The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 3: The Triumph of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  Laurence, recovering consciousness, opened her eyes, propped herself up between two cushions, watched and listened.

  Saint-Clair went on: “Me against you! The Nyctalope against Lucifer! My mind against your mind! My will against your will! Me to subjugate you! I’m here. I’m looking you in the face–and I’m waiting. Try me, Lucifer!”

  He folded his arms; he was like a statue of Defiance.

  Glô von Warteck took another step backwards and he, too, drew his steely frame up to its full height. His eyes gleamed and he raised his arms and extended his hands to make cabalistic designs...

  Some 20, 30, 40 seconds went by. Then, everything became vertiginous. Saint-Clair abruptly burst out laughing, joyful, insulting and formidable. While laughing, he quickly made the movements that rid him of the diving-suit. He emerged svelte and vigorous, lithe and agile, dressed in a white woolen pullover and trousers, and slippers.

  “Corsat! Pilou! Your daggers!” he cried.

  There were two movements behind him, and he suddenly had two blades in his hands: long, broad, sharp and shiny, with black hilts. He threw one of them down at the feet of Glô von Warteck, retaining the other in his right hand. Then, in a sardonic voice, the Nyctalope said: “God’s judgment, Lucifer! Since your spell-casting will cannot impose itself on mine, sorcerer, become a man again! Take up that dagger and defend yourself, as best you can. We must revert, for a while, to the Middle Ages, whose spirit you’ve extinguished with the principles of your accursed science. En garde, Warteck!”

  Lucifer, still upright, but now with the face of a madman, did not budge. Saint-Clair relaxed and took a step to the left. In a changed voice, cold and scornful, he said: “Baron Glô von Warteck, I warn you that if you refuse to fight me with a dagger, I will have you executed like the common murderer you are. You have killed Mathias Narbonne, the three Zuchts and Minna. Doubtless, they are not the only murders you have committed, but I don’t know the other victims and those are sufficient for me. I’ll count to ten. Then, I’ll shout fire!” He turned his head towards his eight companions and concluded: “Then, all together, you’ll fire.”

  Standing a little further to the left, so as to be outside the line of fire, he began counting: “One... Two... Three... Four...”

  Eight hands, each armed with a Browning, were raised as one.

  “Five... Six...”

  On “seven,” Lucifer finally reached down, picked up the dagger and said, harshly: “And if I win?”

  “You’ll be shot immediately afterwards,” Saint-Clair said, “for murdering Mathias Narbonne, the three Zuchts and Minna.”

  “Why should I fight, then?” sneered Glô.

  “Because you’ll have an opportunity to kill me–which, I feel sure, would sweeten the bitterness of your own death.”

  “So it would! But why do you risk your own life when it’s so easy to...”

  Saint-Clair cut him off. “To enjoy the opportunity of killing you.” Then, understanding from the Baron’s hateful stare that the duel was accepted, he said to his companions: “Lower your weapons!”

  He resumed his place in the center of the room.

  “I can see you, Leo,” said a soft but firm voice.

  “I know that, Laure.”

  With his left arm raised as a shield and his right arm by his side, his weapon flat against his thigh in the manner of the peasants of Aragon, Leo Saint-Clair advanced on Lucifer.

  What a spectacle! What a lesson in philosophy! What a symbol of true humanity! These two geniuses, who had fought with the weapons of science during weeks of prodigious cerebral activity, making heady progress with each passing day, were now brought together by the irony of circumstance and the fatal play of their own characters, to fight man-to-man with daggers, like two peasants from Spain!

  Moreover, their passions were running so high, at that supreme moment, that the one forgot his satanic ambitions and the other his universal altruism. They were no longer fighting, now, for the conquest of the world or the liberty of humankind, but simply for the possession of a woman.

  Until the last moment, however, Glô von Warteck continued to manifest that cowardice which consists of only exercising force at a distance. He had doubtless taken lessons in knife-throwing from Malta in the Bermudas. The dagger he had in his hand had a well-balanced blade and hilt; Glô had taken account of that when he took it in hand. He did not wait for Saint-Clair to come at him–he raised his right arm abruptly and hurled it forcefully. The blade shot through the air as if it were a ray of steel sprung from his open hand.

  “Ah!” The strident cry of horror came from Laurence–but the Nyctalope had been on his guard. If he had not seen it in time, the sharp blade would have planted its entire length in his throat, but he ducked under it skillfully and promptly, and it flew over his head.

  “Traitor!” he growled.

  Standing erect and leaping forward, he drew back his dagger with a rapid movement and sank the blade into Lucifer’s breast, slightly to one side.

  The blade remained there. Saint-Clair stood back and folded his arms.

  “My God!” gasped Laurence, intoxicated with joy.

  Glô von Warteck staggered backwards. His wide-open eyes and screwed-up face expressed hatred and despair. He fell to his knees against a tapestry whose large folds hid the wall between two windows.

  He’s dying! thought Saint-Clair.

  He’s dying! thought La Païli and the eight men standing motionless at the back of the room.

  There was a five-second interval. Leaning his left hand on the floor, Lucifer lifted the fabric with his right hand, seized a lever, put his entire weight on it, depressed it, and collapsed, croaking: “You’ll... all die too!”

  “Ah! Laurence, my friends–let’s get out of here! Go!” howled the Nyctalope.

  Who would not have understood? Presumptuous as he was, sure as he was of his ultimate victory, Lucifer had nevertheless taken precautions against his defeat, doubtless by virtue of some obscure and troubling presentiment, entertained since he had deciphered the prediction hidden in the verbal labyrinth of the Kabbalah. Every room in Fort Warteck was equipped with a mechanism which, once triggered, would provoke explosions, collapse, ruination, destruction and death.

  “Go! Get out!”

  Saint-Clair lifted up the semi-conscious Laurence. The entire company ran for the elevator, which descended. They went out through the guard-room bunker, on the side opposite the tramway.

  “Dopp!” shouted Saint-Clair, as they passed through. Dopp followed, uncomprehendingly–after which the Nyctalope, his mind clear and alert and his gestures sure and lively, wrapped La Païli in one of the fur cloaks used by the Kalmuks, which was hanging from the wall near the exit door.

  Outside, in the dreary daylight, a brief glance and a rapid thought sufficed for Saint-Clair to get his bearings. They had come out on the east side; ten kilometers to the south-west the three aircraft were waiting, near the submarine station.

  “Go left! Go left!” the Nyctalope howled–and ran.

  The large entrance court, like the tramway trench, was hollowed out of the ice and its atmosphere was similarly kept warm by means of electric radiators. The wall surrounding the buildings of Fort Warteck finished to the right and the left at the places where they branched out at right-angles to form the court. Heated galvanized iron stairways gave access to the surface of the ice-cap outside the wall.

  “Go left!”

  They climbed the left-hand stairway and ran headlong into the compacted snow, heading diagonally south-eastwards, distancing themselves from both the walls and the trench.

  Less than three minutes had gone by since Lucifer had fallen dead upon the depressed lever. There was suddenly a mighty roar: explosions; a cataclysmic tornado.

  The entire tightly-knit company of fugitives was seized by an invisible cyclonic wind, knocked down, sent skidding. Instinctively, some of the men grabbed hold of one another; those left isolated formed themselves into balls; Sa
int-Clair hugged Laurence tightly to him and was himself surrounded by the strong arms of Corsat and Pilou; their agglutinated mass slid over the ice and was brought to an abrupt halt by an outcrop of ice standing up like a menhir.

  In the distance, flames leapt up from Fort Warteck towards the clouds; black masses soared upwards and fell back to Earth. It was as if a hundred cannons were firing at the same time. Detonations resounded along the entire length of the trench, towards the south, and smoke gushed into the air.

  The Nyctalope, who was quite lucid, heard and saw it all. Having been shoved, dragged and rolled by the mighty wind, he was sitting where he had stopped, with his back to the ice menhir. To his right, Corsat and Pilou were taking off one another’s helmets. Girard was lodged to his left, motionless. Leo Saint-Clair, the conqueror of Baron Glô von Warteck, alias Lucifer–still hugging Laurence’s body, wrapped up in the Kalmuk’s cloak–witnessed the total destruction and annihilation of Fort Warteck and, without any possible doubt, all the individuals within it.

  “Grisyl! Admirable Grisyl!” Saint-Clair whispered, his heart gripped by gloomy regret. “Madame Païli! Romski!” And immediately thereafter: “What about the station? That must have been destroyed too, along with Sir Patrick Swires!”

  “We’re alive, boss!” said a hoarse voice beside him.

  “We’re alive!”

  That was Pilou and Corsat.

  “And I’ve killed Lucifer!” added Saint-Clair, with such emotion that large tears sprang from his eyes.

  At that moment, Laurence stirred within the fur that enveloped her. She had recovered consciousness a few seconds before, and had heard the Nyctalope’s words. She saw the tears running down his ecstatic face.

  “Leo, my beloved!”

  She raised herself up. He leaned over her. Their foreheads touched, their lips were united...

  For them–for an interval that probably lasted a minute, but which comprised years of happiness for lovers who could no longer be separated–the outside world no longer existed...

  Epilog

  A few hours later, beside the RC1, RC2 and RC4, a short distance from the devastated submarine station, Leo Saint-Clair added up the balance-sheets of the victory and the catastrophe.

  On the one hand, the victory: Lucifer dead; his family destroyed or taken prisoner; the liberty of humankind saved; Laurence, Irène and Henri Prillant free to enjoy life and love.

  On the other hand, the catastrophe: Grisyl dead, Romski dead, Madame Païli dead, along with Sir Patrick Swires, Elias Carter, Captain Berton, Cadet Dupuis and Wolf; the Teledynamo lost; the scientific discoveries of every sort, for which Fort Warteck and the submarine station now served as tombs, blasted apart to the point where nothing useful remained.

  But all that was over. It was necessary to act.

  Retaining the RC4, with La Païli, Captain Girard, Corsat and Pilou, Saint-Clair took it upon himself to spend 24 hours exploring the ruins of Fort Warteck, the railway and the submarine station. Some distance away, he found Grisyl’s head in the snow, almost intact.

  The RC1 and RC2, with Aymard, Garet and Berge, flew out over the sea, where the compact polar ice gave way to the relatively open sea to await for the Uberalles and the Lampas, which could not be long delayed–because it was probable that Raymond de Ciserat, freed from all enchantment, and Professor Lourmel, warned about the destruction of Fort Warteck by the hypnotized Rupert VI, would not go into the waters beneath the ice-cap. The ignorance of what had happened would leave the former somewhat at a loss, astonished to find himself suddenly in the polar regions; logical deduction would assure the latter that the Nyctalope would undoubtedly send one or two aircraft on a reconnaissance mission, if that were not revealed to him by Rupert VI. That was, in fact, how events unfolded.

  Is it necessary to describe the tender scenes that marked the reunion of the Uberalles, the Lampas, the RC1 and the RC2, soon rejoined by the RC4, with the Nyctalope and La Païli? Is it necessary to describe the sorrow of the Englishmen at Elmwood station when they received news of the deaths of Sir Patrick Swires and Elias Carter, ameliorated by the pleasure of knowing that Lucifer and his family were in no condition to enslave humankind? Is there, finally, any need to register the details of our heroes’ return to France, or the exile to a Pacific island of the survivors of the Bermudas, or the fates of the thuggish Kroon, the straw man Eiger Nott and other nonentities?

  And would it be appropriate to conclude this epic with a lengthy account of what the world’s newspapers had to say about the marriage of the singer Laurence Païli to Leo Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope, at which Monsieur Alexandre Prillant, Onésime Lourmel, Raymond de Ciserat and Captain Girard served as witnesses?

  La Païli continued her career as an actress and singer–which did not prevent her from presenting Leo Saint-Clair with three handsome sons during the next five years. Irène de Ciserat traveled a great deal by submarine, with her husband–which presented no obstacle to the birth of a daughter, and then a son, who was baptized with sea-water in the harbor at Rio de Janeiro. Henri Prillant became a brilliant student. In brief, life went on.

  And at dawn every year, on June 6, in the garden of their château in Maintenon, Leo Saint-Clair and Laurence Païli kneel down in front of a marble stone surrounded by rosebushes.

  There is nothing engraved on that stone but a name: GRISYL. For there is one act more beautiful than the act of love, and that is the act of sacrifice, which is often the consequence, the crowning glory and the purification of love.

  THE END

  Not Alone in the Dark:

  The Tumultuous Life and Troubled Times of the Nyctalope

  Jean de La Hire’s Leo Saint-Clair, alias the Nyctalope, is a French character who has not gained the recognition of the more famous Rocambole, Arsène Lupin, Rouletabille and Fantômas–nor, to be honest, did it deserve to, at least on its literary merits alone. Yet, the Nyctalope ought to be remembered as the first, full-fledged superhero in the history of French pulp literature, anticipating such larger than life crime-fighters as Doc Savage by more than 20 years.

  Leo Saint-Clair is a fearless French explorer, adventurer and crimefighter, known as the Nyctalope because of his ability to see in total darkness. This, in fact, is the opposite of the real condition of nyctalopia–Greek for night blindness–which makes it difficult or nearly impossible to see in the dark. The Nyctalope is said to have eerie eyes, not unlike those of a lynx, with irises shifting colors between brown, yellow and green.

  La Hire was notoriously inconsistent in the spellings of his characters’ names, even within the same novels. In its first appearance, the Nyctalope is named “Leo Sainte-Claire” and in his second “Jean de Sainclair,” but we shall use “Leo Saint-Clair” which is the standard version used by La Hire from the third novel onwards.

  French scholar Hubert Juin notes in his foreword to the Marabout edition of Les Mystères de Lyon that La Hire was fond of using the name “Sainte-Claire” or “Saint-Clair” in the mainstream novels he wrote before 1908, often as an alias for himself. Whether any of these other “Saint-Clairs” or “Sainte-Claires” can, or should, be connected to the Nyctalope’s family tree still remains to be investigated.

  In any event, La Hire was not adverse to reusing the same fictional names for different characters in different works. For example, the Nyctalope novel Titania (1929) features an evil scientist named Korridès, while La Hire’s popular pulp series, Les grandes aventures d’un boy scout [The Great Adventures of a Boy Scout] (1926), includes a good scientist also named Korridès!

  To attempt to piece together a consistent biography of the Nyctalope sometimes requires us to choose between conflicting bits of information given throughout the series, selecting some while discarding or trying to explain away others. Most of these inconsistencies are due to the fact that La Hire chronicled the Nyctalope’s adventures between 1911 and 1946. During that time, he was confronted by what is known in comic books today as the issue of the “sliding timesca
le,” i.e.: the clash between the once-topical references and the seemingly agelessness of the hero. Whereas Edgar Rice Burroughs chose to make his Tarzan immortal, La Hire retroactively rewrote his hero’s biography.

  In addition to the spelling of the name “Saint-Clair” in the first two volumes, there are three major inconsistencies in the series: (i) the Nyctalope’s birthdate, which appears to have been moved forward as the series went on; (ii) the Nyctalope’s father, a French Navy Ensign named “Jean,” then, later, an engineer named “Pierre” and (iii) the sudden aging of one of the hero’s sons (also named “Pierre”) between two of the later books.

  We shall deal with these inconsistencies as they arise and try to posit various explanations for them.

  Finally, it is worth noting that, throughout the series, La Hire makes it clear that the Nyctalope is a real figure and he, merely his biographer–just as Ponson du Terrail did with Rocambole and Maurice Leblanc with Arsène Lupin. He even specifies in a footnote that the notebook Leo loaned him to retranscribe his adventure was stained with the Nyctalope’s own blood.

  The saga of the Nyctalope begins with L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau [The Man Who Could Live Underwater], first serialized in the daily newspaper Le Matin in 1909. In it, we meet Jean Sainte-Claire, who is only a supporting character in the story. He is introduced as a young French Navy Ensign, who is serving under Lieutenant Louis de Ciserat aboard the ship Cyclone. L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau is about two megalomaniacal villains, Oxus, and his brother, the evil monk Fulbert, who are plotting to conquer the world. To achieve their goal, they have grafted shark gills onto an orphaned boy, raised him underwater and misled him as to the nature of the human race; they have turned him into the “Hictaner,” a water-breathing man, who is meant to be their secret weapon. Then, posing as “L’Inconnu” (The Unknown), they attempt to blackmail the great powers of the world into submission.