by Tom Slemen
"Yes." La Sage turned his attention to Jean-Louis, who was drumming his fingers on the table. "I believe we've met before, haven't we, monsieur - Deveau isn't it?"
"Yes," The man from Marseilles displayed a nervous tic in his face.
"You ran off with the takings from a nightclub in the Latin Quarter, and I caught you, didn't I?" said La Sage, plainly relishing the fact.
Jean-Louis Deveau nodded, then looked forlornly down at the table top as the gloating policeman smiled.
"And what are you doing in Paris?" La Sage's laser-like stare beamed down on Jean-Louis.
"I'm er, looking after my sick sister,” Jean-Louis croaked from his closed-up throat, avoiding contact with the lawman.
"Oh, I do hope she gets better soon. Well, I must be on my way. Bye-bye." La Sage walked on down the boulevard.
Once the policeman was out of range, Claude sighed. "That was close."
"I hate that gloating idiot," said Jean-Louis. Feeling comfortable enough to eat again, he picked up the remaining cream cake and eased it whole into his cavernous mouth.
"Don’t worry about the fool," said Alain, lighting a cigarette, "If the job goes as planned tonight, we'll never have to see his face again. We'll be able to live in luxury down on the Riviera."
The job was so simple. All they had to do was gain entry to the home of a Professor Goldstein, blow the safe, remove all the hard and untraceable cash that the eccentric old man was hoarding, and get out. There was no alarm system installed in the place because Goldstein was too mean to get one fitted and really thought that no one knew about his old safe. But a friend of an associate of Jean-Louis Deveau knew someone who cleaned the windows of Goldstein’s home, and this window cleaner had been doing his mundane job one day when he glimpsed the scatterbrained professor making a large withdrawal of money from the wallsafe. When Alain got to know, he was shell-shocked to learn that his brother's apartment was in the same street as Goldstein's house, and was situated in a neighbouring building less than one hundred yards away. All he would have to do was get through the skylight of his brother's apartment, go along the roof, and enter the skylight of Goldstein's house; simplicity – and that was a word Alain Chabrol loved.
At 7. 35 p.m., Professor Goldstein left his apartment and drove off in his old Renault 6 to the chess club, as he did without fail every Thursday. Five minutes later, three men in black ski-masks emerged from a skylight and crept along the slated roofs until they reached Goldstein's skylight, Claude took a roll of sticky tape from his satchel and applied several strips of it to one of the panes of the skylight, then belted it with a hammer wrapped in a towel. Not even a tinkle was heard. The youth inserted his hand into the hole in the pane and undid a rusty catch.
"Well done," Alain complemented Claude, and watched the youth open the skylight wide.
The three burglars dropped into Goldstein's garret and made their way down to the drawing room, where the fabled safe was said to be, The safe was hidden behind a framed Renoir print, and Claude identified it as a Farrel & Herring model; an obsolete 19th century safe that could practically be blown by a child.
"I'll only need a quarter of the jelly to blow this little baby." Claude stroked the safe door.
Alain searched the house just to check no one was around, and then the two men removed their masks.
"I'll go upstairs to get a mattress," said Jean-Louis. He went up to the bedroom and threw the blankets and pillows off Goldstein' s single bed, then got hold of the mattress and hauled it down the stairs to the drawing room. When he returned, Claude had already cut a piece off the block of yellow putty-like explosive and was applying it to the lock of the safe. Alain looked on as the youth pressed a small detonator cylinder with red and blue wires trailing from it into the gelignite.
"Okay, rest the mattress against the safe," said Claude, removing his mask to reveal a sweaty face.
Alain propped the mattress up against the safe, then walked into the hall with Jean-Louis and Claude, who was unwinding the wires from the detonator off a small bobbin. The drawing room door was closed behind them, and Claude finally came to the end of the detonator wires. He took a small PP3 Ever Ready nine-volt transistor radio battery from his pocket and looked at Alain, for a moment. He then touched the positive terminal of the battery with the red wire and the blue wire was applied to the negative terminal. At that precise moment, a dull explosion sounded in the drawing room, and the floor throbbed for an instant. The three crooks opened the door and entered the drawing room to see that the gelignite had blown a small hole in the mattress and had produced a mini-blizzard of feathers in the process. Alain pulled the mattress away. The gelignite had done its job of destroying the safe’s primitive lock mechanism.
"I'll open it. The handle's still hot." Claude's gloved hand turned the handle and yanked the blackened and smoking door of the safe open to reveal - not much. A small roll of banknotes and a little pile of coins that added up to around four thousand francs, and an odd-looking helmet.
"Some haul. Spaggiari eat your heart out," said a disillusioned Jean-Louis.
"I don't believe it. I was told the old man had over a million francs in here. What a waste of time.“ Alain fanned away the smoke and looked further into the safe. He saw a thick book which he picked up to examine.
Claude read the book's title over Alain's shoulder. "Neurostimulator Notes."
"What the heck is a neurostimulator?" said Jean-Louis, taking his third of the bank notes.
"This book’s some sort of technical manual. There’re drawings of that crazy helmet in here." Alain leafed through the tome. "That thing must be one of Goldstein’s inventions."
"But what does it do?" said Claude, "It's just a crummy helmet. It wouldn't even make a good crash helmet. It'd only cover the top half of your head."
Alain picked up the headgear and examined it, "I’ll take it anyway. See what the thing does. I suppose I'd better take the book too."
"Why don’t we have a look around the place?" suggested Claude. "There might be some valuables knocking about?"
"No, let's quit. Someone might have heard the explosion. Don't worry; I'll have another job ready in a week or two." Alain put his mask back on and told the others to do the same. They returned to the garret and left through the skylight.
When they were safely back in the apartment of Alain's brother, Claude and Jean-Louis waited until they were certain that no police had arrived outside, then disappeared into the night. Alain's brother had a good laugh at the safe-blowing fiasco, and a quarrel ensued which ended In Alain storming out of the apartment after being called, "An idiot, and an utter failure as a thief."
Later that evening in his apartment Alain sat at the window drinking the last inch from a bottle of bad red wine, looking into the night. He felt so depressed over the failed safe job, and became even more depressed when he saw Juliette in the street below, entering the building with a young man. The door slammed and he listened as the couple embarked on the steep hike up the stairs to Juliette’s flat above. Alain was about to switch on the TV when he remembered the helmet from Goldstein' s safe. He took it from a plastic bag hidden inside his wardrobe and examined the strange gizmo, It was made out of grey high-impact plastic, and there was a small toggle switch on the side of the helmet, just above ear level. The helmet was lined with comfortable padded PVC. But its purpose still couldn’t be fathomed, so Alain decided to tackle the manual he'd taken from the safe. He made a pot of coffee then rested on the bed as he attempted to make sense of the book, After skipping the wordy introduction, he came to a page entitled, 'Session One: Preparation'.
Relax and think of a problem. Alain recited the text in his mind. He grinned, then began quoting it out loud in an effort to make the esoteric material easier to understand, just like a child reading a storybook. 'Press the cold start switch located on the right side of the helmet, You may initially feel dizzy."
Alain put the helmet on and flicked the switch. He suddenly felt so dizzy t
hat he rolled off the bed and hit the floor with a thump, but didn’t hurt himself. The dizziness subsided and Alain suddenly experienced an amazing sensation. His consciousness had somehow been amplified by the helmet, and every thought was incredibly clear. His power of concentration had been heightened to such an extent that he could see a clear colour picture of anything he imagined in his mind. He thought of Juliette's face, and immediately, her face appeared in his mind's eye. Her beautiful countenance seemed so life-like and detailed. He willed the mental image to rotate, and it did, revealing the tight bun of hair on the reverse of Juliette's head. Alain imagined a map of France, and Juliette's face was instantly replaced by a detailed map of his country. He studied the map in his mind and scrutinised the name of every town, highway and river as if he were studying a real geography book map before him. "This is incredible," Alain told himself, and he remembered what the text had said about thinking of a problem, so he gave himself one. "Yes, a problem, let's see. What is the square root of ninety-nine? Ha! It's obvious. It's nine point nine four nine eight seven four four! Let me see; how many seconds are there in a year? Easy! Thirty-one million, five-hundred and thirty-six thousand."
The altered state of consciousness made the Frenchman greedy for information. He felt an insatiable hunger for facts, and the burning urge for more knowledge led him to his small bookcase, where there was a one thousand page encyclopaedia he had never even bothered to read after receiving it as a gift from his sister many years ago.
He assaulted the book of learning, and was delighted to discover he could read more rapidly than normally; five times faster than before in fact. He started at A, and quickly digested the origins of the first letter of the alphabet, then moved on swiftly through Aachen, Aardvark, and continued to read on. As he neared the end of the A section, Alain's rapid rate of reading doubled, and by the time he' d reached the Q section he reached what was apparently the limit of his absorption rate. He could take in all the data on a page within ten seconds. Two hours and seventy-seven minutes later, he finished reading the 25,876th and final article of the encyclopedia, which told him what a zygote was.
Over at Goldstein’s burgled home, the police were interviewing the professor. Inspector Jaques Charroux asked the questions, and took the replies down in his notebook while René La Sage looked on.
"And you say the place isn’t alarmed, monsieur Goldstein? Why is that so?" Charroux walked leisurely away from the blown safe and bent down to take a closer look at all the pieces of feathery mattress stuffing strewn across the carpet.
"I didn’t think I needed an alarm. I didn't think anyone knew about the safe, Inspector," Goldstein admitted. He wiped his glasses with a handkerchief then put them on and scrutinised the black hole in the safe door.
"And this, er, neuro thing - " Charroux struggled to remember the stolen device's technical name.
La Sage reminded him: ‘The neurostimulator.’
"Yes, this neurostimulator; what does it do?" Charroux, continued.
"Well, as its name implies, Inspector, it stimulates the neurons of the brain," Goldstein attempted to explain the function of the device and was not doing a good job of it at all. He was a first class inventor and a very poor educator.
La Sage and the Inspector looked blankly at each other.
"Er, excuse my ignorance, professor," said Charroux, "But you'll have to use the language of the layman, so we can understand."
"Yes. How can I put it?" said Goldstein, to himself. "Around eight tenths of the human brain are never used. We don't know why, but that's how it is. These silent zones of the brain, these dormant areas, if they were to wake up, so to speak, would greatly enhance an individual's intelligence. Some neurologist's think geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart, and Einstein, may have lust been people whose silent zones had been activated, perhaps by some peculiarity of their nervous systems or genetic make-up."
Inspector Charroux put his notebook away and looked at his watch. "Please get to the point, professor – this is not making much sense."
"Well, in a nutshell, Inspector, I spent seven years developing a machine that could wake up the sleeping sections of a person’s brain. The result of all my work was the neurostimulator helmet. The device works on a magnetic induction principle. You see, the very thoughts in any brain are nothing but electrical impulses. So I concentrated on a way to boost these signals by lining a helmet with a superconducting material that would stimulate the neurons in the silent zones of the brain to switch on," Goldstein clicked his fingers above his own bald head.
"Professor, in a nutshell remember?" said an impatient Charroux.
"Okay, inspector. In a damned nutshell, the neurostimulator is a thinking cap," said Goldstein, embarrassed by his own definition.
"This is science fiction, professor. A thinking cap? Something out of a Jules Verne book," scoffed Charroux. La Sage’s shoulders shook twice with subdued laughter.
"I should have expected this from you people," Goldstein shook his head and looked condescendingly at the two men of the law. "Look, Inspector, I implore you to take this matter very seriously. I dread to think what the neurostimulator could to the criminal mind. It could transform the pettiest crook into a supercriminal."
Inspector Charroux gradually became more sombre as he realized that the professor seemed to be genuinely disturbed by the theft of his unusual invention. "Look, professor. Have you any evidence that your - thinking cap - actually works? Did you try it on yourself, for example?"
"Yes, I have evidence. I didn't try the machine on myself. I admit, I was afraid something would malfunction, causing brain damage, But I tried it on a chimpanzee. I'll show you something." Goldstein opened a draw in his desk and took a slim folder from it. He opened the folder and took three A4-sized sheets of paper from it. He looked at the sheets, then handed them to Charroux.
"What's all this?" Charroux examined one of the papers. It was a child-like drawing of a rectangular house with a triangular roof and the usual four windows and a door.
"Those pictures were drawn by a chimpanzee," said Goldstein. "The first sheet is just a lot of scribble. That was done by Luigi, a three-year-old chimp. The second drawing - the one depicting a house - was completed after Luigi had worn the thinking cap for five minutes. And the third drawing, which is quite detailed, was made by Luigi after wearing the cap for five minutes on another occasion."
Charroux saw that the mentioned picture was a detailed sketch in pencil of the Eiffel Tower. "That's truly amazing professor," said Charroux, genuinely impressed. La Sage looked over his superior's shoulder at the exquisite drawing, and was equally amazed.
"Sadly, Luigi died shortly after executing that sketch," said Goldstein.
"That's tragic," said Charroux, "What happened?"
"Nobody knows." said Goldstein. "He went into a sort of coma after prolonged exposure to the neurostimulator, then died from some sort of shock. My close friend, Philllpe Manet, is a philosophy lecturer at the Sorbonne. He believed Luigi's death was due to the tremendous mental shock of knowing the ultimate riddle."
"The ultimate riddle? What's that?" said Charroux.
"The reason why we're all here. You know, what's behind reality, and all that Jazz. It's only a basic ontological theory."
"That’s absurd. A monkey with such knowledge, " Charroux dismissed the hypothesis with a nervous wave of the hand.
Elsewhere in the city, Alain sat at the end of his bed, deep in contemplation with his chin resting on his fist, in the exact same posture as Rodin's famous statue of The Thinker. Although he'd taken the helmet off, he continued to experience the altered state of super-consciousness. He turned thoughts through his mind that no man had ever experienced. Grand meditations on things metaphysically complex and the deceptively simple. Mental machinations of the highest magnitude and thought processes unattained by even the likes of Newton, Euler and Einstein cogitated in the expanded mind of the former petty crook. Alain never blinked once as he stared intentl
y with his mind's eye into that world of higher consciousness which exists above the everyday world of us sleepwalking ‘normals’. Alain recalled and cross-referenced the facts from his encyclopaedic database and cross-fertilized them with other facts and figures to create more information. He started to actually formulate the equations that would result in the startling hypothesis that stumped Einstein and later Hawkins; the Unified Field Theory; a scientific theory that could explain how the forces of electromagnetism, gravity and the atom were interrelated. A theory of everything!
There was a scream upstairs. It was from Juliette.
Alain broke out of his grand cogitations and ran out of his flat. He bounded up the stairs to Juliette's door and pounded on it. There was another scream, and Alain kicked the door open to reveal the sight of Juliette wrestling on her bed with her boyfriend.
"Alain!" shouted Juliette. Her boyfriend had her pinned down on the bed.
Alain brought his fist down heavily on the young man’s back, winding him, then grabbed him by the arm and hurled him away from the bed.
"He wouldn't take no for an answer," said Juliette, and she started to sob.
"Get out of here, you creep!" Alain shouted, and pointed to the door.
"I didn't do anything to her. She kissed me, and - " protested the youth, getting to his feet.
"Out! Now! Or I call the police!" Alain threatened.
The youth mumbled a few profanities and left. Alain slammed the door behind him.
"Thankyou," Juliette wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and sniffled.
"Are you okay?" Alain took hold of her by the shoulders and looked into her face, and deep into her reddened eyes.
"Yes, Thanks."
"You need a drink." Alain looked at the wine bottle on the bedside table. He examined it. "Oh, it's empty. Come downstairs and have a drink and something to eat."
"No, it's okay. I'm fine," said Juliette. She seemed surprised at Alain's new personality. He had never been that assertive before. She had never seen him look so deeply into her eyes like that before.
