‘That’s just what worries me,’ sighed Lalouette.
After all, now that they were sure the great Lonstalot was unaware of what they knew, the whole situation was more reassuring — much more so than before they knew how the other three candidates had met with death so suddenly. So the two men decided that in order not to be disturbed, they would lock themselves in the Dictionary Room so that no one could possibly get in, especially not the great Lonstalot.
And then they bought themselves some cotton and some blue glasses!
With the cotton in their ears and the blue glasses on their noses there in the Dictionary Room sat Hippolyte Patard and Gaspard Lalouette, waiting.
Only a few moments now, and that phenomenal memory of Monsieur Lalouette was going to serve the illustrious cause of letters.
Outside an impatient murmur began to be heard.
‘The hour has come,’ said Patard suddenly, and taking his new colleague by the arm, he opened the door. But some one shoved past them roughly, then shut the door.
The two men stepped back, livid with fear.
The great Lonstalot stood glaring at them.
‘So that’s it,’ he said, a slight tremor in his voice. ‘So, now you’re wearing glasses, are you, my dear Secretary? Ah!... and you, too, Gaspard Lalouette?... How do you do, Monsieur Lalouette... I haven’t had the honour of seeing you for a long time... delighted, I’m sure.’
Lalouette stammered out a few unintelligible words; Patard tried to get control of himself, for the moment was a serious one. The thing that worried him was that the great Lonstalot was hiding something behind his back.
He must look unconcerned — as though nothing was wrong. It was obvious that Lonstalot suspected something. He coughed a little dry cough, kept his eye glued to every turn the scientist made, and said:
‘Yes, Monsieur Lalouette and I have just discovered that our eyes are a little weak.’
Lonstalot took a step forward; the two men took two steps back.
‘Where did you discover that? Wasn’t it perhaps last night at my house?’
Lalouette felt himself getting dizzy. Patard denied it, deploring that neither he nor Lalouette had left Paris last night; that Lonstalot, the most absent-minded of men, doubtless didn’t realize what he was saying.
The great Lonstalot sneered again, still keeping his hand behind his back.
Suddenly, to the terror of the two men, an arm came forward. Instinctively they adjusted their blue glasses and the cotton in their ears. They were sure they were about to gaze at the little black lantern and the dear little ear-piercer.
Instead, their eyes fell on an umbrella.
‘My umbrella!’ exclaimed Patard.
‘You recognize it, then?’ growled the scientist. ‘Your umbrella, which you left in the Varenne train.... A conductor, who knows me and you and has often seen us travelling together, gave it to me.... Ah! my dear Secretary, ah!’ he cried triumphantly as he waved the umbrella fiercely. ‘So you think I’m so absent-minded, do you? Well, would I have left my dearly beloved umbrella on the train as you did?’
At that the great Lonstalot sent the umbrella whirling across the room. It took several turns before it finally spent its force against the calm features of Cardinal Richelieu’s portrait.
The scandalized Patard wanted to cry out against such a sacrilege. But one look at the terrified face of Lonstalot and the cry stuck impotently in his throat.
Lonstalot stood in the doorway waving his arms, looking like Mephistopheles trying to see if he could fly. Lightning seemed to flash from his face and both men thought the great scientist had gone mad. They were sure they were face to face with the devil himself.
‘So... you pair of thieves!’ he burst out at them. ‘Stealing my secret... you had to go down to the cave, did you? while I was away...just like the sneak-thieves you are... he should have cooked you alive... and the dogs should have torn you to pieces, killed you like flies! That’s the way Dédé talks... you saw Dédé, didn’t you?... a pack of thieves... take off your glasses, you fools!’
He stopped a moment to wipe the perspiration from his forehead and the foam from his mouth.
‘Why don’t you take off your glasses?... you have cotton in your ears, haven’t you?... all that fiddle-faddle... all Dédé’s nonsense!... that he invented all those things for me just for a piece of bread!... and the secret of Toth, yes?... and the rays that strike you dead!... and the dear little ear-piercer... all Dédé’s prattle!... what didn’t he tell you?... the poor fool!... poor dear fool.’
Lonstalot sank onto a chair, sobbing desperately. The man who hardly a moment before seemed to them the greatest criminal on earth, now suddenly appeared infinitely pitiful. They were taken off their feet to see him sobbing like this, yet they went up to him with the greatest caution... and they kept on their blue glasses. Shaking in every part of his body, Lonstalot went on:
‘The poor idiot... the poor child... my child... gentlemen... my son... do you understand, now?... my son is an idiot. The law allows me to keep him with me only if I keep him as a prisoner — one day they snatched from his hands a little girl he had almost strangled because he was trying to pluck from her throat something that made her sing well!... I must tell you... it’s my only son... they want to take him away from me... they want to steal him and hide him from me... you have only to say the word and they’ll steal my boy... thieves, all thieves!’
How he sobbed out the words!
Patard and Lalouette, speechless, looked at him, thunderstruck by his revelations and his despair. The mystery of the man behind the bars was explained.
But what about the three dead men?
Patard laid a timid hand on Lonstalot’s shoulder.
‘We’ll not say a word,’ he promised. ‘But there were three other men before us who also promised to say nothing — and they are dead.’
Lonstalot, still weeping, arose and spread wide his arms as though he wanted to embrace all the sorrow of the world.
‘They are dead!... But don’t you suppose I was more shocked than you were?... Bad luck seemed to dog my footsteps... they are dead because they were not in good health... what could I do about that?’
Going up to Lalouette, he looked straight at him.
‘But you, sir... you tell me... you are in good health?’
Before Lalouette could answer, impatient colleagues crowded into the room, trying to find the Secretary and the new member.
In spite of the cotton in his ears, Lalouette was well aware of and pleased by all the honours that were being shown him. He felt sure, after all that Lonstalot had told him, that he could go forth to immortality, quickly and with no regrets of any kind. But at the door of the auditorium he came face to face with Lonstalot himself! It occurred to him that before going any further he would take one last precaution. So, leaning toward the scientist, he said:
‘You ask me if I am in good health... thanks, yes... excellent... I believe all you told me... but in any event I hope for your sake that I shall not die... I have taken the trouble to write out everything that we saw and heard at your house, and it will only be divulged immediately after my death.’
Lonstalot looked at him questioningly and then said slowly:
‘That can’t be true, since you can’t read or write.’
Lalouette could not in all decency turn and go back now. People had already seen him in the hall; deafening cheers had greeted his entrance. The sight of Madame Lalouette in a first tier box had given him a little courage, although Lonstalot had just struck him a terrible blow. He was still shaking. How did that man know he couldn’t read? The secret had been more than carefully guarded; it couldn’t have been Patard who had revealed it, and Eliphas was too happy to see in the Academy a man who couldn’t read to miss his revenge by telling. Eulalie was a thoroughly trustworthy repository for secrets. How then? When? Perhaps, though, Lonstalot meant no harm by his reply; perhaps he was just a desperate, unhappy father... of course... s
o what had Monsieur Lalouette to be afraid of — especially with his blue glasses, and the cotton in his ears?
The honours and the glory heaped upon him by the admiring crowd revived his spirits. He tried to look as proud and triumphant as a Roman conqueror. And he succeeded. Especially as those blue glasses hid just a hint of anxiety in his eyes.
He saw right near him, very quiet and very sad, the great Lonstalot, lost in thought. That expression reassured Lalouette still more. So, just at the proper moment, he began his speech, very much at his ease; bending his elbow and turning the pages just as though he were reading them. His memory served him perfectly... it was very good... very good... so good in fact that he was reciting his eulogy and thinking of something else.
He was thinking, ‘But still, how does the great Lonstalot know that I can’t read?’
All of a sudden he tapped his forehead and cried out in the middle of his speech:
‘I have it! Now I know!’
At this unexpected gesture, this inexplicable cry, every one in the room rose and started toward the speaker, expecting to see him fall, just as the others had fallen.
But, clearing his throat, he said:
‘It’s nothing at all, ladies and gentlemen. I shall go right on... I was saying... ah, yes... I was saying that poor Martin Latouche, dying so prematurely—’
Now Lalouette was superb, calm, and perfectly sure of himself. He spoke of death with the calmness of a man who is never going to die..
they applauded him deliriously... the women especially went mad; they drew off their gloves so that they could clap louder; they interrupted with little cries of praise and pleasure... He saw Madame Lalouette between two devoted friends, little streams of happy tears flowing down her cheeks. He went right on reciting his speech, and made it more effective with some gestures he inserted on the spur of the moment.
Here’s the story of why he had cried out: ‘I have it! Now I know!’
‘I know, because that day when I went alone to Varenne-St Hilaire and when I fled from Lonstalot’s house as though it were a madhouse, that very day I reached the station just in time to hop on the train back to Paris. There was a woman in the compartment shrieking like a peacock; she thought I was going to kill her. The more I tried to calm her the louder she screamed. At the next station she called in the station-master who reproved me for having entered a compartment reserved for ‘Ladies Only.’ He threatened me with arrest but fortunately I had with me my police identification papers, by means of which I could prove that I couldn’t read.... Now, that station-master must be the very one who found Patard’s umbrella and who gave it to Lonstalot. To Lonstalot’s question as to my description, the station-master must have answered that Patard was travelling with the man who couldn’t read!’
‘Ladies and Gentlemen... Monsieur d’Abbeville was, like me, born of simple people....’
At this point in Lalouette’s speech a messenger crossed the room on tiptoe, a letter in his hand.
When the audience saw that letter, they thought it must be for the speaker and, as one man, they cried out:
‘No... no... no letters!... don’t open it!... don’t let him open it!’
One piercing scream came from Madame Lalouette’s seat. When Lalouette had turned his head toward the boy, he had seen the letter - and understood... the most tragic perfume was lying in wait for him, perhaps. Then he had heard the desperate cry from his wife.
He stood up on tiptoe, making himself as tall as he could, and, really dominating, at least with moral force, that frightened crowd, he pointed with a steady finger to the fatal letter and said:
‘Ah, no... not with me... that won’t succeed this time... because I can’t read!’
The hall rang with shouts of mirth, screams of laughter! There was a quick-witted man... full of courage and wit! Didn’t know how to read!
Adorable words! Lalouette’s triumph was complete! His fellow members shook his hand with wild enthusiasm and the outburst of merriment.
His triumph was all the more complete because when all was over Gaspard Lalouette did not die and the man who couldn’t read was able at last to take his place in d’Abbeville’s chair without having been done away with in any way. The letter was not sent to Lalouette’s home address. Madame Lalouette went home to find a husband very much alive and who seemed to her the handsomest of men.
A little later, a boy was born to them whom they named Academus.
As to the great Lonstalot, he met with a great sorrow. His son Dédé died. Patard and Lalouette were invited to the funeral, which took place at night, almost in secret.
At the cemetery Lalouette’s attention was attracted to a very mysterious person. He kept walking up and down, with his eyes on Lonstalot. When the famous scientist knelt, the stranger approached and bent over him as though he wished to ask the reason for his sorrow. The man’s face was invisible, for his hat was drawn down over his brow and a scarf was pulled up around his neck. All during the ceremony, Lalouette kept asking himself who it was, for the man’s general appearance did not seem to him altogether unfamiliar. Finally, the man disappeared into the night.
Patard and Lalouette returned to Paris together — this time not in a compartment for ‘Ladies Only’ but in the ‘Smoker.’
‘Poor Lonstalot seems to be having a good deal of sorrow,’ said Patard.
‘Yes, yes, quite a good deal,’ answered Lalouette shaking his head.
A year later, while on his way to the Academy, Gaspard Lalouette was crossing the Pont des Arts arm in arm with Hippolyte Patard. Suddenly he stopped.
‘Look,’ he exclaimed, pointing, ‘the man with the scarf.’
‘Well?’ said Patard, surprised.
‘Don’t you remember him?’
‘No.’
‘That’s because he didn’t impress you as he did me... that’s the man that didn’t leave Lonstalot’s side the night of the funeral... and I thought then I had seen him somewhere before.’
Just then the man turned around.
‘Monsieur Eliphas de la Nox!’ cried Lalouette.
It was the wizard. He came toward them and shook hands with Lalouette.
‘You here?’ cried the latter. ‘And you’ve never come to see us. Madame Lalouette will be so happy to see you. Won’t you come to dine with us quite informally some evening?’
He presented Eliphas to Patard.
‘And what are you doing now, my dear de la Nox?’
‘Selling my rabbit skins as usual, my dear Academician,’ he answered with a quiet smile.
‘And you don’t regret not being in the Academy?’ Lalouette asked.
‘No, because you are there,’ Eliphas answered gently.
Lalouette took the words as a compliment and thanked him.
The Perpetual Secretary merely coughed.
Lalouette referred to the time he thought he had seen Eliphas at the funeral of Lonstalot’s son.
‘Yes, I was there.’
‘Did you know the great Lonstalot?’ Patard asked.
‘Not personally,’ he answered. ‘No, not personally, but I had occasion to find out about him at the time I was making an investigation for my personal satisfaction, relative to several strange deaths in the Academy.’
Hearing that, the Secretary wished that the Pont des Arts would open up and put an end to a conversation which brought to his mind the most gruesome and painful moments of his usually placid life.
‘Yes, I remember seeing you at the cemetery,’ he stammered. ‘Lonstalot sustained a great loss in the death of that son.’
And Lalouette added:
‘And his troubles are not over... we haven’t seen him at the Academy since that cruel blow and he never comes to help us work on the Dictionary... ah, that was a terrible blow.’
‘Such a blow... such a blow,’ suddenly replied the Man of Light, turning his handsome, mysterious face toward the two trembling men.... ‘Such a blow... that since Dédé’s death... he’s never invented anyth
ing!’
And Eliphas de Saint Elmo de Taillebourg de la Nox turned his back to the Academy and disappeared across the bridge.
Not until they reached the Secretary’s office did Lalouette declare that his conscience would no longer let him guard a guilty secret. In vain Patard pleaded with tears in his voice to have nothing more said about the great Lonstalot. Lalouette would not listen.
‘No,’ he cried, ‘it was Martin Latouche who was right. He was the one who perceived the truth: ‘There has never been a greater crime on earth!’
‘Yes, yes there was!’ Patard burst forth. ‘Yes, there has been a greater one.’
‘And which is it?’
‘The one of letting a man who can’t read become a member of the Academy! I’m the one who’s responsible for that crime.’
And he added, trembling in holy fear, ‘But denounce me if you dare!’
A knock at the door brought them to their senses. Lalouette fell into an armchair and Patard went to open the door. The concierge handed him a registered letter, addressed, ‘Monsieur Perpetual Secretary, to be opened at a closed meeting of the French Academy.’
Patard recognized the handwriting and trembled.
‘What is it?’ asked Lalouette.
In his excitement the secretary did not answer. With the letter in his hands, he paced up and down the room. Suddenly he stopped, looked at the letter, broke the seal and unfolded a thick manuscript, inscribed across the top, ‘This is my confession.’
Lalouette, looking on, understood nothing of the deep emotion which moved Patard as he kept on reading and turning the pages of the mysterious manuscript. Gradually the color went from his face and he became pale as the marble which one day would commemorate his immortal features on the threshold of the Dictionary Room.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 504
