up,” said the ambassador, in a low voice
“But yes! It’s not permissible for him to let his guests go like this.” She shook him. “Wake up, Tani. People are leaving.”
But the sleeper did not budge. She shook him again, with no more success. “Is something wrong with him, Doctor?” she asked, alarmed.
Tornada became anxious in his turn. Freeing himself from the after-effects of the champagne, restored to sound professional observation by that incomprehensible unconsciousness, he leaned over the Baron. He took his pulse and parted his eyelids No reaction. He lifted one of his arms and let it drop.
“But one would think...”
Wondering whether he was dealing with a suddenly death, such as he had sometimes observed in the course of his career, perhaps from a fatal apoplexy, he listened to the heart. There again, no manifestation of life. As he straightened up, however, he realized that his ear was damp. He put his hand to it, and withdrew it stained with blood.
“Oh! What does this mean?”
Looking more closely, he saw a stain on the Baron’s robe, at the level of the vital organ, which was confused with the red of the fabric tightly fitted to the chest. Pulling up the garment with an abrupt tug, he laid the torso bare.
In the region of the fourth intercostal gap on the left side, there was a perforation some three centimeters long, where blood was clotted.
On that stupefying observation, Betty became greatly distressed. “Doctor! Has someone...?”
“Murdered—no doubt about it.”
“Save him! You, who can work miracles, Doctor, save him!”
“Too late, my poor friend. He’s been dead for at least ten minutes.”
It would be pretentious to attempt to describe the effect of such a brutal declaration on the sensibility of a loving woman. Betty threw herself upon the inert body, wrapped her arms around it, appealing to the Baron, begging him to come back to her, swearing that she had no one but him in the world and that she could not survive him. Assuredly, Tornada found in the manifestation of her distress words, cries and attitudes that she had one displayed on the screen—but they were only echoes, excused by the brutality of the drama.
The clamors of despair had reached the cloakroom. The ambassador had not closed the door on that side; guests who had been on the point of departure arrived, forming a circle around the cadaver and the wife, who was now convulsed by an attack of nerves.
The only person missing from that final scene was the one who, more than any other, ought to have been there. Tornada asked for him—but when Abrovici declared that Monsieur Félix had already left some time before, he asked the servant to telephone his home. They were told that he had not yet come in.
“Monsieur Vion only lives five minutes away by auto,” Abrovici observed. “I can go fetch him.”
“There’s no need,” said Tornada. “He must be going home on foot, and as he’ll be told that he has been demanded, he’ll certainly hurry back as soon as he gets there. Let’s take care of this poor woman instead.”
Chapter III
In response to the energetic plea of Professor Tornada, the guests eventually withdrew. He remained alone with Betty and the cadaver. The electricity, uniquely conserved by the small lamp on the work-table, lit the room in a sinister fashion, projecting on to the wall the magnified shadow of the victim in the position of his last sigh. Betty, exhausted by grief, was sprawled in an armchair. Numbly, with staring eyes, she was contemplating the dead man who had changed her life. In the house, the noises were dying down.
Tornada came to sit beside her. She grasped his hand violently, as if communicating her emotion to him might bring her some relief.
After a long silence she emerged from her abyss. “Doctor, we can’t leave him like this! We have to carry him to his room, and put him in an attitude more worthy of him.”
“Don’t touch anything, Baronne, until the police have conducted an examination.”
“Have they been alerted?”
“I sent your chauffeur to do it.”
“He’s gone to the Commissariat?”
“He’s telephoned—that’s sufficient to bring them here.”
“Has he informed them fully of what’s happened?”
“There was scarcely any need for elaboration.”
“Oh my God,
I wish they’d get it over with.”
“I believe they’re here...”
The doorbell had just rung.
“I’ll go,” said Betty, standing up.
“Stay there! Your presence will be required.”
Footsteps sounded in the hall and the Commissaire of Police came in. He was a stout man with an abundant belly and short legs. His eucrasic appearance belied the idea that one might have of a citizen charged with combating vice. His puffy eyes revealed that he had been summoned from a profound slumber. His night shirt was visible through the gap in his overcoat, the collar of which was turned up. He was accompanied by an elegant secretary, on duty that night, and two policemen, whom he ordered to remain at the door.
He advanced, smiling, toward the cadaver. He considered it briefly without concealing his satisfaction. The sentiment of duty was not the only reason why he ordered his subordinates to wake him up on all similar occasions. He obtained more resources and glory from another profession than he did from his official functions; he was, under a pseudonym, a popular novelist appreciated by the crowd. He based books on spectacles like the one he had before his eyes. Imagination was superfluous for him; the more crapulous a crime was, the more promising its fecundity seemed to him to be. What need is there to invent stories when life is strewn with adventures as curious as the one he was in the process of observing? He had been frustrated when, having been promoted, he had been assigned a rich neighborhood in which murders were exceptional—barely the occasional suicide and petty dramas of cuckoldry. He had even requested to return to his old station, near the fortifications, where rascality flourished.
He bowed to Betty, like a man of the world. “Madame la Baronne Sasoitsu, no doubt. Might I ask you, Madame...”
“Will you please address yourself to me, Monsieur le Commissaire,” Tornada cut in. “Madame is too upset for the moment to give you any useful information.”
“To whom do I have the honor…?”
The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 15
