On the Brink of the World's End

by Brian Stableford

  As he emerges from the office, Joe Helly is the focal point of all the gazes in the hall, and the reflection is heard: “He must be mad to walk around with a fortune like that!”

  Without emotion, the bearer of the six millions goes through the entrance gate and resumes following a bizarre course. While walking, he takes off his overcoat; he goes into an alleyway where he rapidly slips the briefcase into a kind of brown kit-bag, and passes the strap over his shoulder in order to carry it. In another alleyway, leading to a hair-dressing salon situated on the entresol, he gets rid of his false beard, converts his deceptive cravat into a conventionally-knotted tie and transforms his soft hat into a bowler. He deposits his overcoat on the staircase that goes up to the hair-dresser’s, after having ripped off the name of the shop from which he bought it. “It will be astonishing if it gets from here to the Prefecture.”

  He is outside again, with an appearance in which no one would have been able to discern the previous Joe Helly.

  In a large café he confides his precious haversack to the cashier. “I’ll come back to collect it in two or three hours.” To himself, he adds: “Now it’s necessary for Charfland to be reborn!”

  He hails a taxi and has himself taken to a place not far from the family boarding-house, to which he goes on foot. Having arrived at his destination he enters deliberately, goes upstairs and opens the door softly with a duplicate key. In his room, he proceeds with a new transformation and appears as at the moment of his departure.

  He rings to ask Thérèse whether any post has arrived for him. After the negative response he goes out, passes the lodge slowly, and makes sure with a glance that he concierge has seen him.

  At a tranquil pace he heads toward a restaurant where he lunches frequently.

  He sits down, while the accused, still framed by the two inspectors, takes a seat with the other witnesses at a neighboring table.

  It is there that the lunch announced by Monsieur de Landré is served. It is an intermission; everyone eats with a good appetite, with the exception of the real Charfland, who is trying in vain to keep a straight face.

  That intermission is followed by another; coffee is taken in a nearby establishment, where Charfland passes ostentatiously before the cashier and the regular customers, to whom he is certainly known.

  The examining magistrate then speaks, saying: “Messieurs, on leaving here, the murderer spent the afternoon in a cinema to which he often went; as he went in he took care to exchange a few words with the cashier, the porter and the usherette. To save time, we’ll skip over that step; we’ll suppose that dusk is approaching and transport ourselves to the said cinema in order to continue the reconstruction following the end of the representation.”

  The accused does not seem to be listening any longer, concentrating all his strength on remaining upright.

  In the vestibule of the cinema Charfland resumes his monologue.

  “Almost everyone has left.”

  Then he hides behind the ample curtain that closes the hall, and observed: “All gone; that’s good.” He goes back into the hall, undresses again, turns his garments inside out, and in a matter of seconds becomes once again the man who was carrying the kit-bag. He goes out, wiping his eyes and stretching his limbs. The porter, who is putting out the lamps in the vestibule observes: “Another one who fell asleep; the usherettes never think about anything but decamping at the first signal of retreat!”

  Charfland returns to the café, asks for his haversack, which is given to him, puts a silver coin in the tray on the counter, thanks the cashier and goes to the lavatory, where he checks the precious contents of the modest bag, and then leaves.

  Then—“It’s dark now,” the examining magistrate observes, in a loud voice—the murderer heads for the quais. He stops under the pile of one of the new bridges, makes sure that no one is looking and accompanies what he does next with a verbal commentary

  “What a good idea I had to note the remark made by a comrade in the Invisible Gang, who worked as a mason on this bridge, that there’s a void that could serve as a good hiding-place. I’ve worked here frequently by night, for periods of half an hour or an hour; no one has ever disturbed me, so the stone is now completely unsealed. I remove the painted rods that imitate the joints; with the aid of this flat chisel I remove the stone... Oh, it’s heavy, but I’m strong... Now, to avoid any deterioration of these precious pieces of paper, let’s surround the knapsack with this rubber sheet; with this solution let’s stick it down so as to render the package watertight... There it is, in place, but when will I see it again? If it’s necessary to wait for months, even years, I’ll have the patience; the stake is worth the trouble. Let’s put the stone back. With the cement that I’ve taken care to store in the hiding-place, a little Seine water and this dainty trowel, this is all that’s necessary to make a new joint... There—it’s done. Finally!

  “Now let’s clean the place up. The rest of the cement, the trowel, the signing apparatus and the cane—into the Seine!

  “Still no one around? Good I can change costume…

  “Here I am, the placid Charfland again!

  “Now, the Law can come!”

  On arrival under the pile of the bridge, the guardians were obliged to sit the accused down on an old crate that had been left there; he could no longer stand up; he was livid, and large drops of sweat were running down his face; increasingly tremulous, his face gave him the appearance of a beast at bay.

  When his double had pronounced his final remark—“Now, the Law can come!” Monsieur de Landré, addressing the accused directly and pointing his finger at him, cried: “The Law has come, Charfland! It is here, and it demands that you account for your crimes!”

  The murderer went even paler. On the point of fainting, he could only murmur: “But who saw me, then? Who turned me in? But I didn’t have any accomplices!”

  “Clerk,” said Monsieur de Landré, “write down the accused’s confessions.”

  And the clerk, without any protest from the wretch, who was no more than a human rag, noted down the long-awaited confessions.

  “Charfland, do you recognize the reconstruction that you have just witnessed as exact?”

  “What would be the point of denying it now, since you have all the proofs?”

  “Good! Inspectors, take the accused back to prison.”

  VI

  Thus concluded the sensational reconstruction of a crime that had, with just entitlement, greatly impassioned public opinion.

  In spite of all the advocate’s requests, the magistrate refused to inform him or the accused of the means that he had employed to discover all the details of the affair.

  “The rights of the defense have been respected; nothing remains now but the confessions of the guilty party,” the examining magistrate limited himself to replying.

  On the evening of that epic day, Max Semper visited Charfland in his cell. He succeeded in giving birth in his mind to the belief that the Invisible Gang had something to do with the discovery of his crime. The Gang, when the crime was reported, had easily divined that he, Charfland, was its author and that, in consequence, he had ten millions in his possession. The Gang had then dispatched two acolytes to Paris to demand a share, but Charfland had refused to recognize his associates and had not responded to the rallying signs they had made to him.

  Judging that Charfland wanted to appropriate the whole of the stolen money, the Gang had opened an investigation, the results of which had been communicated anonymously to the magistrate; that investigation had been the departure point of the reconstruction that had just concluded.

  Charfland, sure of what awaited him, then surrendered to Max Semper, in a spirit of vengeance, everything he knew about the Invisible Gang, and the delighted American detective crossed the ocean again, certain this time that the famous gang would fall into his hands.

  If the reader desires to know the epilogue to the drama, let it be known that Charfland, condemned to death, paid his debt thre
e months after the reconstruction of the crime.

  Almost at the same time, Monsieur de Landré, taking advantage of an exceptional promotion, obtained a seat as a counselor in the Appeal Curt; that was the recompense of the Government, which, thanks to him, was able to respond victoriously to an interpellation lodged some time before regarding the “poor administration of justice.” That interpellation, although conceived in general terms, was fundamentally aimed at the Charfland affair, but the very generality of its terms obliged the author to debate it. The interpellator had envisaged a scandal capable of opening a ministerial crisis; the Charfland affair having been set aside by the guilty party’s confession, nothing remained but trivia of which the Garde des Sceaux had rapidly disposed. Then, turning against his adversaries the weapon of which they had tried to make use, the Minister had exposed the formidable endeavor undertaken by the Law to succeed in confounding the one and only guilty party in a frightful drama, executed in conditions so mysterious that it had required veritable genius and enormous labor to bring forth the truth.

  Epilogue

  Ten years after the closure of the Charfland affair, an exceptional session brought together the members of the Académie des Sciences and that Académie de Médecine. The convocation, entitled: “Communication of Messieurs Chasselan and Lavrille on the life and works of Nounlegos,” bore an underlined annotation: Exceptional importance.

  Needless to say, the meeting hall was full. The Academicians, somewhat intrigued, were wondering who Nounlegos, unknown to them, might be.

  The president of the session, the longer serving of the two Academic presidents involved, made the following speech:

  “My dear colleagues,

  “About two years ago, the Académie des Sciences and the Académie de Médecine were informed by a notary in Bondy that Monsieur Nounlegos, recently deceased, had instituted the said Académies, jointly, as his legal heirs; he made us the inheritors of his fortune, of which he gave us free disposition, his instruments of study, and all his works.

  “After having fulfilled the necessary formalities, our administrative services entered into possession of a certain sum of money, encumbered only by an annual income to an old domestic servant, and a marvelously accommodated laboratory equipped with items of apparatus bearing no resemblance to those of which we are habituated to making use. Our colleagues Messieurs Chasselan and Lavrille were charged with making an inventory.

  “During their very first visit to the domicile, their attention was attracted by a series of stout hardbound volumes whose spines only bore serial numbers. Those records, all manuscripts, with numerous diagrams and calculations, bore as a title: The Work of Nounlegos.

  “It took our delegates a year to familiarize themselves with them, and several months to verify for themselves some of the advertised results, which explains the delay to which the communication you are about to hear has been subject.

  “We think, Messieurs, that we are informed as to the research of a truly superior order that the scientists of the entire world are pursuing relentlessly in order to enable science to participate in the greater wellbeing of humankind. We believe that we are particularly familiar—because we follow it step by step in our sessions—with studies made in our own dear land of France; we interest ourselves in it; we encourage it, attempting, by means of our discussions, to stimulate the genius that brings them to a conclusion. And yet we had no suspicion that, in a small detached house in a suburb of Paris, an unknown man was working, for more than forty years, on a problem whose mere exposure was an unusual audacity.

  “That unknown man, Messieurs, before whom we ought all to bow down respectfully with veneration, and who is about to give us, in revealing him to the world, a glorious immortality, is Nounlegos.

  “Yes, Nounlegos, the man whose science makes all of ours pale: the modest individual who has tackled on his own one of the most troubling aspects of physiology, who has conceived innovative apparatus, invented a method and new means of examination, the application of which to other subjects will revolutionize all of medicine and surgery!

  “Nounlegos, who—listen carefully Messieurs—has succeeded in reading the human mind!

  “Do not think that it is a matter of a few improvements of any psychological methods or the reasoned observation of the nervous reflexes that accompany certain impressions. No, Messieurs, Nounlegos has arrived at reading within the human brain, without taking any account of external phenomena, as we might read a book.

  “He sees thoughts stirring within the brain as one can see the blood flowing through the arteries, as one can see nerves contracting under an electrical contact. Yes, he has seen thoughts; he has grasped them; he had read them; he has written them down.

  “His work is not finished; what he wanted was to succeed in reading them at a distance, recording them mechanically and fixing them in an indelible fashion.

  “Death has not permitted him to find the complete solution to the vast problem that he posed himself, but the road is traced out; others will have the honor of bringing the task undertaken to a conclusion.

  “It is not without a profound emotion that I announce this discovery publicly, which places its author in the front rank of all the scientists of his century—what am I saying?—of all the centuries!

  I do not know what the philosophers will think, confronted by the perspective of a humankind so new, in which sincerity—not apparent but real—will be so easily verifiable. Many will doubtless estimate that life would be better if the black veil that separates thought from speech and action were to remain intact. Others will be enthused by the idea that hypocrisy will henceforth be unmasked, that it will always be possible to know the true motives of human actions. But that is the affair of the philosophers. Let us leave them the care of envisaging the discovery from that point of view. For us, whose only love is science, it is from the scientific point of view that we ought to try to perceive some of the innumerable consequences of the miraculous work of Nounlegos.

  I have told you already that the reading of what is happening within the brain can only be obtained with the aid of previously-unknown apparatus and mechanisms; these means permit the easy vision and the examination of what is happening in any part of the human body. We shall be able to follow, in the course of an illness, the various alterations of the organs and tissues; we shall be able to track the alterations made by any medicament or any treatment—and you can appreciate that a new therapeutics is now on the eve of being born.

  “When a surgical intervention is judged necessary, the operator will be able to work with precision, since he will have seen in advance the milieu in which he is operating, and will have no fear of any surprise.

  “I shall limit myself, Messieurs, to those few remarks, but I cannot restrain myself from adding that in addition to these repercussions on human medicine and morality, Nounlegos’ discovery of genius, by virtue of the knowledge that it will permit of the movements and transformations of the various cells of the organism, will doubtless allow science to make inappreciable progress.

  “Thus, you will permit me, Messieurs, on your behalf, that of all the scientists of France and the entire world, to render to the memory of Nounlegos the very profound, respectful and grateful homage that is due to him!”

  Colonel Royet: On the Brink of the World’s End

  (1928)

  Introduction

  For long hours, I have mediated before these pages, hesitantly, with a heavy heart, my head vertiginous, as if on the edge of an abyss...

  Ought I to make public these memories of one of the most anguished and tragic periods through which humankind has passed, without being aware of it?

  Was it permissible for me to evoke the terrible threat that the future might reserve for us?

  Oh, what perplexity was mine before the ultimate decision!

  However, I have decided. The terrible secret is choking me. For more than twenty years I have kept it, having sworn to do so to Monsieur Luissant, the v
enerated President of the Republic. Today, my oath is no longer binding, because the illustrious Statesman summoned me to his deathbed in order to release me from it—me, the last survivor of those who knew. More than that, the great and good citizen engaged me to publish my notes and memories.

  “Now that panic is no longer to be feared,” he pronounced, in a voice already faint, “it’s necessary for people to know how close they came to Oblivion. Perhaps the frightful vision of the accident that nearly destroyed life on our globe will render them better.”

  In delivering the lines to the printer, it is, therefore, a terrible will of which I am the executor.

  It is also a confession, for which I glimpse the appeasement of a dolorous remorse. Although entirely virtuous, a responsibility weighs cruelly upon my life. Too sensitive and too pusillanimous, I lacked decision. I allowed a frightful peril to grow before me, without denouncing it. My determination stood up just in time to prevent the definitive catastrophe, but too late to obliterate the effect of frightful misfortunes already consummated.

  Perhaps people will consent to absolve me on imagining the heights of alarm and terror that I was obliged to scale. But above my imperishable dolor, crushing my weak personality, the Fact will be imposed, colossal in itself, disconcerting in its causes.

  The Fact!

  The World nearly perished.

  The cause?

  An unforeseen cosmic phenomenon? A cataclysm of the physical order? An unleashing of natural forces?

  No.

  Terrestrial life was threatened by a single man, simultaneously a genius and a madman.

  And the reason for that monstrous aberration?

  An amorous despair!

  I. Roger Livry

  The fifth of August 192*.

  That date hammers my skull, an ineradicable obsession that marks the point of departure of the fantastic adventure in which I was involved.