Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen….

by Edouard Jourdan

  Alexander appeared in the meantime, in his brown livery with daffodil piping.

  A jovial visitor was crying from the antechamber:

  - Announce Napoleon the Little!

  The valet, condescending, laughed.

  "M. de Varmand," he said.

  The old painter was already there.

  At the spectacle of Johan and Katarina, he knew without delay that destiny had made his own and he refrained from casting around the condoling glances, as if fragments of heart were scattered in all directions and that the two sections of a broken existence strew the carpet.

  - Hum! he said. Sand in the wheels? Johan told about the situation:

  - Is this only? said the Marquis. Come on, come on, we have to see things as they are! Your father is not eternal; he is going on seventy-two and he is cardiac. It's sad to say, but in a short time you'll be a millionaire. So, what? you would not find a way to live until then while keeping your manicures, your masseuses, your machines, finally all your manias? Well! me, then? me that your father houses, feeds, heats and whitens since the advent of Victor Faure, am I not here? ...

  - My good friend! exclaimed Katarina, full of gratitude. You are the best of beings. But I do not want you to sell for us one of your paintings.

  - Silence! the Marquis snorted, imitating a bailiff. I mean to meddle in your business, but I do not allow reciprocal! I am major, maybe. Come on, that's fine. You decimate your servants momentarily; you change the cave momentarily; I help you, momentarily; and during that time Johan becomes a great pianist again - definitely!

  Johan spoke:

  - Go for the restrictions, we are ready. As for your help, my dear friend, I thank you for it wholeheartedly, but I cannot accept it.

  - Johan, is this a lesson?

  The young man, taken aback, blushed.

  "No," he said, cracking the knuckles of his hands. And you know it, do not you? You have rendered my father invaluable services. Without you, without the loving and watchful tutelage you exercise on him without his knowledge, I ask you where we would be! This is another reason why I do not agree to live by your hooks. I want to work and make a living.

  Katarina was transfigured. Johan's tirade, so masculine, so noble, freed her from a constraint that had held her back for many weeks without her realizing it. Like a ray of April pierces, the vault of the clouds after a long winter where we accustomed ourselves.

  "Work," repeated M. de Varmand meditatively. Good. Hey! but, I think about it ... What would you say about ...? Do you know the Purple Orchestra, Rue Saint-Sulpice?

  - Perfectly. Good box. Symphonic Rudiment. Excellent little orchestra. I have comrades from the Conservatoire.

  - I am an old regular of the place; I go there often, in the evening, to take my coffee; and Purple, the boss, has nothing hidden for me ...

  - Well?

  - Conductor, right?

  Johan made the movement of a man who receives a pebble. The past and the future appeared to him in contrast. But, all in all, the Purple Orchestra had, musically, the best fame; conductor, it was better than a professor, he would have plenty of time to heal his hands; finally, this situation was only temporary.

  "I only have to name you," said M. de Varmand. Purple will engage you right away, as you think. What a godsend for him!

  Katarina threw herself on Johan's neck, and they kissed. But the Marquis watched the tenderness. He put his hand on his heart, rolled his eyes swooning and, taking a sharp soprano voice, to English words, he called Mr. Charpentier to the rescue:

  - I am "happppyyy"! Too "happpyyyy"!

  Katarina, laughing among her tears, gagged him with a charming hand, which the old gentleman kissed gallantly.

  Whereupon he went to M. Purple, lighter than his imperial lookalike in the glorious evening of Solferino.

  Now it happened that M. Purple; if he engaged Johan eagerly, he could not at once confide the baton of conductor to him. The present incumbent would not empty the platform until the moment of a marriage which would assure him the sweets of wealth; no sooner, no later. This marriage he hoped to conclude soon; but until then, as a wise man, he would retain a job at the Purple Orchestra which he held to the satisfaction of all.

  From the first steps, Johan found the discouraging competition that stars have quickly forgotten when they came out of the crowd.

  He resolved to wait until the confrere's hymen allowed him to take his place.

  Katarina, without further ado, suppressed the phone, the auto - which was the month - and refused to dismiss her people ... She felt a strange premonition. She learned brutally their departure ... She also ignored the true meaning of the brutality of this intuition.

  So, they all left, moved, grateful, and gave a high idea of​​the house to their replacement.

  Her name was Regina, quite simply. Regina Delrio, to be honest. She was young, dark and pink, pretty and pretty, made the turn. His black eye was shining with a bright fire. More daring than stylish, bolder than educated, she worked like a little horse, and yet you had mines of maid to delight the regulars of our subsidized scenes. Katarina was full of praise for her discovery, which the suburban spirit entertained when they were both cleaning up.

  For Madame Bansberg had set to work again, as in the days of Mother Doret. It had to be good. It would be necessary especially until one had discovered a smaller apartment - discovery all the easier as Johan did not want to move away from his father.

  He nourished for this unpleasant old man a dull affection which nothing had put off. "It's my father," he said with some reason. I have no other family than him. And then, I cannot forget that he adored my poor mother. If he gave in occultism, it was first to try to see her again, remember! And then again, see that M. de Varmand disappears, I should be alone in watching over Papa! "

  The housing crisis then raged in all its harshness. Inside the ideal circle that Johan had drawn around the small mansion in the Rue d'Assas, no one managed to find him a lodging.

  Katarina did her best to turn the tide.

  The concierges she sensed in turn took her for a musician, because of the leather towel, handle, which she never separated and which seemed crowded with music.

  These were the values​​she carried with her, lest the scarlet banner should steal them in her absence.

  One day, chance made him meet some of his friends, a woman of order and action, but very furious, who, out of mischief, wanted to know the contents of the napkin. Katarina had to confess that these were titles, Karikal's Coal Mining.

  She added out of human respect:

  - I'm going to the agent of exchange ...

  And carried away by the momentum, she fostered her lie:

  - ... To sell, to subscribe to the Loan.

  - It's a little late to sell! the woman of order and action quipped. You have that since the show, is not it? Well! to realize fifty percent of loss is to have stomach!

  Shocked by such a disastrous news, Katarina stayed a few seconds without being able to speak. Finally, mobilizing all the energies of her being, she asked in a clear tone:

  - The interests could change?

  - Of course not! You're not very good, honey ... Let me give you some advice: do not sell. Your coal mining shares are an excellent investment. You will see them in a few years double their issue rate. The current decline is only the result of a stock market move. She has not finished growing; do not pay attention.

  Poor comfort! One may have decided not to sell a thing; One may well learn that one day it will be worth twice its purchase price, there is no kind of voluptuousness to know that it is worth only half and that tomorrow it will not be worth more than the quarter ... Moreover, if the authors of the "coup de Bourse" were financiers of the other world, if the occult powers, not being able to retract the values, had decided to depreciate them, the decline, indeed, "Had not finished growing"! ... Brutal fact: instead of fifty thousand francs, the vignettes represented only twenty-five thousand.

 
Johan, now, took some interest in the economy of the house. He could learn by a third the tumble of Karikal Coal. Katarina preferred to inform him.

  The sky was darkening with new clouds.

  An expert was brought in so that he might estimate the furniture, pictures, and works of art. Another streak of pain in her upper-class pride…

  Johan was a modern. Without despising the masters of the past, he considered it foolish and foolish to disregard those of the present. By taste, by reason, by humanity, then by stubbornness, and by a kind of thoughtful snobbery, this artist had proscribed all his work not only ancient but also accepted. Only contemporary productions were seen there whose authors were violently contested when they were not unknown. The expert could not treat these hypothetical masterpieces as Palissy, Boule and Corot. His inventory provides a derisory figure.

  So, for art objects as for values, it was wise to stand in waiting posture. These were riches more virtual than real, to which the future alone would give all their value.

  Closely squeezed, Johan had to make a move to his father.

  He left the interview thoroughly disgusted with the family and ruminating this painful dilemma: "Or it is false that a father is a banker given by nature, or it is wrong that my father is my father. "

  The old man had waited an hour in the hall with Charlotte, who was watching him pretending to charm her waiting. Finally, some baroque people had evacuated the salon, and Johan had sat in an armchair still warm from the session just made Miss Lydia Puchot, sleepwalker extra-lucid and medium. Other seats surrounded Palmyra, the turntable. Scarves of odoriferous smoke floated in the heavy air.

  M. de Varmand, who was of all the spiritism parties, wished to retire by discretion. Father and son united to dissuade him.

  - Yeah! said the former notary, when Johan had told him of his tribulations. If Monsieur had resumed the study ...

  There was more for an hour. When the terse starts to speak, nothing stops them. The odious man was shamelessly relieved, less perhaps of having been disobedient, than of having thought for some years that he had been mistaken. The glory of Johan had shamed that proud wretch. Fate, at present, gave him reason, and, without thinking that fate could, in a short time, give him back wrong, he triumphed without measure and without pity.

  The Marquis, however, had posted himself behind him, and was engaged in a debauch of grimaces, of which Johan did not penetrate the esoteric sense. He understood only in these games of physiognomy that he should not be insistent; that the old man's refusal was of no importance; and, moreover, exhausted, seized by an impassioned urge to open the door and draw the wife Valentine's ear which he guessed stuck to the rabbet, he got up, kissed his father with a cold rage, and without waiting for the peroration of his diatribe, suddenly deprived him of an audience.

  The other turned against the Marquis. But this one, sneaking behind Johan, said in a whisper:

  - He's getting married tomorrow!

  Such stupefaction was depicted in the features of the young man, whom the Marquis, dreading some exclamation on his part, cruelly coughed to cover her.

  - The conductor! he explained. The conductor!

  - Yes? Johan said on the threshold of the mansion. So, everything is fine. But what a revenge, my Emperor!

  It was dark. No star seemed bright enough to be his.

  11 – THE SUBSTANTIAL DEVIL

  The apartment was found, Boulevard Montparnasse, on the sixth floor. He was grateful to Johan for the expanse of windows, the existence of a shed which would make an excellent "Hand's Room", and the proximity of the Rue d'Assas.

  The date of the move was fixed.

  A few days before, the home of the Rue Lesueur witnessed a last episode, which is not the most of this bizarre adventure.

  It was one a.m. Johan, having returned from the Purple Orchestra, was electrified; and Katarina was sewing in the smoking-room, in the light of a light-bulb adorned with a lampshade painted on silk by an industrious artist.

  An hour earlier, tired of having packed a bunch of small things in crates, she had gone into the bedroom and undressed, having put back in their trunk, as she did every night, the titles of these coal mines, which were to be worth a hundred thousand francs a day, but which for the moment were negotiable only at eighteen thousand. As she disheveled her crumbling hair, the memory had returned from a snag that the nail of a crate had made to her skirt. Almost happy with an occupation that would make her look after Johan's return, she had put on a lovely blonde bathrobe, and had started sewing in the smoking room, without worrying about values​​any more. In fact, she thought about it for a second. But since she had been watching them so closely, he had been away two or three times, and nothing ghostly or infrared had occurred.

  Besides, the smoking room was contiguous to the bedroom.

  These two rooms both overlooked a wide corridor - as much as gallery. They did not communicate directly; but, leaving the two doors of the corridor open, what Katarina did, one could hear perfectly what was going on in the other.

  Katarina smiled as she sewed. Her husband had returned from a very good mood, satisfied with his new job, happy to have reinterpreted in the musical practice.

  In the "Hand's Room" we heard the snoring of electrotherapy equipment. Johan never went to bed without asking for one last tremor. Although this "Hand's Room" was located on the other side of the corridor; Although the apartment was still covered with all its carpets and draped with all its curtains, the electric hum was powerful enough to cover discreet noises, even close enough. Katarina was immersed in a dream and did not realize it. She realized too late that the absolute silence, her best assistant, had let go. Head recoiled with a sudden movement, she now presented the fixity of a wax figure. This creaking she had just surprised, was it the first? Had there been some time an intruder was acting in the bedroom? The lamp lit only one corner of the smoking room. The rest of the room was bathed in dim light. The door opened on darkness. Katarina rose without a sound; the creaking resumed. His plan was brave: to silently win the door of the bedroom; there, turn the switch, flood the room with clarity, see, know and parry; but all this without a gesture making a slight trembling, without a step crackling, because of the intruder that had to be surprised and Johan that should not be frightened. Carpets covered the floors, thick, favorable, blessed! Johan, deafened by his electric treatment, would hear nothing. As for the intruder. She was advancing, as if on the dubious ice of a very deep lake, as though through a medium heavier than the water itself, balancing arms and fan-shaped hands, having something of a rope dancer going on her steep journey. On the way, with the dizzying rapidity that seizes ideas at very critical moments, evidence and suppositions crisscrossed their flashes in his mind. Was she going to see "Demonoplasm" again? Was it him, or some aphidian? A shadow? A man! But then a fake man, an infrared man? ... Once again, how did you enter the room? There was no one in this room when she was out. Since the theft of the jewels, she had been careful to look under the bed, behind the curtains, everywhere at last, at bedtime; and she did it today; she had done it an hour before! ... No one had taken advantage of Johan's return to break into the apartment. Nobody had been able to insinuate himself behind him, since, when he returned, she was there, in the corridor, she, Katarina, who saw what everyone did not see! In vain his enemy accumulated the examples of his subtlety, in vain he multiplied in his eyes and intelligence the proofs of that marvelous gift which enabled him to traverse the densest matter; Katarina's astonishment did not fade. But this time, grappling with an adversary whom she felt surprised, seized by the interest of a less unequal combat than usual, Mrs. Bansberg was powerful with an unparalleled composure. She had just crossed the threshold of the smoking room. Opposite, a ray of light indicated the door of the "Hand's Room". The electrotherapy equipment was snoring. On the side of Johan, therefore, nothing to fear.

  The entrance to the smoking room and that to the bedroom were only three steps apart. Holding her breath, Katarina reach
ed the threshold of the room. Impenetrable darkness reigned there. But deep down, to the right, there were small, barely perceptible noises. The closet, of course! The safe with values!

  If the burglar was not a spirit, he had only one way out: the door - the door where Katarina stood, slipping her slow hand against the woodwork, toward the switch.

  She reached him, and turned him in a nervous movement, as one triggers a revolver pointed at someone. The small device let go of its click ...

  But the light did not come. And the darkness, suddenly silent, was formidable.

  Katarina, caught off guard, shuddered. Was the invisible being, alerted by the click, fleeing surreptitiously through the windows of the window or the stone of the walls? Would he, on the contrary, go for the door? ...