Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Einstein blinked, and slowly shook his head. “I can scarcely begin to understand the principles involved.”

  “I’m sure they will become clear to you,” the old man said. “In time.”

  “But supposing that this device does function as you suggest,” Einstein said, “what is its purpose? What is the utility of attracting objects with a different resonance frequency that this… what did you call it? Space-time?”

  The old man rubbed his lower lip, and then wagged a finger in the young man’s direction. “I believe I’ve worked out the cause of anomalies you have noted in recent years, those involving these strange energies which seem to contravene the expected laws of physics. It would appear that your continuum has been infected by influences from outside what you would consider the natural world. These strange energies, resulting from the presence of beings from beyond the dimensions of space and time that you know, over the course of decades, has been perverting the fabric of reality, slowly transforming it into a replica of some other plane of existence.”

  “Towards what end?”

  “Why, to colonize your world, of course. My boy, you are being invaded, and you don’t even realize it.”

  The night wore on. The assemblage before them continued to hum, setting their teeth on edge, and the stars wheeled in their slow courses overhead.

  The two men discussed energy and matter and space and time, passing the hours, until finally falling silent, simply staring up at the clear night sky overhead.

  “It just occurred to me, Doctor,” Einstein said at last, breaking a lengthy silence. “Should these beings you seek appear, what do you intend to do?”

  “Hmmm?” The old man raised an eyebrow, a contemplative expression on his face. “Do? Oh, yes. Well, that is a good question, isn’t it?”

  “But, I thought…” Einstein began, alarmed, but the rest of his words were cut off, as the air around them suddenly began to vibrate, and a soft blue light suffused the hilltop.

  “No time for that now, my boy,” the old man said, raising his voice above a sound like a hundred violins tuning up at once. “I believe our guests have arrived.”

  Suddenly, the sound ceased, and just as suddenly the empty air around them was filled with a riot of shapes and forms.

  “Donnerwetter,” Einstein whispered.

  Circled around the two men and the strange apparatus, these unearthly shapes appeared to fall into one of three categories. Cones, which varied in color from blue to green, and which were about half the size of a full-grown man; cylinders, some tall and thin, others low and squat, which range from bronze laced with green, to purple, to black; and layers, vertical shapes patterned almost like the bark of a birch tree, which seemed to resemble virgin copper. Each of them was translucent, shifting in color and size continuously, and at the base of each is a dazzling light. As the two men watched, the shapes shift from one form to another, cones becoming cylinders, layers becoming cones, undulating endlessly.

  “As I suspected,” the old man said, as the undulating figures circled around them.

  “What are they, Doctor?” Einstein asked, his voice a tremulous whisper.

  “On most worlds in which they have appeared, they are known simply as ‘The Shapes,’ but my people have long known them as the Xipéhuz.”

  “Doctor!” Einstein said urgently, grabbing the old man’s elbow and attempting to drag him away from the device. “We must flee.”

  “Flee?” The old man snarled briefly, his eyes momentarily flashing. “What do you take me for?” He calmed, and then added, “Besides, each of the Xipéhuz is capable of emitting radiant energy in a concentrated burst, sufficient to reduce either of us to ashes.”

  “What?!” Einstein blanched, and regarded the strange floating forms in horror intermingled with amazement.

  “But this is not a contest to be won by fisticuffs and feet, my dear boy,” the old man said, patting Einstein’s shoulder. “No, we must reason with these creatures. They are quite simple, when you get down to brass tacks.”

  “But what are they?” Einstein asked, eyes wide.

  “They are three dimensional intrusions of multidimensional beings, naturally.” The old man shook his head, a distasteful expression curling his lip. “But really, they are little more than pests.”

  One of the floating cones flashed red, angrily, and advanced towards the old man, the star-like light at its base dazzling.

  “There we are. An invitation to parley.” The old man stepped right up to the advancing cone, his chin held high. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he said, a hard edge to his voice.

  The cone seemed to vibrate in the air, and a black symbol appears on its front. It resembled nothing so much as the Greek letter omega, but then quickly transformed into what appears to be the Greek letters theta and sigma, which then turned sideways before fading from view.

  “That’s right,” the old man said, nodding slowly, as though coaxing a simple answer from a slow child. “And you know what I’m capable of doing, I would bargain.”

  Einstein was confused, and grabbed hold of the old man’s elbow. “Doctor, what is happening?”

  “The shapes and lines which sometime appear on the surface of the Xipéhuz”–the old man pointed to the symbols now coming into view on the surface of another of the forms–“are complicated signs used for communication. But though they hate to admit it, they are capable of understanding the spoken word, perfectly, and could probably even vibrate the air around them sufficient to create spoken language, if they weren’t so pig-headedly obstinate.”

  Another of the Xipéhuz now displayed a new symbol, a complex figure-eight design inside of a circle.

  “I have left my people,” the old man answered, as a cloud passed across his features. He shook his head. “A minor difference of opinion. But don’t think for an instant that I’ve surrendered any of my power in doing so.”

  A floating cylinder shifted like sand through an hour glass, going from tall and thin to short and squat, and flashed a quick sequence of black shapes on its forward edge.

  “This is my home, for the moment,” the old man answered, crossing his arms over his chest, “and I won’t have you muddying the place up.”

  One of the vertical layers moved from side to side, and flashed a single, incredibly complicated symbol on its surface.

  The old man glowered, and shook his head. “That’s all well and good, isn’t it, until you’ve pushed things too far, and then decoherence is the least of our problems. At that point, there’s no more particles, no more fundamental forces, and no more arrow of time.”

  One of the cones shifted from blue to green, and displayed another set of symbols.

  “Good for you, perhaps,” the old man said, stabbing a finger in the cone’s direction, “but not good for me, nor for any of the natives of this continuum. And if you think I’ll stand idly by, and allow myself to be marooned in a little bubble of distorted four-space, you are sadly mistaken.”

  Several of the Cones clustered together, raising slightly off the ground, and moved closer to the two men, menacingly. The one in the lead displayed one, simple symbol.

  “What will I do about it?” the old man said, repeating the question.

  After a lengthy pause, the old man smiled, darkly, and answered.

  “You know who I am, and you know what I’m capable of doing. The question you need to ask yourself, Xipéhuz, is what I won’t be willing to do about it.”

  The old man and the patent examiner stood in silence as the shapes appeared to communicate amongst themselves, rapidly shifting shapes, sizes and colors in a dizzying array too quick for the human eye to follow.

  Finally, they all adopted the same form, and the two men were ringed by dozens of translucent blue cones, each about half the size of a man.

  As one, the cones all displayed the same symbol on their surfaces, and then with a mighty inrush of air, they disappeared from view.

  The air was still around them, a
s the sky began to pink in the east, the first signs of the coming dawn.

  “What happened?” Einstein looked around him, turning this way and that, as though suspecting the strange forms of sneaking up behind him. “What did they say?”

  “They have gone, leaving this continuum for less… troublesome climes. As for what they said? Well, let us say that they expressed displeasure at my intervention, and leave the matter at that.”

  The old man leaned down, and collected the small gem-like objects from the assemblage they had constructed, and the faint humming which had persisted through the night suddenly stopped.

  “Had I not seen it with my own eyes,” Einstein said, rubbing his hands together, “I’m sure I wouldn’t believe a bit of it. I came following you seeking answers, and find myself now with even more questions than before.”

  “The important thing is not to stop questioning,” the old man said, smiling. “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

  The old man pocketed the glittering objects and started down the hill, leaving the assemblage of copper and iron and ceramics behind.

  “Come along, my boy,” the old man called back over his shoulder. “You have work to which to return, I’m certain, and I have matters requiring my attention back in France. But first, a hearty breakfast seems in order, don’t you think?”

  Over a stout Swiss breakfast of fresh bread, cold meats and cheeses, sweet rolls and coffee, the old man and the patent examiner discussed all manner of things, most often with the old man listening attentively as the younger man worked his way through any number of his half-formed hypotheses. The old man nodded appreciatively, asking leading questions from time to time, the bones of their meal lying forgotten on the table between them.

  Near midday, when the young man could delay going to the Patent Office no longer, the two men shook hands and parted company. Each headed into history, each in his own way.

  By week’s end, Doctor Omega was back in Le Creusot. Though Borel plied him with repeated inquiries about what had so commanded his attention that he traveled to another country, the old man remained tight lipped about the affair.

  Five weeks later, though, on their return to his residence near Marbeuf in Normandy, the old man found a parcel waiting for him. It contained the finished draft of a paper, “On a Heuristic Point of View concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” along with a note from its author, indicating that the work would see publication in the June 9th edition of Annalen der Physik. An analysis of the photoelectric effect which disregarded the notion of panergon–recently dismissed by the scientific community as nothing more than a hoax–it introduced the author’s notion of quanta, discrete packets of energy which, in the aggregate, behaved like a wave.

  Over dinner, having spent a long day attaching plates of pandimensional metal to the surface of their still-unnamed vessel, shipped by rail from Le Creusot, the old man showed the journal to Borel, and tried unsuccessfully to explain its significance, saying as much as circumstances and decorum would allow.

  That Borel failed to recognize the import of those few pages was hardly surprising. It would be many years to come before any but a select few would recognize what a year of wonders this had been.

  As George Orwell observed in his article “Raffles and Miss Blandish” (Horizon, Oct. 1944), amateur cracksman Raffles is not just “a honest man who has gone astray, but a public-school man who has gone astray. His remorse, when he feels any, is almost purely social; he has disgraced the old school." Lupin, on the other hand, was not born a gentleman and, despite all his attempts to pose as one, will never truly be part of High Society. He is, at heart, a street urchin, an anarchist of the salons, a true man of the people. That quality is wonderfully emphasized in this remarkable contribution by Canadian writer Jean-Louis Trudel, which is a fitting almost-conclusion to a volume which was entitled, after all, Gentlemen of the Night...

  Jean-Louis Trudel: Legacies

  Paris, 1924

  In the gardens of the Palais-Royal, a cold rain was falling. Oblivious to the drops, a lone stroller skirted the patches of yellowed grass. There was no mistaking his national origin. Under his black umbrella’s shelter, he was from head to toe the very picture of an English gentleman in Paris. Bowler hat, bespoke suit from a Savile Row tailor, real leather shoes waxed by a Crillon bellhop... All that he lacked was a proper coat, especially since the late October weather had turned bitter.

  Withered leaves crunched under the man’s feet, the sound cutting through the patter of raindrops. The gravel paths of the Palais-Royal were deserted. Even the hardy British nurses were nowhere to be seen. They had sought the protection of the arcades, taking along their young Parisian charges. The rosy-cheeked young women from Hull or Perth were waiting for a break in the weather, holding on tightly to the boys in sailor suits and the girls in heavy skirts who still hoped for a chance to play.

  Though the lines of the man’s face betrayed a life already rich in adventure and high drama, he fancied many a youth would have envied the spring in his step and the slimness of his frame. As he approached the far corner of the public gardens, he tipped his umbrella to sneak a glance at the dormer windows lining the edge of the zinc roofs. Grey skies glowered back at him.

  “Poor Ganimard!” he whispered to himself. “A mere garret. It’s a poor reward for so many years of service. The Republic owed you more. But I may be able to do something about that... if you’ll let me.”

  Once inside, he climbed a series of stairs. The higher he went, the rattier the carpeting. The last flight was bare wood, stained and worn in the middle. A card pinned to the third door allowed him to knock confidently.

  “Who is it?”

  “Inspector Lestrade, from London.”

  The door opened.

  “Come in, Monsieur Lestrade. But please excuse the state of the premises.”

  Justin Ganimard was showing his age, thought the visitor. Retirement had not been kind to the former Chief Inspector. The white hair was unkempt and the sunken cheeks showed a pitiful stubble. The suit he’d hastened to put on shone at the elbows, nearly threadbare. And the room was small, with hardly enough space for a bed, a table, a couple of chairs and a folding screen to hide the washstand.

  “To what do I owe the honor? Everybody knows Scotland Yard’s finest, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Oh! But we have, and many times besides.”

  “I really can’t recall...”

  The visitor swung his furled umbrella at the humble room.

  “So what happened to that little house you were saving for?”

  “I put all my money in Russian Bonds. How was I to know...”

  The old Policeman shrugged eloquently. The demise of Tsarist Russia had left thousands of French citizens with nothing but worthless paper to show for their pre-war savings.

  “But wait... Who told you about the house?”

  Laughter burst forth. Ganimard stared, amazed, at the unexpected sight of a London Police Inspector besides himself with mirth. Unable to speak for laughing, the man was holding his sides and wagging a finger reprovingly at him. At length, he caught his breath and spoke again.

  “Truly, Ganimard, it is a wonder that you still can’t recognize me. You’ve been running after me long enough.”

  The visitor leaned forward. In that instant, his face changed. His gaze sharpened, losing the weary vagueness of the London Policeman’s eyes. As muscles unclenched and age lines disappeared, the man in front of Ganimard appeared to make the years vanish from his expression. He smiled mockingly.

  “You!”

  “Ah, Ganimard, I’m glad to hear you say that with such obvious pleasure. I was worried you might bear me a slight grudge. No, don’t bother being polite, you have the right, I admit it readily. I did play you for a fool once, perhaps twice. And it was unfailingly delightful to give you the slip. The old cops and robber routine only works if the Police is left dumbfounded... but I’m rubbing it in, am I n
ot.”

  “You!” growled the old man, unwilling to pronounce the name of Arsène Lupin aloud. “Are you here to torment me?”

  “Never. Wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, I’m here to ask you for a favor.”

  Ganimard was, true to form, dumbfounded. Lupin smiled wanly.

  “You want my help?”

  “I need an invitation to the next ball at the Soviet Embassy.”

  “But why?”

  “Why do you think? A lady fair and worthy of my acquaintance... if I’m allowed in.”

  Ganimard sighed.

  “You and your petticoated friends. What’s her name?”

  “Well, she said she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, but I don’t know whether I should believe her.”

  “If she is that, I doubt she’ll be welcome at the Embassy.”

  “Indeed she won’t, but she asked me to go.”

  “And what did she ask you to do?”

  “Nothing much. The new Russia is in dire straits. It would seem, my old enemy, that if the workers run the country, nobody is left to work. The Soviets desperately need money. Well, Ganimard, what does one do in such a case? Perhaps you know how it is now, if you never did before... You pawn what you have. Family heirlooms, if necessary. Jewels, for instance.”

  “Jewels!”

  “The Romanov jewels, if you prefer. Diamonds, emeralds, Fabergé eggs, and the like... The Commissars wish to use them as collateral to negotiate an international loan of some sorts, and they’ve brought them to Paris for appraisal. On the other hand, the Grand Duchess wants them back.”

  “I can’t help you steal!” the old man protested despairingly, for he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

  “Is it theft? Surely, the Romanov jewels belong to the Romanovs. The Grand Duchess Anastasia is a Romanov. Ergo, this is not theft but restitution. QED. The law should approve. And you should applaud. You’re surely not going to tell me the Bolsheviks have any right to them? They massacred the rest of the family to get their hands on them. They are thieves themselves, and worse than thieves.”