The Nickel Man

by Brian Stableford

  Rosamour showed him his warrants and, without wasting time criticizing him for his inopportune intervention, he submitted him to a routine interrogation. Then he had himself taken to the prison, silently examined the location, gave orders for a locksmith to come and open the door giving access to the gardens, and had no difficulty finding the tracks of the fugitives. The snow had preserved them, and it was easy enough to follow hem step by step.

  The two men must have separated outside the enclosing wall of the Mairie. The footprints of one of them were lost on a path leading back to the village, confused with those of other pedestrians, but the other had gone across the fields, going round the houses in order to reach the westbound road to Courtalain.

  He had waited there for a few minutes, as testified by the trampling of the snow in that location, but he had eventually been rejoined by his companion, and both of them had continued on their way, following the hedge instead of the road.

  All of that was written in a clear and precise fashion on the great white page. There was no mistaking it. Suddenly, however, the tracks stopped again. A further trampling indicated a new halt, and then the two fugitive had leapt on to the road. The imprints of their heels could be seen deeply embedded in the snow by the roadside. From then on, it was difficult to follow them because of the other tracks with which they were confused.

  Escorted by two gendarmes, Rosamour continued his investigations as far as a place where there was a muddy dip in the road. The snow was no longer intact there, except between two profound ruts, on either side if which it had been crushed, mixed with earth and water to form a horrible sludge.

  A vehicle had stopped there. The white area indicated the place protected by the body of the vehicle. In front of it, the horse had stamped its feet for some time, trying to gain purchase for its hooves, and then had pulled away. The carters, by exciting it or pushing the wheels, had got it moving.

  Rosamour examined everything, leaning over the ground, without making the two gendarmes party to his reflections. They were wondering what could possibly there to interest the clever fellow from the Sûreté.

  When he had finished his examination, the agent turned to the brigadier and asked him, in an indifferent one: “Since you traveled along this road shortly after the escape, you can tell me what vehicles you encountered.”

  “Oh, indeed. They weren’t very numerous, in any case, given the weather. The first one was saw was that of a conjuror who gave a performance yesterday evening at the Cheval Boiteux. As I told you, it was during that performance that the arrest was made…”

  “Ah! Give me a few details. Where was this vehicle when you encountered it?”

  “About three kilometers from here.”

  “Did you look inside?”

  “Ah!” said the other, swelling up with pride. “One knows one’s métier. I stopped the vehicle, without making any fuss, and I could see all the way to the back. There was no one hiding there.”

  “You didn’t go inside?”

  “I didn’t think it was worth the trouble.”

  “Well, my good man, you were mistaken; your two birds were there.”

  “You’re joking,” said the brigadier, who was strongly tempted to hold his sides.

  “Where was your conjuror going?”

  “To Courtalain, where he’s giving a performance this evening.”

  Rosamour looked at his watch. It was too late to think of catching up with the fugitives that day. In any case, there was no urgency since he now knew where to find them. He therefore went tranquilly back to Briseval, telegraphed the examining magistrate to reassure him, installed himself at a small table in the Cheval Boiteux, near the stove—the same one at which the artist and the laboratory assistant had dined—and ordered a comfortable repast, which consoled him for his fatigues.

  XIII. An Unexpected Ascension

  The entire quarter of Nantes surrounding the gas factory was on holiday. It was the day of the fair, and in the little square the fairground booths were set up, ranging from the humble tents where waffles were spreading the odor of frying to the ample theater whose façade disappeared behind painted canvases.

  When dusk came, everything was illuminated, as brightly as by day. Big drums of every caliber began to thunder, with the strident accompaniment of cymbals. The French horns, bugles, trombones and ophicleides all sang their favorite songs. The mechanical orchestras, their hundred flags blowing in the wind, bellowed furiously in the midst of wooden houses gleaming with gilt and facets of mirrors.

  And the crowds went by, in a perpetual jostle of elbows, with an indescribable riot of cries, catcalls, exclamations of joy, growls and yelps. Everyone was at the fête, all having a good time!

  Among the establishments that the inexhaustible parade passed there was one, in particular, that arrested the members of the public as if it had seized them by the collar. That was a pavilion of restricted dimensions, decorated with paintings in which a superb woman clad in a low-cut dress could be seen, in all the attitudes that somnambulistic sleep can produce. A gentleman in a black suit, wand in hand, evidently represented the skillful operator who realized the marvels in question.

  And on the trestles, that same gentleman in a black suit—but in the flesh and bone—with a beautiful smile and beautiful words on his lips, was inviting the crowd to come into the tent with noble gestures.

  A rather thin young woman was leaning on one of the tent-poles and occasionally adding something to the proprietor’s patter.

  “Come in, Mesdames et Messieurs; it only costs ten centimes—two sous! You’ll see the most astonishing things. Hypnotism demonstrated! Extra-lucid somnambulistic sight! Come in, Mesdames et Messieurs.

  To one side of the platform, a clown with a white face and a village bridegroom with a red nose were making deadening music. The former was banging a bass drum and cymbals with formidable wrist-power, the later blowing into an enormous trombone, with clicks and clacks every time the long slide went in or out to its full extent. The sounds that sprang from the brass instrument, along with the vibrations of the shrill rattle, tore the most hardened eardrums. It was a danse macabre of triple crotchets, a hectic jig of delirious triolets, cascading over the broken rungs of a fantastic scale of incoherence.

  And the grotesque artiste who was inflating his cheeks to blow into that tube has such an expression of unalloyed satisfaction that the public guffawed, stamped their feet, howled with joy and shouted for more at the top of their voices, with an exhilarating enthusiasm.

  But the man in the black suit rang the big bell, and the music fell silent.

  It was just in time; the artiste was on the point of collapse. His entire face was swollen and as red as his vermilion nose. He sponged his temples, and while the patter ran its course he leaned toward the clown

  “Finally,” he said, “I’ve found an audience that understands my music! I’ve been all over France, America and Asia. I’ve given concerts to high society and savages, but no one ever applauded like this crowd.”

  “This crowd had an instinct for decadent music, my dear Bém...”

  “Call me Arthur, I beg you.”

  The clown also had his share in the success. It was not that he was particularly amusing, or that his sallies were marked with the English humor, reminiscent of an epileptic undertaker, that one loves to encounter nowadays in artistes of that genre. He was absolutely deadpan, sulky and sad, and it was his sadness that was funny. In the bouffant trousers that dressed his legs, with the sun on his belly and a half-moon on his back., he was so gauchely maladroit, so blissfully taciturn and stiff, that one could not look at that white face with its two eyebrows like grave accents without laughing until one cried.

  “Come on, Monsieur Clown, say something amiable to the honorable society!”

  It was the black suit that pronounced those engaging words, and, taking Monsieur Clown by the arm, he made him do a pirouette, while that unexpected shock caused the marionette to stagger and beat the air w
ith his long arms.

  People writhe with laughter, and when the invitation to “Enterrrrr!” resounded again, there as a veritable stampede that threatened to overturn the trestles, stave in the planks and bring down the whole tent.

  Inside, the spectators arranged themselves on the benches, poorly covered with red fabric, which was coming away in tatters.

  At the back, a platform represented the stage. At the foot of the stage was a red velvet pedestal, over which a muslin veil was thrown, vaguely outlining the forms of a recumbent body.

  The young woman who has just appeared at the door was sitting on the stage, with a weary and disenchanted expression. The clown was astride a bench. Finally, when the village bridegroom and his trombone had taken their places in a corner, the man in the black suit advanced toward the audience and bowed, one hand on his heart, like a vulgar comic-opera tenor.

  “Mesdames et Messieurs, you must have heard mention of Professor Joël. I can say without boasting that renown precedes me wherever I go. The Académie itself has taken an interest in my work, and I defy anyone, in that honorable society, to carry out experiments more curious than those you are about to witness. But enough preamble! You’re impatient—strike up the band!”

  The trombone launched a series of furious notes. When the chromatic scale was extinguished, Professor Joël bowed again.

  “Before putting on display before you all that hypnotic science has of the mysteriously sublime, let me give you a few necessary explanations regarding the anatomical constitution of the human body.

  While pronouncing that emphatic exordium, he lifted the veil that was covering the red pedestal, on which a recumbent body appeared, painted in a cadaveric hue, with greenish tints of advanced decay.

  “You have before you, Mesdames et Messieurs,” the professor continued, “the reproduction of a masterpiece of statuary, in which the anatomy of the human body is, so to speak, sculpted in the quick.”

  And to think, thought the melancholy village bridegroom, that it’s me who painted my uncle in those lugubrious colors!

  With the tip of his wand, Joël gave his physiological demonstration, accompanying it with big words and grand gestures, but his audience was primarily griped by the eyes. Everyone stood up on the benches and jostled one another in order to see “the masterpiece of statuary” and that strange thin and pale man whose bones were jutting out through his green-tinted flesh.

  That was, however, only a curtain-raiser, and the real performance was yet to commence—but before then, the professor had a recommendation to make to the public.

  “Don’t forget, Mesdames et Messieurs, that tomorrow, at two o’clock in the afternoon, in the square in front of this establishment, the inflation and ascension will take place of a monstrous balloon. I shall have the honor of performing, on a trapeze suspended below the nacelle a thousand feet up in the air, the most perilous acrobatic feats that you have ever seen. And now, I shall begin...”

  We shall not describe that session of hypnosis, in which the clown played the major role, Professor Joël contenting himself with commenting and making speeches, explaining the experiments that his auxiliary was carrying out on the entranced young woman.

  Among the spectators there was one young man who had placed himself beside the village bridegroom, and who, while the latter was not blowing into his trombone, did not disdain to chat to the instrumentalist.

  At first there were exclamations and expressions of admiration. The experiments impassioned and enthused him. He was a traveling salesman, he said, and had seen all sorts of things, but he had never seen anything as impressive. Then he came back to the anatomical statue.

  “Is it made of wax?” he asked, naively.

  The artiste shuddered. “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “It’s astonishing how much it resembled a drawing I’ve seen in the illustrated papers. It was a sculpture by Bémolisant—you know, the artist who disappeared.

  The other shifted in his chair, with an evident malaise.

  “It’s said that he murdered his uncle,” the spectator continued, in a tranquil and detached manner.

  “That’s absurd, idiotic...what do you want?” exclaimed the other, immediately biting his lip.

  “Me? I don’t want anything at all. I’m just saying what there is in the newspapers.—but perhaps you know better than I do, if you know him...”

  “If I know him, if I know him…why do you think I know him?”

  “Well, no, I don’t say that. How do I know? It doesn’t alter the fact that the old man can’t be found. And yet, if he hasn’t been murdered, he could reappear, and then the slander would shut up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, it’s easy for you to talk. It’s always easy to settle questions. I’d do this, I’d do that—but when one finds oneself in a tight corner, one finds that it isn’t so easy to get out of it. In fact, I don’t know him, this sculptor; I’m just talking...”

  “To make conversation, that’s all—understood.”

  “But I have a sympathy for him. One ought to have, between artistes. And I say to myself: who knows? Perhaps he’s in a situation that’s too implausible, and, if he tried to make people believe it, everyone would laugh in his face. They’d cry: ‘Tell it to the marines, old man! You can’t take us in with tales like that!’ And all the evidence is against him, everything demonstrates that he’s guilty…it’s just a supposition, you understand, a simple supposition...”

  “Oh, that’s how I take it.”

  “He says to himself then: I’ve been very stupid to fall into the wolf-trap. I could swear my innocence till the cows come home, but they’d convict me anyway, and I want to keep my skin.’ What do you think of that reasoning, eh?”

  “That it’s sane enough. Unless he’s guilty, in which case I’d understand even better why he’s running away.”

  “You wrong to believe that. Anyway, I’m not trying to convince you.”

  “All the more so as it’s not me that it’s necessary to convince, but the police.”

  That observation had the power to make the artiste shudder. In a low voice, he repeated: “The police, the police…yes, it’s the police.”

  When the performance finished, the audience got up to leave, with a frightful hubbub.

  The pretended commercial traveler politely took his leave of the trombonist. Scarcely had he turned his back when a head leaned toward the artiste’s ear and murmured: “Don’t trust the man who was just talking to you—he’s a policeman.”

  The unfortunate village bridegroom started trembling in every limb.

  At that moment, the man in question turned round and, perceiving the man who had just spoken to the musician, said to himself: Why, what can that serpent Boissonnald be doing here? That’s not obvious. He’d better not put a spoke in my wheel or, word of a Rosamour, he’ll regret it.

  The following day, which was Sunday, the fair was in full swing.

  The preparations for the launch of the balloon were being made solemnly, as is befitting when it is a matter of interesting a crowd and extracting good money from its pockets.

  Ropes had been extended to form a large circle; within that area several rows of chairs had been set out, in which the most curious or the most fortunate spectators had taken their places.

  In the middle of the circle, one of the openings of the gas main had been uncovered.

  The envelope of varnished calico forming the balloon was lying on the ground like a huge fishing net, the valve in the center. A broad tube, similarly made of varnished calico, was fitted to the gas conduit, the other end extending underneath the aerostat to the orifice that have it access.

  Professor Joël had abandoned his black suit; he appeared in the spangled leotard of a simple acrobat, ready to perform gymnastics underneath the nacelle that could be seen a few paces away, rigged out and ready to be attached to the balloon’s net as soon as the inflation was complete.

  Pilesèche, in his clown costume, and Bémolisant, the
trombone-playing village bridegroom, were there again, along with Miss Adda, who was circulating among the spectators, selling them oranges and barley-sugar.

  It was a bright, sunny day with a dry cold that that had not kept anyone away. The audience was numerous and its members well disposed to take pleasure in the spectacle they had been promised, the preparations for which Joël was explaining to them in a stentorian voice.

  Two or three employees of the gas factory, in braided caps, were lending their collaboration to the inflation. The gas was gradually introduced into the envelope, which swelled up awkwardly, like the spontaneous generation of an enormous mushroom.

  The cords of the net were attached to sacks of ballast, which held the fragile machine in place, preventing it from rising too quickly. The men had to bring the bags closer together, attaching them lower down, as the gigantic ball rose up, forming a gilded dome inside the mesh of the net.

  The equator of the thousand-cubic-meter sphere is already visible; it is filling up rapidly now. The pear-shaped neck appears. The time has come to fit the nacelle; it is attached.

  With scrupulous care, Joël verifies all the junctions, makes sure that no cleat is faulty, that no mooring-rope will break in mid-air, imperiling the human lives that are about to confide themselves to the frail craft. The material is a little old, but with precautions the ascension will be accomplished without a hitch. The passengers announced in the program are Joël, Miss Adda and a volunteer. While Joël does his perilous exercises on the trapeze, Miss Adda will guide the aerostat. As for the benevolent passenger, he has paid a rather large sum to procure the emotions of a voyager in space.

  The aides attach a French flag to the suspension cords; the anchor is hanging over one of the sides of the nacelle, and to maintain equilibrium, the other side is fitted with the guide-tope rolled up into a ball.

  Everything is ready.

  Joël was in the nacelle, methodically arranging the instruments and sacks of ballast.