In the depths of their being, however, the three young men—still very young and so poorly armed against the vicissitudes of life—felt crippled by this first blow, which was, in truth, very heavy. Before they arrived in Lausanne, Robert Champeau, inspired by the confidence of inexperience, but after having demanded nevertheless a formal promise of absolute discretion, had confided in General Le Breil all the essentials of their dramatic adventure.
“Fichtre!” muttered the General, excited and admiring—and he looked more closely at Leo Saint-Clair, who, wedged between Croqui and Degains, had had his forehead bathed with ether and summarily bandaged by Mademoiselle Aurora Malianova, thanks to the resources of a small portable first-aid kit that was always stowed away in an interior corner of the limousine. No one noticed the strange hardness of the gaze that the young woman fixed upon Saint-Clair.
Leo was still unconscious, but the regular beat of his pulse and his normal respiration clearly indicated that, save for any consequences of nervous trauma, his general health was as well as could be expected. That condition was not modified in the slightest until he was installed in the only bed in a room in a clinic in the Rue du Petit-Chêne in Lausanne, where Leo Saint-Clair received the attentions of Doctor de Villiers-Pagan. Mademoiselle Aurora, who had rapidly donned her nurse’s uniform, served as his assistant. At the back of the room, standing to either side of General Le Breuil, Champeau, Croqui and Degains waited very anxiously, fearful and confident at the same time.
First the surgeon unbandaged the wound, had it carefully washed by Aurora, and examined it closely.
“There won’t be any lasting damage,” he said. “Only a minuscule scar will remain visible at close range—but the handsome lad’s had a lucky escape!”
The wound was sterilized and the dressing replaced. Then Monsieur de Villiers-Pagan administered an intravenous injection in the left arm.
A few seconds later, Leo Saint-Clair shuddered, sighed, and opened his eyes. The right one was slightly masked by the slanting bandage. His three comrades, the two other men and the young woman saw his face express astonishment at first, then amazement, and then a frightful terror, while his clear brown eyes rolled madly in their orbits.
Robert Champeau, more impulsive than his companions, could not help taking a forward step toward the bed and exclaiming: “What is it, Leo? What’s wrong?”
With a vigorous thrust of his supple hips, Saint-Clair sat up; his half-extended arms moved, his hands seemingly groping for invisible objects. With a brutal emotion, they all heard him say, in a tremulous voice: “Everything’s dark! Black! I can no longer see! I’m…oh, my God! I’m blind!”
“No, my friend, no, you’re not!” said the doctor to Champeau, taking him by the arm and forcing him backwards—and he seized the wounded man’s groping hands himself, pronouncing in a firm and benevolent voice: “Monsieur Saint-Clair, listen to me! Be calm and strong, and listen to me! No, you’re not blind, and you won’t be. The person who’s talking to you is Doctor de Villiers-Pagan. You’re in a room in my clinic in Lausanne. Your comrades are here, safe and sound. You have a wound on the right side of your head, along the temple, level with the eye—an insignificant wound that will scar over within three days—but the impact of the bullet that struck you occasioned such a brutal shock to your ocular nerves that it has caused a temporary overload. That’s all…nothing more. Do you believe me? You must believe me, because it’s the exact truth.”
With that immense and profound statement, he fell silent.
While the surgeon had been talking, though, Saint-Clair’s face had cleared and become calm; his eyes became still. His entire physiognomy no longer expressed anything but a keen attention, an intelligent desire to understand and to believe. Finally, a smile even spread over his lips, which had become firm and ruddy again, and it was in his normal voice—steady, decisive and still quite incisive—that the young man said, slowly: “Thank you, Monsieur. I believe you. But how are my friends? Robert and René have been attacked, struck down. And there’s nothing wrong with Jean?”
Monsieur de Villiers-Pagan stood aside then, and made a gesture that the three young men understood. They hastened to the bedside of their Chief and friend, and for a few minutes, while their hands enlaced and their breath overlapped, there was a noisy mixture of ardently amicable, confident, encouraging words, concluded by an affirmation from Saint-Clair: “We’ve lost the first round. We’ll win the second, and also the last! May I recover my sight swiftly! As for the rest of my being, body and soul, I feel more vigorous and lucid than ever!”
He laughed, and his comrades laughed too, with happiness and hope. In the silence that followed, however, as is usual after an explosion of strong emotion, the voice of Doctor de Villiers-Pagan rose up, reticent and slightly hesitant, like that of a man expressing an idea that has just occurred to him, and with which he has astonished himself.
“Will you please stand still where you are, Monsieur Le Breuil, and you, gentlemen. I won’t budge either. Would you, Aurora, close the window completely, both the internal and external shutters, and pull the curtains, hooking them together. There needs to be total darkness in here…”
Everyone was surprised.
“Is it an experiment?” murmured General Le Breuil. His voice was cautious and low, but everyone heard him, including Saint-Clair.
“Yes,” the surgeon replied. “There’s something astonishing and exciting in the iris and the pupil of those eyes. They weren’t like that before the trauma—they couldn’t have been. They’re dilated; they have a sort of internal coloration, if I might put it that way, which makes the normal shade more transparent. They remind me of the eyes of a lynx at dusk, or he eyes of certain nocturnal birds. Hurry up, please, Aurora!”
The young woman had only two more actions to perform to make the room dark—completely, opaquely dark—for double shutters and thick curtains had been provided for certain circumstances in which invalids needed to be in total darkness even during the hours of daylight.
There was an exclamation then—a sharp and resonant exclamation, uttered by Leo Saint-Clair. The exclamation was followed by words proffered in a tone that became increasingly exultant and excited.
“I can see! I can see clearly! In this darkness, oh my God! I can see! You there, Mademoiselle, very pale. And you, Champeau, you Croqui, you Degains! And you, Monsieur, presumably Doctor de Villiers-Pagan, as you introduced yourself a few minutes ago. And that other gentleman over there, at the back of the room. I can see, I can see clearly! And it’s really dark? Absolutely dark? Yes, undoubtedly, since you ordered it thus. Ah, I’m a nyctalope, a nyctalope! Is it possible? Yes, it must be, since I’m experiencing it and know perfectly well that I’m not delirious, that I’m not mad, and I’m in full possession of my reason and lucid control of my senses!”
The impassioned voice fell silent.
In the darkness, in which no one but Saint-Clair could see anything, there was nothing for an entire minute than the painting breath of the prodigious nyctalope, overwhelmed by emotion. Then his voice resounded again, hesitant and fearful now. “But tell me, Doctor, tell me…what you initially affirmed, which is that I’ll be able to see as usual—which is to say, in broad daylight—that will be realized too, won’t it? And I’ll still be able to see in the dark? Come on, Doctor, please tell me what you think. You can’t see me, but I can read in your face the exaltation of a great discovery. What do you think? Speak, speak, I beg you…”
He fell silent, breathing even harder than before.
And he and saw and heard—and everyone else in the room heard—Doctor Adrien de Villiers-Pagan, whose encyclopedic medical and surgical knowledge was famous throughout the world, affirm with certainty: “The chiasma of the optical nerves is among the most astonishing marvels that the life of the human body offers us. That chiasma, that swelling of the optical threads that make up the vital system, the generator, the accumulator, the condenser and the distributor of visual power, is still a m
ystery in several of its actions and reactions. I can’t, therefore, explain a priori the phenomenon of which you are, so far as I know, the first human example. As for explaining it a posteriori, I could only do that by dissecting you alive…and even then…at the first contact with my scalpel, the marvel would be annihilated, and I’d only find myself confronted by a chiasma like those I’ve seen many times before in the course of my anatomical studies. No, I can’t explain anything!” He took a deep breath, then resumed, with the same forced calm: “But I can establish one fact, one precise, localized, demonstrative and evident fact. The darkness in this room is absolute, but you can clearly see the walls the furniture, the objects and the people who are here. Can you see us in full color? Answer me.”
“Yes, in full color,” Saint-Clair replied. “A trifle blurred, though, it seems to me.”
“There it is! You can see in the dark. It’s a confirmed fact. The shock produced on the chiasma of the optic nerves by the impact of the bullet sliding along the temporal bone has modified its equilibrium, perhaps even transformed the normal economy and he general faculties. You’re a nyctalope, and that’s a fact. Will it last? Will it be maintained when your natural diurnal clear-sightedness returns? That will come back, sooner or later. I won’t hesitate to be frank with you, Monsieur, since you’re evidently courageous. That, I simply don’t know.” He took another deep breath, and continued: “Yes, I don’t know. We’re witnessing a series of phenomena of which you are the living and conscious subject. How will that series evolve? I have no idea. Let’s wait and see!”
And they waited—which is to say that, after a whole hour spent in recording, on Doctor de Villiers-Pagan’s instructions, all the external manifestations of his nyctalopia, Leo Saint-Clair was bathed once again in the broad light of day, Mademoiselle Malianova having slowly and progressively unmasked, disengaged and opened the window.
“I can’t see—I’m blind!” said Saint-Clair, with the stoical firmness of a man who has agreed with a stout heart to carry out redoubtable experiments, and to have them carried out upon him.
“Let’s wait and see!” the scientist said, again.
They waited four days and five nights. Working in shifts, Monsieur de Villiers-Pagan, Robert Champeau, René Croqui, Jean Degains and even General Le Breuil kept watch on the wounded man, the invalid.
Lying down by night, standing up or sitting down by day, the latter slept, ate, read, performed Swedish gymnastic exercises and walked in his room or in the doctor’s private garden, access to which was prohibited to the staff and patients of the clinic. As for Mademoiselle Aurora Malianova, she no longer came into the room, but she was the one who kept the blind Saint-Clair company in the garden while Croqui, Degains and Champeau were at the dining-table.
Leo Saint-Clair continued to see clearly in the dark, but was blind during the day. On the morning of the fifth day, however, at 11 a.m.—shortly after Champeau, Croqui and Degains had set off to eat breakfast, as usual, at the Hôtel du Pélican, where they had kept their rooms and where they hoped in spite of everything for the return or news of Wenceslas Polki—Mademoiselle Malianova heard a hesitant voice close at hand saying: “My God! Am I really awake? Isn’t it a dream? The sky, those trees, those flowers, and that beautiful angelic face! Oh, is it possible?”
Feminine ears undoubtedly have special properties, for it was the words “that beautiful angelic face” that Mademoiselle Aurora heard, and it was a face rosy with apparent confusion that she lifted up—because she was reading at the time, with her head lowered. The confusion was immediately drowned by the enormous and rapid flux of a violent emption, a joy that made her laugh and cry out…perhaps to cry and laugh too loudly for it to be entirely sincere.
Standing before her, although he had been lying in a canvas deck-chair a few moments earlier with his eyes closed, Leo Saint-Clair was looking at her, with his eyes wide open, alive and joyful. And he was conscious of an almost painful, and yet exceedingly sweet, emotion that he had never experienced before. He blushed violently—but at that same moment, the young man found the measure of the self-mastery, self-possession and calmness of which he was capable.
He plunged a sharp, almost black gaze into the young woman’s blue eyes, and he said, very softly: “Mademoiselle Aurora Malianova, isn’t it?”
As if fearfully tremulous with surprise and joy, she seemed incapable of doing anything but stammer: “You can see, Monsieur…can you see?”
“I can see! And the first living being that I’ve seen again in broad daylight is you, Mademoiselle. In the dark, when I was the Nyctalope, you never came. I scarcely caught a glimpse of you during the first experiment…and now you, the first… Oh, I shall never forget it!”
He took her gently by the hand. As if subjugated, she abandoned herself to him. In order to kiss her, he lowered his head, and did not see the young woman’s eyes become as hard and cold as a blade of blue steel, with an expression of hateful cruelty. When he raised his head again and looked at Mademoiselle Malianova, she smiled, pretending to be confused.
He smiled too, and said: “Would you care to take me to Monsieur de Villiers-Pagan, Mademoiselle? He ought to be the second one to know. And then, I’d like to find out for myself whether, while no longer being blind by day, I can still see clearly in the dark. I’ve got nothing against nicknames, when they’re rich in meaning, and believe me, Leo Saint-Clair the Nyctalope will suit me very well!”
“Come on, Monsieur, quickly,” she said, her voice warmly resonant.
A quarter of an hour later, in a tightly-sealed room, Leo Saint-Clair established that he was indeed, still and supremely, the Nyctalope.
“Oh, dear God, may I be so forever!” he exclaimed, raising his arms in a surge of enthusiasm and desire that animated his entire being. Immediately mastering himself, however, and turning to Champeau, Croqui and Degains, who had hastened in response to a brief telephone call from Mademoiselle Malianova, he said incisively: “Back to the hunt tomorrow, my friends! In the work we’ve undertaken, and which we’ve had to abandon for six days, it’s a good omen nevertheless that our first defeat had had the consequence, for me of nullifying the ambushes, difficulties and impossibilities of darkness. To no longer have to take account of darkness, when we’re fighting against men for whom material and moral darkness is a safeguard, is both an incessant superiority and a very encouraging symbol… From tomorrow on, we’ll get back on the trail. If there’s still time, it’s necessary to save Polki, find Sadi Khan, and recover the plans and models of Radiant Z…and quickly!”
“Long live the Nyctalope!” cried Champeau.
Mad with enthusiasm and joy, the three “forwards” embraced their Chief without being able to see him. Doctor de Villiers-Pagan and General Le Breuil, who were very emotional, were smiling in the darkness—but the seemingly-discreet Aurora had left the room, perhaps having others things to do, carefully closing the door behind her on the darkness in which the two large clairvoyant eyes were gleaming.
Alive to the light and nyctalopian as those eyes were, however, they would never have been penetrating enough or powerful enough to see into the obscure soul of that enigmatic young woman, in whose presence Leo Saint-Clair had suddenly experienced the revelation of first love, and first desire…
Part Two: Turnabout
Chapter I: The Real Aurora
It is no secret for anyone in the world that some years before 1914, the German General Staff, in making preparations for an eventual war—as every good General Staff has to do—had organized a very well-constructed network of spies in France, Russia, England, Italy, the Balkans and Turkey, and that one of the nerve-centers of this network was a beautiful modern villa situated in Berne in Switzerland, on the road to Thoune, in the vicinity of the Nouveau Jardin Botanique. Nor is it a secret, either, that the various Russian terrorist, nihilist and anarchist organizations had their headquarters in Geneva, where the leaders of nihilism, terrorism, anarchy and Bolshevik communism, such as Lenin and Trot
sky, were in virtually permanent residence—save for occasional sojourns in Paris and mysterious trips from which they did not always return—perpetually surrounded by more or less numerous “comrades” of both sexes.
As often happens, the various elements of these two organizations, so fundamentally different and sometimes so diametrically opposed, occasionally interpenetrated one another. And it was not uncommon for Russian terrorists, in order to fill their coffers and promote their own imminent or distant projects, to carry out espionage on behalf of Germany. On the other hand, it was just as frequent for German secret service and counter-espionage officers, in order to enrich the information of their General Staff, to pretend to be Polish anti-Tsarists or Jews animated by a spirit of vengeance against the Cossack executors of imperial pogroms, and to be engaged as informers or militants in revolutionary Russian organizations.
There were, in consequence, hybrid gangs composed of fake pro-German spies and fake Russian terrorists—or, rather, people who were simultaneously, or who alternated between, one thing and the other, and who served the High Command in Berlin or were obedient to Lenin and Trotsky according to their personal interests or their convictions—patriotic for some, revolutionary for others.
Lenin and Trotsky were unaware of these often-tragic imbroglios, but the German High Command was unaware of nothing, and had in its pay the secret chief of these gangs, the man whom all the police forces of Europe only knew by the presumably-false name of Theodore Wallis, supposed resident of Chicago, and by another name that could only be an enigmatic and suggestive soubriquet: Sadi Khan. It was also known, however, that the individual was marked on the forehead by a horizontal scar.
At any rate, while it can be affirmed that “Theodore Wallis” and “Sadi Khan” were names known to the police, no policeman had ever seen more than a name inscribed in a hotel register, the lease of a furnished house or some passport. The individual who used them, or to whom they were, at least attributed, always seemed to have vanished into thin air. There was no further evidence of his real existence except for one fact, evidently charged with enormous and incalculable consequences: Monsieur Pierre Saint-Clair had clearly seen the horizontal scar on the forehead of the fake Polish scientist who had wounded and robbed him, and destroyed his workshops, store-rooms and the results of twenty years’ work, by means of time-bombs.
Enter the Nyctalope Page 5
