The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen

by Jean de La Hire

  COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE DE SAINT-GERMAIN

  October 13, 10 a.m.

  Monsieur le Chef de la Sûreté,

  I have the honor of informing you, for whatever purpose it might serve, that Madame Rondu, governess of Mademoiselle Christiane Saint-Clair, disappeared last night. A pane in the window in her bedroom had been removed. In addition, inquiries have proved to me that a narcotic was mixed yesterday evening, by an unknown hand, with the wine that Madame Rondu and the domestic Baptiste—who was found asleep and has not yet woken up—drank with their dinner. I am continuing my investigation.

  The aviator-agent who will bring you this letter will await whatever orders you care to give me.

  Le Commissaire de Police.

  As for the telegram, rendered in the complex cipher used by the police in secret and confidential communications, the strange document, translated into clear by Monsieur Sanglier, read:

  Sanglier, Sûreté, Paris.

  Abduction Christiane. Am in a position to give precise information. Arriving by Sud-Express. Maintain absolute secrecy regarding my existence, my intervention and my journey.

  Bastien.

  “That’s bizarre!” said Monsieur Henrion. “Didn’t Bastien leave with Admiral de Ciserat’s expedition?”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Préfet.”

  “Is that expedition in Barcelona, then? That’s impossible! They left on October 9, aboard La Gironde, and the Colonial Minister received a telegram from Brazzaville yesterday, in which the Governor says that Admiral de Ciserat, Saint-Clair and their companions arrived without incident in Brazzaville and have left again to go into the interior of the Belgian Congo.”

  “Perhaps Bastien disembarked in Barcelona, which was on La Gironde’s itinerary,” said Monsieur Sanglier.

  Monsieur Henrion and Monsieur Sanglier would have found Bastien’s telegram even more astonishing if they had known that Bastien had been sent, as a cadaver, from the port of Palma to the Faculty of Medicine in Barcelona—but they did not know that.

  “What about Madame Rondu’s disappearance?” said Monsieur Sanglier.

  “Bah! That’s as clear as mud. Go back in the plane with the aviator-agent from Saint-Germain and take a look for yourself. This entire affair seems to be being run by people who are much cleverer than we are…” After making an evasive gesture and taking a cigar from an open box on his desk, Monsieur Henrion added: “You see, my dear Sanglier, experience tells us that in police matters, it’s still chance that is the best ally of society. Perhaps chance has summoned Bastien this time. Do take one of these cigars—they’re excellent.”

  “But not legal,” said Monsieur Sanglier, with a broad snigger.14

  “Obviously!”

  Two hours later, Monsieur Sanglier came back from Saint-Germain. He knew no more than the Commissaire of that pleasant town’s police force—and that was very little.

  The head of the Sûreté did not leave his office again, waiting impatiently there for Bastien’s arrival.

  The day was long and monotonous. Monsieur Sanglier received visits from inspectors, telegrams from France and abroad, and an inventor who came to offer him a proposal for an apparatus for the instant analysis of odors mingled in the atmosphere of rooms in which crimes had been committed—the knowledge of which odors would be able to set investigators on the trail of the criminal, because, it appeared, every human being has a particular and distinctive odor. Monsieur Sanglier wondered whether he ought to send the inventor to the infirmary in the detention cells, but contented himself, on due reflection, with bidding him a polite farewell, putting 100 sous in his hand. The inventor fell over himself expressing his gratitude and swore three times over that, as soon as he had constructed his apparatus, he would make a gift of it to the Sûreté.

  Another two hours went by. Consulting a timetable, Monsieur Sanglier convinced himself that the Sud-Express must have arrived at the station. Where, then, was Bastien?

  Finally, the office-boy, entering for the 100th time since noon, came over to his master and said, in a mysterious fashion: “There’s a gentleman who doesn’t want to give his name. He told me simply to tell Monsieur le Chef de la Sûreté that he’s come from Barcelona.”

  “Send him in!” said Monsieur de Sanglier.

  The office-boy went out, and in his place appeared an extremely pale individual whose face was ornamented by a magnificent blond beard. His eyes were hidden by green-tinted spectacles and he supported himself as he walked with a stout walking-stick. He looked quite worn out.

  When the door had closed again, Monsieur Sanglier took four steps forward and seized the moribund by the arm.

  “Is that you?”

  “It’s me,” the man replied. “Keep your voice down, I beg you.”

  “Bastien?” whispered Monsieur Sanglier.

  “Yes! Bolt the doors!”

  The head of the Sûreté went to bolt both his office doors. When he returned to the desk, which was harshly lit from above by electric lamps, he saw the blond beard and the tinted spectacles on the blotter. He raised his eyes to look at the man and could not hold back an exclamation: “But you’re dead!”

  “I have been, in fact,” Bastien breathed, his eyelids closed, as he let himself fall into an armchair. “And when one is resurrected, believe me, one’s face conserves for some time thereafter the imprint of the other world…”

  His emaciated face was cadaverously pale and his sunken eyes were shining with an ardent fever.

  “You’ve been dead?” murmured Monsieur Sanglier, disconcertedly.

  “Very nearly. Which is to say, cataleptic—and, as you know, catalepsy gives a man struck by it all the appearances of death. I’ll tell you my story when we have more time. Tell me, have you a glass of rum? I think I’m about to faint.”

  Monsieur Sanglier hurried to a cupboard, opened it, took out a decanter and a glass, poured out a generous helping of the liquor and presented the glass to Bastien’s lips. Bastien was, indeed, on the point of fainting.

  When the glass had been emptied by prudent sips, Bastien put it down on a corner of the desk and said, in a slightly stronger voice: “You haven’t discovered anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The abduction of Christiane Saint-Clair hasn’t been followed by any other event?”

  “Madame Rondu, Christiane’s governess has disappeared.”

  “When?”

  “Last night?”

  “No clues?”

  “None.”

  “Good. Will you please sit down in your usual chair, get out your pen and take down everything I have to say in shorthand, in order that nothing will be forgotten subsequently, in case someone kills me.”

  “Kills you!” exclaimed Monsieur Sanglier, bewildered and somewhat afraid. “Who can do that, here, in my office?”

  “Bah!” said Bastien, shrugging his shoulders. “How do I know that you, too, aren’t an agent of the Fifteen?”

  The head of the Sûreté shuddered. Very pale, his hands agitated by a nervous tremor, but without saying another word, he sat down in a wicker armchair, drew a pad of headed notepaper towards himself and took up his pen.

  “Speak,” he said, simply. “I’ll write.”

  Part Two: Between Worlds

  I. Forward the Nyctalope!

  After leaving the Condor’s gondola, Saint-Clair and Maximilien Jolivet walked without pausing until daybreak. Beneath the immense trees of the jungle, the night was pitch-dark, but the Nyctalope’s eyes pierced the darkness—or, rather, the darkness did not exist for him. Orientating himself every quarter of an hour with an excellent pocket compass, Saint-Clair advanced at a rapid pace, finding his way without hesitation through the labyrinth of narrow pathways traced through the virgin forest by the Vouatoua dwarfs who lived there and the innumerable wild beasts that populated it.

  As for Maximilien Jolivet, whose eyes did not have the extraordinary faculty of seeing by night, he carried a minuscule electric lamp attached to his jacket
; its beam, without much radiant power, projected a few paces forward in a straight line and stained Saint-Clair’s moving back with a little flower of light. By this means, although he could see nothing around him, moving in a meandering line through darkness as opaque to him as that of a tunnel, the brave Maximilien was able to follow Saint-Clair without the slightest hesitation. The little flower of light, dancing on the Nyctalope’s back to the rhythm of Jolivet’s footfalls, said to the young man: “Don’t lose sight of me, and keep going.” And he kept going, his carbine on his shoulder, with the athletic and decisive stride of a captain of some scholarly battalion.

  The calm and silence of the night were untroubled, save by the distant roars of wild beasts, the chattering voices of roaming chimpanzees and, at long intervals, the harsh, piercing and horribly harrowing cry of some solitary lemur.15

  For several hours, Saint-Clair and Jolivet did not exchange a single word, but when the first light of dawn pierced the thick curtain of branches, foliage and lianas, Saint-Clair stopped and said: “Rest for quarter of an hour, Max.” Then, after consulting his compass, his chronometer and his pedometer, he added: “These paths have taken us a little too far south. It’ll be necessary to cut straight through to the north-west, whatever gets in our way. Sling your rifle over your shoulder and take your hatchet in hand. I know the jungle well enough to understand from certain indications that we’re entering a region of clay soil, and walking will be difficult. Are you tired?”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “Bravo, Max. Let’s have a bite and be on our way. By tonight, we need to be lying in wait on the edge of the forest beside the enigmatic esplanade of the Fifteen’s base.”

  “If you’re there, Commander, I’ll be there.”

  “You’re a brave lad, Max. Don’t worry, we’ll get your sister back.”

  “And the Demoiselles de Ciserat, too,” replied Jolivet, with as much audacity as was appropriate.

  Saint-Clair shivered, and looked at the young man with a rapid flash of emotion. “Damn!” he said. “I thought I knew you well, but I see that you have even more qualities than I thought…” And he added, in a tone of inexpressible authority: “I like you, Max.”

  “Thank you, sir!” exclaimed the young Parisian, blushing with joy and pride. Nimbly, he unfastened the haversack that he was carrying on his back in the manner of a soldier, and took out two pancakes, a jar of pickles and a flask of coffee.

  The meal lasted ten minutes. Then, with the haversack buckled and re-suspended, they resumed their march, rifles over their shoulders and hatchets in hand.

  The Nyctalope had been right about the difficulty of making progress, but Saint-Clair was one of those men, too rare in our time, whose endurance and energy increases in proportion to the accumulation of obstacles—and Jolivet too was moved by two sentiments that gave him strength: emulation and the desire to be worthy of the master he had chosen.

  Accustomed to rapid advancement since their departure, now they had to pause continually, and wait patiently until they were able to take a few steps forward, thanks to the passage they had opened in the curtain of lianas with hatchet-blows. In the meantime, the trees poured forth a heavy dew from every leaf; large drops of water fell upon them from every branch, every liana and every stem. Above their heads, networks of interlaced branches hid the light from them. They did not know whether the day was cloudy, sunny or misty. They marched through a feeble twilight, like that of temperate climates an hour after sunset.

  Soon, the clay on which they had been walking turned into a tenacious mud from which, at every step, water seeped that imprisoned them up to their knees. To the right and the left, the thickets of the undergrowth rose up to a height of five or six meters. The soil, a dark brown humus formed by the accumulation over many centuries of the forest’s debris, incessantly soaked, constituted a warm bed of an astonishingly prolific fertility, from which thousands of plants of an incredible diversity sprouted, between the enormous trees.

  From time to time, the marchers descended into ravines containing streams that emerged from leafy depths composed of date-palms, banana-trees and fig-trees. They had then to climb the opposite slopes through thickets of clinging and creeping stems. It was a difficult march, often halted by the necessity of scaling the enormous trunk of a fallen tree or opening a passage with hatchet-blows through an inextricable tangle of lianas.

  The dew fell until 10 a.m., incessantly striking the two obstinate men with its large drops. Their clothes were saturated; their helmets seemed to be charged with lead. To the external humidity was added the transpiration that exuded from their every pore, for they were stifling. Warm vapor rose up visibly from the soil, forming a grey cloud above their heads. What point is there, though, in describing the incessant and perennially-renewed difficulties that afflicted their progress? Exhausted and breathless, the adventurers did not reach the edge of that frightful undergrowth until 2 p.m.

  Saint-Clair finally stopped and said, in a contained voice: “Halt, and rest.”

  They had come to a little clearing strewn with rocks, between which snaked a stream, whose source was at the foot of a colossal banana-tree. A path that ended at this wellspring, on the far side of the stream, bore innumerable tracks of the feet and claws of wild beasts, in the midst of which it was easy to recognize the large imprints of the enormous feet of elephants.

  “Let’s eat!” said Saint-Clair. “There, on that flat rock.”

  In the middle of the clearing there was, indeed, a natural table formed by a great flat circular rock, appropriate for setting out victuals.

  While Jolivet took various objects from his haversack and Saint-Clair wiped the barrel of his dew-soaked carbine, the branches of a banana-tree were gently parted a few paces away from them, and a horrible grimacing face appeared between the large leaves. Then, little by little, a body emerged, very prudently, ready to disappear at the slightest movement either of the two men he was watching might take towards it.

  What an extraordinary creature it was! An enormous head, hairy and bearded, on a little body that was entirely naked, wiry and muscular, as if hewn by blows of a hatchet. The whole was a dark chestnut color, and measured no more than a meter in height from the soles of its feet to the top of its head. It was evidently one of those horrible dwarfs that still populate the unknown regions of the great equatorial forests of Africa—one of the dwarfs of which Stanley had spoken in his accounts of his travels across the mysterious continent.

  The newcomer fixed his sharp and cruel eyes on Saint-Clair and Jolivet. Suddenly, he lifted the bow that he held in his left hand, affixing to it with his left hand a long barbed arrow. The bow flexed, and a ferocious smile crossed the monster’s face; the arrow was about to fly—and then the dwarf abruptly changed his mind, lowered the bow and arrow, took a step back and went back into the banana thicket.

  Saint-Clair and Jolivet were oblivious to the danger that one of them, at least, had been in. They continued tranquilly, one of them laying the table, the other wiping the barrel of his rifle.

  “Lunch is served, Commander,” said Max, standing up straight again.

  Saint-Clair glanced at the conserves. “There’s no dessert!” he said. “Wait! I saw some magnificent bananas a few paces away.”

  And the Nyctalope, retracing his steps, went back into the forest.

  Jolivet, water-bottle in hand, headed for the stream in order to get some fresh water. He still had his carbine over his shoulder. He turned his back completely to the banana-tree in which he dwarf was hiding. Then the dwarf reappeared, took two steps into the clearing, lifted his bow and took aim. The arrow flew—but at the instant when it was released, Max had made a slight movement, and that saved his life. The barbed point grazed his neck and sank into the stream with a hiss.

  As quick as lightning, Jolivet turned around. He saw the dwarf. With a single movement, he had his carbine in his hands; he put it to his shoulder, almost without taking aim, and fired…

  The
monster was lifted from the ground and collapsed, face down. Jolivet reached him with a few rapid paces and turned him over with his foot. There was a tiny bloody hole in his left breast; the bullet had struck him straight in the heart.

  “What’s up, Max?” said the Nyctalope, emerging from the edge of the forest with a bunch of bananas on his shoulder. He had not heard the silent shot.

  “Commander,” said Jolivet, emotionally, his youth showing through now the danger was passed, “it’s one of those dwarfs you mentioned to me. He fired an arrow, which grazed me—then, my word, I followed your advice and put him down!”

  “You did well, my lad!” said Saint-Clair, simply. “But that’s a warning for us. One single moment of inattention might be the death of us, as you see. In the vicinity of the Fifteen’s base, the forest must be swarming with these little monsters, just as the neighborhood of an oasis abounds with jackals. We’ll sit down back-to-back on that stone and we’ll each cover half the edge of the clearing with our eyes. At the slightest suspect sign, no hesitation—carbine in hand and fire! But I ought to congratulate you on your skill and promptitude—you haven’t wasted the time you’ve spent on the firing range!”

  “He was only ten paces away!” said Jolivet, modestly.

  Saint-Clair smiled. He sat down first on the stone; the young man imitated him—and they ate, back-to-back, with loaded carbines on their knees. If it was not sumptuous, the meal was at least tranquil. No suspect movement was evident amid the banana-trees, lianas and bushes.

  At 3 p.m., after smoking a cigarette, Saint-Clair and Jolivet resumed their march through the jungle, still in a north-easterly direction. Again, they followed the animal-trails and the paths made by the Vouatoua.

  They had no further encounters before nightfall, except for a chimpanzee that amused itself for more than an hour by following them, without manifesting any hostility. There was no trace of dwarfs; the one in the clearing had doubtless been undertaking a long journey, far from his tribe’s huts.