The Nickel Man

by Brian Stableford

  Was she listening to him, her eyes fixed and her cheeks pale and sad? Or were her thoughts wandering in the distance, over the waves where the treacherous nacelle had sunk?

  XVI. In Search of the Cadaver

  “A labadens!38 Rosamour, my friend!”

  “Jean Saure! Is that you, old comrade?”

  “The king of reportage in person. Ah! The recognition scene always make a sensitive heart beat faster.”

  “It’s been such a long time since we ran into one another. And then, like this, unexpectedly, on a street corner...”

  “To be frank, my dear friend, the encounter isn’t absolutely fortuitous; if I’m in these parts it’s partly to look for you. I need you.”

  “Aha!” said the other, without blinking, but bracing himself to withstand the rude assault of a man wanting to borrow money.

  He was mistaken, though; the comrade did not have designs on his wallet, and all anxiety vanished as soon as he spoke again.

  “Aren’t you in charge of the investigation of the Grillard-Bémolisant affair?” the journalist continued.

  “Um,” said Rosamour, with compromising himself.

  “I’m on the hunt for news; I need you to give me some. Go on, talk: my paper is waiting.”

  “Well, whatever it costs me, I’ll make you a confession...”

  “A confession free of all artifice...”

  “Absolutely free of all artifice...”

  “Make your confession, then—but you know, I don’t trust myself; it’s not in my métier to let myself by taken in.”

  “All men, in all métiers, have the same pretention…and they get taken in all the same. No matter…it’s quite clear that I have an idea at the back of my mind, and I’ll tell you what it is...”

  “Without beating around the bush?”

  “Without beating around the bush. I’m a policeman; you need me. You’re a journalist; I need you. Let’s join forces, and all will be for the best.”

  Jean Saure linked arms with the detective. “Golden words,” he said. “Come and have a beer. There’s nothing better to aid confidences.”

  The two men stopped under the awning of a café, and Rosamour was finally able to formulate the confession promised with a mysterious expression.

  “You know, my dear Jean, since the papers have said so, that my two fugitives slipped through my fingers and took off like sparrows. That small misfortune would be nothing, but for the wrath of the court, which has got me the boot. Now, you know that I’m rancorous, vindictive and not patient; you can therefore conclude that I’m not taking my disgrace as benevolently as people would like to believe. For want of being able to do official police work, I shall launch myself into opposition. I have my plan; I’ll let you in on it. The two of us will undertake the counter-investigation. The magistracy is searching for the murderer; we’re searching for the victim. I need Père Grillard, dead or alive. We’ll demonstrate the perfect innocence of Bémolisant and his acolyte...”

  “What! You think they’re innocent!”

  “Until there’s proof to the contrary. I’ll tell you my reasons. We demonstrate that the examining magistrate is a blockhead, that Boissonnald is a murky individual, that Rosamour is a great man, the rival of the great policemen of the past…”

  “Who were decorated!”

  “I’ll be content with a simple statue.”

  “You shall have one.”

  “It’s a veritable campaign that I’m undertaking against the Sûreté and the Court; I shan’t be content until I’ve ground my enemy into the dust.”

  “Go, Redskin!”

  “But for that I need a newspaper—a newspaper that will take the lead and won’t be afraid—and that’s where our role begins.”

  “Oh, my friend, I’ll introduce you to my editor, who likes nothing better than slinging mud at the administration. You can make your pitch; your natural eloquence will seduce and persuade him. All the reporters on the paper are ready to launch themselves on the various tracks you indicate. As for me, I’ll take charge of putting the boot into your examining magistrate. I’ll be mocking, I’ll be mordant, I’ll prick him and harass him. It’s a task, at least, and not banal.”

  “Is your editor capable of putting funds into the enterprise?”

  “Don’t worry about that—to get one up on the police, he won’t back off.”

  And as ideas come in the course of conversation, the two friends quickly fell into agreement regarding the first operations of the campaign.

  First of all, it was necessary to interest public opinion, to prepare for a turnabout in favor of the suspects. Now, great humanitarian sentiments do well in newspapers headlines and columns; a subscription in favor of Madame Bémolisant could not fail to have a prodigious effect. Given a little push, the public, in its turn, would feel sorry for the undeserved fate of the unfortunate woman and the innocent baby struck so cruelly by the unjust accusation leveled against her husband.

  “Yes, unjust. Hasn’t the investigation been marked by the most evident prejudice. Where’s the evidence of culpability?”

  And all the usual speeches about judiciary errors...

  There was an entire war machine on which the two friends counted of making use like a catapult to batter the defenses of the Sûreté that had so ludicrously sacked the most scientific of its detectives.

  And what a racket there would be around the subscription, to come to the aid of the pitiable victims of an unmerited insult!

  And finally, the statue! Did they not have the statue? That statue was a flag, as Joseph Prudhomme would have said. They were going to exhibit once again the marvelous work of the sculptor whose disappearance in such mysterious circumstances attracted so much attention.

  The dispatch-room of the paper seemed entirely indicated for that manifestation, which would take on the color of a charitable intervention in favor of a tearful family. Was it not in that dispatch room that once could see, every day, the flower of current affairs, to which the paper, raising the trumpet to its lips, never failed to give a noisy publicity?

  Tombolas, charity sales, pictures to hang on the wainscoting, autographs by the man of the hour, with his photograph in his latest cravat: to that kaleidoscope, the public willingly applied its eye.

  In truth, that was the drumbeat that the two conspirators needed.

  And in the meantime, Rosamour went to establish his batteries solidly, before unmasking them and battering a breach in the theory so briskly erected by the examining magistrate

  What he had not said was that he counted on inaugurating, in order finally to discover what had been the fate of the unfortunate Monsieur Grillard, a method as bold as it was unusual.

  The story of Jacques Aymard, the “sorcerer” of Lyon and his divinatory wand was running through his mind. Was this not the case on which to try out the singular means that had succeeded so well in that circumstance?

  Rosamour also thought that Miss Adda might be useful to him in realizing that project.

  She was, to begin with, the “sensitive individual” described by the Baron von Reichenbach,39 for whom the nature has manifestations unknown to common mortals. The policeman had witnessed experiments that left no doubt as to the sensibility of her nerves.

  Without even being plunged into a provoked trance, she perceived the odic effluvia that escape from the asperities of various bodies, but which are only detectable by a few individuals. If someone raised a hand in a dimly-lit room she saw a kind of slight flame springing from the fingertips, and that flame differed in color according to whether it was emanated by the left or the right hand.

  It was sufficient for her to hold a glass in her left hand for a few minutes for the water it contained to take on, for her, an insipid and disagreeable taste and make her feel nauseated, whereas water appeared pure and agreeable to her when she held it in her right hand.

  One would never finish if it were necessary to identify all the bizarre and unhealthy sensations that the young woman
experienced, which made her a remarkable subject for study.

  Rosamour judged that all these precious faculties might finally find their application. It was only necessary for him to be able to put Miss Adda on the track of the old scientist. With that end in mind, the policeman assembled a few clothes that had belonged to Monsieur Grillard and, making a package of them, went to the cheap hotel where he had lodged the young woman, having given her instructions to show herself as little as possible.

  The instruction has been almost superfluous; after the overworked existence that she had dragged out on the road, the former ballerina was avid for repose and tranquility. She lived in her little fifth-floor room, only descending occasionally to buy a cornet of fries or the few sous’ worth of cooked meat that constituted the bulk of her nourishment.

  She stayed there, often in bed or sprawled in an old armchair with worn-out springs, doing nothing, motionless, her gaze lost in a dream…and her dream went into the distance, all the way to the sea, where she thought she saw a balloon floating, disaster-stricken. And among the passengers in the frail nacelle, she only saw one: the one who had so much empire over her; the unfortunate clown, Pilesèche.

  Her imagination concentrated then on that singular spectacle; her vision darkened; her entire being became numb, as if, even at a distance, she could feel the effluvia of her former magnetizer passing through her.

  Was that not because he was still alive?

  That conviction invaded her entirely, and when, with a violent start, she woke up again, agitated, excited by fever and nervous overexcitement, she conserved that belief that the aeronauts had not perished. She tried to make Rosamour share it, but he shook his head. No, no, the sea did not return its victims; anyway, they would have heard mention of it.

  And what was the point in paying any more attention to the unfortunate shipwreck-victims? The key to the problem was the vanished cadaver; and it was the cadaver that it was necessary to find, at any price.

  Putting her into contact, therefore, with all the objects that had belonged to the scientist, he questioned her, pushing her lucidity toward that sole question: where as the old man’s body?

  She did not reply.

  Large beads of sweat testified nevertheless to the efforts she was making to see with the eyes of her soul and the grasp a trail that was incessantly hidden.

  He decided to make one last attempt, and took her to the former dwelling of the mysterious victim.

  The rubble had been partly cleared; the walls had been shored up, but the repair work had not progressed beyond the first floor. He was nevertheless able to hoist the young woman up to the former laboratory, which remained in almost exactly the same state as on the day after the fire, except that the charred beams had been supported by stays, and planks had been thrown laterally to make an almost continuous and accessible floor.

  Silently, Adda went along the walls, feeling, sniffing, her eyes staring beneath half-closed lids, folded into herself, and sometimes shivering.

  Suddenly, she stopped, her neck taut, her nostrils dilated, as if she had perceived the distant odor of the object for which she was searching. Her hand extended forwards, pointing at an invisible phantom that was fleeing before her, zigzagging like a pursued hair; then she started walking.

  Adda went down the ladders that she had had so much difficulty climbing without any assistance, marched through the streets, without hesitation, without stopping…marching continuously, until, at the top of the Avenue Clichy, she stopped for a few seconds outside Madame Bémolisant’s door; then, as if picking up a fresh trail, she resumed her curse, going back down toward the great boulevards; hesitated again at the intersection of the Rue de Sèze; set off again more urgently in order to steer toward the house where Rosamour lived, after detours and backtrackings that had taken her all the way to the Gare Montparnasse...

  Rosamour, who was following her, was exhausted.

  Miss Adda did not seem to feel the fatigue of that hectic course, and her feet skimmed the ground, hardly touching it. Her pace accelerated, while unfortunate detective ran out of breath following her and it was with a flagellating stride that he climbed the stairs leading to his apartment.

  In front of the closed door she stopped, breathless, and banged on it violently with her fist until the policeman had opened it.

  Adda went in like a hurricane, with an “Ah!” of relief and triumph—but, immediately vanquished, her entire being relaxed, as it were, abruptly, and she fell, inert, outside the cupboard in which the nickel statue lay...

  Oh, poor Rosamour scarcely spared a thought for that statue, as he let himself fall in his turn into an armchair, his face convulsed and streaming after that hectic steeplechase.

  For a moment, he had been hopeful: the somnambulist had such an inspired expression. She was walking with such a sure and rapid pace toward her invisible goal! But on seeing her climb the stairway of his own house...

  Good! thought the disappointed policeman, laughing humorlessly. You’re going to see that the cadaver is hidden in my apartment! I’m hiding Père Grillard, or giving shelter to his murderer! Too bad—my subject isn’t as brilliant as I hoped, and I’m back to square one....

  Regathering his wits, he went on: I only have one hope left: the indecipherable cryptogram contains the key to the enigma; it’s up to me to bring it out.

  He was tired out by such a gallop, however, and incapable for the moment of stringing two ideas together. He was still mopping his brow and panting when Adda woke up and rubbed her eyes, also exhausted, her limbs aching, incapable of moving them without crying out, and utterly unconscious of what had happened.

  Rosamour was still under the impact of his failure when his friend Jean Saure came to find him. The news that he was bringing was not made to comfort the poor detective.

  To be sure, the press campaign was going well; public opinion was already showing a benevolence toward their cause, while the court was under vigorous attack. But time was passing and the need for money was making itself felt. Madame Bémolisant had confessed, blushing, that her resources were almost totally exhausted, and the war could only be continued with the aid of new subsidies.

  It was necessary to sell the statue.

  An Englishman, a kind of Barnum, had made an enticing offer. They might be able to do even better by organizing a public auction.

  The agent acquiesced to all his friends proposals, leaving him complete liberty to act, without the strength to think and devoid of courage.

  He only had one idea left: to harness himself like a Benedictine to the deciphering of the cryptogram. That was where salvation lay. The rest scarcely mattered...

  XVII. Saved from the Waters

  On the deck of the little steamer Francine two streaming bodies lay, clad in grotesque costumes, which the waves had lacerated in a bizarre fashion.

  The drowned men were lividly pale, insensible to any stimulation. They scarcely had a pulse-beat, and no breath was emerging from their breasts.

  Sailors and passengers surrounded them with muffled exclamations, while two or three crouching men strove to reanimate them, massaging them in order to restore some warmth to their icy extremities, imposing rhythmic tractions on their tongues in order to reestablish the automatic movement of human respiration, which maintains the hearth of life.

  A physician, without saying much apart from issuing brief commands, was presiding over that work, and listening at intervals to see whether the hearts had begun to beat under the violent stimulation of napkins soaked in boiling water and abruptly applied to the epigastrum.

  Standing up, his legs apart, with his hands in his pockets, a short broad-shouldered man, solid and thickset, was smoking his pipe. He was the commandant of the vessel, Captain Carbagnac, a southerner of good vintage, who had no need to proclaim the fact; his accent did that for him.

  “Stand aside, the lot of you!” he cried, in a stentorian voice, to the sailors whose circle was getting tighter, intercepting the daylight and
the respirable air. “Nevertheless,” he said, addressing the doctor, “We interrupted their bath at a good time.”

  The doctor, very busy, only replied with a grunt—but the other had no need of an interlocutor; his loquacity could do without replies.

  “Look—one of them moved... It’s not so bad... With good fur gloves and vigorous rubbing, you can wake the dead... Poor fellow, they don’t look so good, all the same... Well, it would be a great pity, old man, if Captain Carbagnac was deflected from his route for corpses... I have confidence, me... I said to myself: Doctor Caudelot is no fool, he’ll get these fellows out of it... What desolates me, damn it, is not to have saved the balloon. I’d gladly made a captive ascent…a don’t worry old man, a captive ascent…Captain Carbagnac owes it to his crew, his passengers, and his family...but nevertheless, imagine how delighted these worthy fellows will be with our rival. Go sound a fanfare! Trying to disengage the nacelle, the damned balloon found a means of flying away with the remains of the net, and that buckle of gas flew away as if it were neither more or less than a soap-bubble...”

  One of the drowned me opened haggard eyes and his lips moved, murmuring softly: “Where am I?”

  And that question, escaping like a breath, they divined without hearing it.

  The other came back with a spasm. “The police! The police!” he repeated, pursued all the way to the coma of asphyxia by an obsessive anguish.

  And they both fell back into their unconscious immobility—but their hearts were finally beating; their breasts were rising, aspiring the oxygen of life, and falling back in irregular somersaults.

  The doctor stood up and readjusted the sleeves that he had rolled up. “Now I’ll answer for them,” he said, finally.

  “So much the better, thank God,” exclaimed the captain, in a voice that he had doubtless borrowed from the thunder of his homeland. “Hey!” he continued, “You four lads, here! Lift these fellows up for me and stick them in hammocks with good blankets. We’ll chat later.”