Jean de LA HIRE
The King of the Night
translated by Brian Stableford
Jean-Marc & Randy LOFFICIER
Return of the Nyctalope
BLACK COAT PRESS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 4
Jean de La Hire: The King of the Night 7
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier: Return of the Nyctalope 214
Timeline 315
FRENCH MYSTERIES COLLECTION 318
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION 320
THE NYCTALOPE SERIES 325
Introduction
Le Roi de la Nuit (translated here by Brian Stableford as The Nyctalope on Rhea) is something of a publishing mystery.
In his entry on Jean de La Hire in the Encyclopédie de l’Utopie et de la Science-Fiction, Pierre Versins claimed that it was originally published in 1923 and included a reference to Cavorite. (La Hire having previously referenced Wells in The Nyctalope on Mars, this was no surprise.)
Genre scholar Jacques van Herp further claimed that Le Roi de la Nuit had been serialized in L’Ami du Peuple in 1923. This statement was bolstered by the fact that the book version, published in October 1943 by Editions du Livre Moderne, the “aryanized” successor of publisher Ferenczi, ended with the mention: “Novembre-décembre 1922, Paris & Le Breuil.”
There are, however, several problems with this history.
The first is that L’Ami du Peuple didn’t start until 1928, so a prepublication in 1923 would have been impossible. Further examination of both Le Matin, the newspaper which usually serialized La Hire’s novels, for the year 1923, and of L’Ami du Peuple for the years 1928-30, does not reveal any pre-publications of Le Roi de la Nuit, or any similar story by La Hire under a different title.
To add to the mystery, the 1943 book version, which is translated here, does not mention Cavorite and features the characters of Gnô Mitang, Vitto and Soca as Leo’s sidekicks. Yet, Gnô first appeared in L’Antechrist in 1927, and Vitto and Socca in Titania in 1929. So they couldn’t possibly have been included in a novel written in 1922 since they hadn’t yet been created!
We are left with several puzzling possibilities: there may have been an earlier version of Le Roi de la Nuit published somewhere in 1923—but if so, we don’t know where—which mentioned Cavorite, but featured other supporting characters. If so, that version was substantially rewritten by La Hire for the 1943 book edition to remove Cavorite (perhaps because of its English provenance, something that would have been unwelcome during WWII)1 and update the cast. Or perhaps there was no earlier version, and Le Roi de la Nuit was first written in 1942. If so, then either La Hire lied, or the printer made a mistake, in that end note that should have read “1942” instead of “1922.”
We may never know the truth.
Oddly, the 1943 version makes no reference to the context of the times. In early 1941, Jean de La Hire and André Bertrand had been given editorial control of publisher Ferenczi, which had issued paperback editions of many of their serial novels, as the result of the Nazis’ efforts to “aryanize” French publishing and expropriate Jewish owners. In April 1941, Ferenczi was renamed “Editions du Livre Moderne.” La Hire proved to be an incompetent publisher and was fired in December 1941. But since he did not avoid references to the German Occupation in L’Enfant Perdu (1942; translated in The Nyctalope Steps In) and Night of the Nyctalope (1944), why did he do so in Le Roi de la Nuit—unless, of course, the book was indeed written before the War? (It is, in fact, rather pacifistic in its approach to conflict.)
Again, we may never know the truth.
Because Le Roi de la Nuit appears, at face value, to take place before the War, Nyctalope scholar Emmanuel Gorlier decided to locate the story in the period ranging from June 1934 to December 1935. The Nyctalope’s third wife, Sylvie MacDhul,2 presumably died soon after Les Mystères de Lyon (1931), since Leo is single again in Le Sphinx du Maroc (early 1934). And Veronique is no longer mentioned in stories taking place in 1936 and 1937.
There is no doubt in our mind that La Hire intended for Leo to return to Rhea someday. We believe that, just as a shroud of darkness and evil was threatening to engulf the world of his birth, the Nyctalope indeed made a second, desperate trip to the wandering planetoid.
But this is not the story of that trip. Instead, this is the story of his third and final trip…
Return of the Nyctalope stands on its own, but readers might want to read, or reread, The Nyctalope on Mars and our story “The Ides of Mars” published in Night of the Nyctalope, which foreshadowed, to some extent, the events contained therein.
Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier
Jean de La Hire: The King of the Night
To my dear friends Madeleine and André Chenue,
the first people to whom I talked
about this novel before writing it,
and their four children, for when they are grown up,
I dedicate this work in testimony
of my longstanding affection.
Jean de La Hire
Chapter I
The Nyctalope’s Idea
It was two or three minutes after 8:30 p.m. when it happened—something unexpected since the world’s beginning, which was very soon to produce the most extraordinary consequences.
Véronique d’Olbans had just said to Leo Saint-Clair, in a light tone not habitual to that passionate young woman:
“My dear Nyctalope, we’re walking as if the Devil were on our heels. Look at my watch, which is always right: it’s only 8:30. We’re not late; we won’t be sitting down at table for 30 minutes, and we’ll be at the château in less than 15, as you know!”
“Very true, my dear,” Saint-Clair replied, smiling.
The road was, in any case, quite steep; even without Véronique’s remark, it would have been necessary to slow down. A hundred meters ahead of the walkers, between the woods of tall trees through which they were moving, an abrupt ridge was outlined against the flamboyant crepuscular sky.
It was then that a man appeared on that summit. His thin black silhouette rose up, soon visible in its entirety, upright on the saddle-back of the road.
“Who can it be?” Véronique murmured. “No one comes this way at this hour, except for the château’s people, and I don’t reco… Oh!”
Her speech was cut short as the man up above uttered a cry, abruptly raised his arms, staggered and fell...
Véronique and Saint-Clair were soon to recall that at that same instant they had heard liquid, silvery and limpid sounds vibrating in the air.
They ran forward and leaned over the body, which was lying face down, from either side. A gray felt hat had rolled a few paces away. The summer jacket that the man had been carrying over his arm was partly hidden underneath his abdomen.
“Uh oh!” said Saint-Clair. “What this?”
The shoulders, the nape of the neck and the back of the skull were dotted with minuscule holes; blood was spreading over the surface of the thin shirt, and swelling in droplets on the neck and the head, in the short-cropped hair.
“It’s like a charge of lead pellets fired from 20 meters—but we didn’t hear any rifle-shot.”
Carefully, Saint-Clair turned the upper body over, almost completely. The throat and face were also speckled with bloody holes, larger than those at the rear.
“The exit holes of projectiles,” said Saint-Clair. “It’s not the lead-shot hunters use; that wouldn’t have gone through. Truly bizarre… but what’s certain is that the man’s dead. Do you know him, Véronique?”
“No, I’ve never seen him before. This road only leads to the château, and only comes from the château. Unless the man’s a hiker who�
��s made a long detour through the forest paths from the village of Longpré? But that’s a long way...”
Véronique fell silent, perplexed.
Saint-Clair’s perplexity was different in kind.
“By what was the poor devil killed? That’s even more inexplicable than his presence here...” He came to an abrupt decision. “You’re strong, Véronique; help me. Grab his ankles; I’ll take his armpits. Let’s carry him to the ditch. Then we’ll hurry on to the château, and we’ll come back in my car...”
“Yes.”
Saint-Clair learned over the bloody shoulders, neck, face and skull, and added:
“The tiny projectiles that hit him laterally didn’t come from the undergrowth to the right or the left, but from the line of the road. The man was standing on the summit of the ridge; the road is steeper on the side behind the man than on the side he was facing. Fired from the road by a person standing up, the projectiles should have gone through the man diagonally—but the trajectory the projectiles followed through the shoulders, neck and head is very nearly horizontal. And first of all, what projectiles, fired by what weapon? We didn’t hear any gunshot...”
Gravely, Véronique said:
“I heard… all this is really too strange… how shall I put it?... in the air, not far above us, a sound, or rather sounds, thin and silvery, very brief… for a few seconds. What about you?”
“That’s true,” said Saint-Clair. “I heard that too… at the exact moment when I saw the man raise his arms, stumble and fall.”
“Yes.”
The Nyctalope and the young woman bent down. They took hold of the cadaver at the ankles and armpits, and lifted it up easily—for the man who had just died so enigmatically was of medium height and girth, and weighed no more than 60 kilos.
They carried him to the ditch on the right and laid him at the bottom. It had been two weeks since a drop of rain had fallen in the locality; the ditch was quite dry. The jacket had been carried with the body; Saint-Clair went to retrieve the hat and dropped it on the body. Then he arranged the long grass on the edges of the ditch in such a way that the recumbent body was entirely covered and hidden.
“Come on, let’s get back quickly,” said Saint-Clair. “We’ll come back in the car with your uncle. Together, we’ll search the area. We’ll try to find something to explain it.”
Side by side, the Nyctalope and Véronique returned to the middle of the road. With an instinctive tacit accord, they stopped at the spot where the man had fallen.
In front of them, between the two continuous ramparts of verdure erected by the trees of the upper region of the vast forest domain, the narrow road ran down a steep slope to the depths of the valley, where there was an old stone bridge over the fast-flowing stream of the Miambe, a tributary of the Loir, which ran two kilometers away to the north, behind the hills, between Vendôme and La Châtre. Beyond the bridge, the road climbed again, just as steeply, to terminate in a semicircle in front of the large gate of the château. The descent to the stream and the ascent to the gate were almost the same length: between 500 and 600 meters.
Beyond the gate, the path, still climbing, was a driveway bordered by two sections of the grounds comprised entirely of pine trees—pines that were hundreds of years old, tall and straight, with vast magnificent green crowns. They gave their name to the place and the dwelling: the domain of the Château des Pins.
At the top of the 200-meter drive stood the château: a large rectangular building with two upper floors, its main façade facing south-east, flanked to the south by an enormous square tower whose rounded roof had been replaced 20 years before by the cupola of an astronomical observatory.
Less than a quarter of an hour after depositing the body in the ditch, LeoSaint-Clair and Véronique d’Olbans arrived at the château.
Rapidly, the young woman said:
“The dinner-bell hasn’t rung yet. My uncle will be in the laboratory.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Saint-Clair.
Instead of going into the old house via the steps of the main façade or the tradesman’s entrance on the north-east side, they went directly to the stout southern tower.
It had one floor more than the rectangular building. The ground floor and the second floor were libraries. The third, fitted out as a physics and chemistry laboratory, was also partly arranged as an astronomical study, the roof of that floor comprising the mobile cupola with multiple sections.
The zigzagging interior staircase connected the superimposed galleries of the libraries and the other floors. On the third floor, it opened on to a narrow landing. From there, in order to get into the laboratory, one had to go through three doors, two made of wood lined with thick sheets of cork and one made of steel, as heavy and massive as the door of a large safe. The system for opening and closing the first two was banal, but a bell and a secret mechanism controlled the third door.
Certain that her uncle was in the laboratory, Véronique rang the bell. Moments later, a red lamp lit up in a narrow corridor continuously illuminated by an ordinary electric bulb. Only then did the young woman turn the graduated handle that, in accordance with a number that was changed every day, was the key to the laboratory. The heavy batten pivoted slowly on its invisible hinges.
“How are you, Uncle?” Véronique exclaimed, immediately.
“Maxime!” called Saint-Clair.
At the other extremity of the immense square room, a large set of French windows opening on to a balcony was wide open. In front of that bay was a squat, or rather low table covered with a thick plate of glass. Sitting on a stool, his two arms stiff at one side of the table, his hand clutching the edge, was a man whose clean-shaven, livid face, streaming with sweat, his eyes staring, expressed violent and terrified surprise.
He did not react to Véronique’s question and Saint-Clair’s call. Had he heard them?
Gripped by the hands by his niece and by the shoulders by his friend, Maxime d’Olbans shivered abruptly, his entire body quivering. Raising his head, turning it to the right and the left, he stammered in a hoarse voice:
“It’s… unimaginable! If I’m not mistaken, the consequences to be envisaged are… are...”
His mind in disarray, he would not find the word.
“Wait, Uncle,” said Véronique, wisely. “Don’t try… calm down...”
Swiftly, she went to a cupboard, opened it, took two bottles and four glasses out of a drinks-cabinet, and came back.
A few minutes later, his composure restored as much by the presence of his friend and his niece as a strong dose of old Ameragnac, the scientist was able to think clearly and speak with his customary ease.
“Do you see this sheet of lead?” he said.
On the glass plate of the table there was only one object, a thin sheet of lead, awkwardly unfolded, which still retained the lines and right angles indicating where it had been creased, clearly marked out.
“Do you recognize it?” added Monsieur d’Olbans.
“Yes,” said Saint-Clair.
“Yes,” said Véronique, adding: “You wrapped it around the little piece of the new metal that you’d succeeded in producing, the Z-4.”
“Very good. Now listen to me!”
The instruction was surely unnecessary, but it was what the scientist always said when he had important things to impart.
“A little while ago, I had the idea of submitting the Z-4 to the action of three acids in combination—an experiment I hadn’t yet carried out because I’d run out of one of the three acids. I received a demi-liter this afternoon. I have the time, I said to myself. Véronique won’t be back before dinner. And I went to that cupboard over there to fetch one of the two packets, each composed of a large sheet of lead folded several times, enclosing between its median folds a kilo of grains of the Z-4, which I’d finally been able to obtain, as you know, last week… after years of research...”
He shrugged his shoulders and, mocking as much as marveling:
“Research! One thin
ks that one has invented, discovered, found something… and then, all of a sudden, bang!—an unexpected phenomenon informs you ironically that what you thought you knew is perhaps only the ten-thousandth part of what your discovery reveals to be still unknown...”
He struck the table with his hand and continued, in a sharply insistent tone:
“So I brought one of the two packets here, to the table. The windows were wide open, as they are now. And before even going to look for the test-tubes and the three acids, I started unwrapping the lead packages, impatient as I was to see the Z-4 again. And then… it was as rapid as lightning… rapid, yes, but all the same, absolutely immediate. You know that my faculty of observation is automatically exercised in a continuous manner, and that, even if I’m thinking about something else, the diagram, so to speak, of everything that strikes one or more of my five senses is automatically inscribed in my memory. I’m therefore quite certain of not being mistaken in affirming, firstly, that the phenomenon was not produced immediately after I had unwrapped the lead sheet completely and uncovered the mass of particles of Z-4; secondly, that the time elapsed prior to the production of the phenomenon was approximately one minute; thirdly, and finally, that the phenomenon was as rapid as a lightning-flash...”
He sighed, and passed a hand over his broad and high forehead, where an emotional sweat was pearling again.
Then Saint-Clair, with the serene gravity that he maintained in important circumstances, said:
“Yes! Streaking through the air with a scintillating, metallic, almost imperceptibly sonorous fulguration, the grains of Z-4 suddenly tore themselves away from the surface of the lead sheet and disappeared from your sight through the open window...”
Maxime d’Olbans started, his eyes widening, and exclaimed in a strangled voice:
“Oh! How did you know that?”
The Nyctalope lost none of his serenity in replying:
The Return of the Nyctalope Page 1
