The Nyctalope and The Tower of Babel

by Jean de La Hire

  “Never!” replied d’Hermont, gravely.

  As for Basilie, Saint-Clair had the clear impression that she was purposely evasive, addressing him in a tone of false ingenuity, an imperfect mask. With a falsely confidential air, the girl murmured:

  “Monsieur, at Beech Grove everything that has to do with the Cross of Blood is taboo: one does not speak of it!”

  And deliberately, she broke the thread of the conversation by saying in her normal voice:

  “Papa, eat your pheasant quickly! What a delicious smell! I still have the hunger of a wolf!”

  From then on, until the end of the meal, nothing more was spoken except indifferent banalities.

  Rising first, the Comte said to his daughter:

  “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  She replied without hesitation:

  “I am going to keep Auntie and Mad company. If they want, I will read to them out loud a wonderful novella by Guy de Maupassant that I read yesterday. It talks about peasants, marriage and inheritance; it’s quite a thrill... Then I will receive Bottot, who will give me a report on his preparations. In sum, I do not think I will go out at all. Do you have any requests of me, Papa?”

  “No.”

  “And you, Monsieur, Saint-Clair, may I be useful to you in any way?”

  “No, my dear girl. I don’t see how. Thank you. Besides, I’m planning to go to Tours, to see an old friend, a curator at the local Museum...”

  “Then let me say good-bye now.”

  She gave Saint-Clair a little bow, at once sweet and mocking, and offered her left cheek to his paternal lips. Then, her step light, balanced and harmonious, she went out.

  Ten minutes later, alone in his car, Léo Saint-Clair drove away from Beech Grove. He had not seen Soca and Vitto again, but they had already received his instructions for their afternoon’s work.

  In fact, the Nyctalope did not go straight to Tours. First, he stopped at Saint-Christophe, where, in the secrecy of his medical office, he had a long conversation with Doctor Luvier.

  At 3:30 p.m., he arrived in Tours, not to see any curator, but to call from a telephone booth at the local post office his secretary, Marcel Dubost, based in an outbuilding of the mansion on Rue Hallé where he presently lived. He was back at Beech Grove at 4:45 p.m., that is to say about half an hour after sunset. From there, he went straight to the room of Jacques d’Hermont, who had been waiting for him.

  “How do you feel?” asked Saint-Clair.

  “Bad. Worse than yesterday at the same time. Tonight, the fever will be dreadful—if you do not succeed in helping me sleep...” replied the Comte with dejection.

  “Not quite! It was to calm you, this morning, that I promised you a strong soporific. You will not sleep until at least midnight—but neither will I. We will stay up together, but not here.”

  “What?” asked the other, astonished.

  “I mean, not in your room, nor in mine. Listen to me, Jacques. You know my theory that Armand Logreux’s long stay in Tibet is crucial to solving this mystery. Do not question me. It is important that the mental in you has no influence on the physical during the entirety of this experience. I cannot explain anything in advance. Afterward, everything will be made clearer, or at least, I hope so. All I ask of you is to follow me. Will you do this?”

  “Obviously, yes!” said Jacques d’Hermont with fervor.

  “Good. Call Firmin right away. First, tell him that you will have only a glass of warm milk for dinner, which should be served in your room. Second, have him go and ask Madame Dauzet and Madeleine to come here immediately, for you must speak to them. That’s all for the moment.”

  Without replying, d’Hermont held out his arm and pressed an electric bell that emerged out from the tapestry, next to the fireplace where the great dry wood fire, all embers, was dying slowly. Saint-Clair sat in one of the armchairs.

  Two minutes later, the valet appeared.

  “Monsieur le Comte has rung?”

  “Yes, Firmin. I will not dine downstairs. In half an hour, bring me a glass of warm milk and some biscuits.”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”

  “Also, go tell my sister and older daughter that I would like to see them in my room right away.”

  “Yes, Monsieur le Comte.”

  Shortly afterward, Laure and Madeleine came in. They were both wrapped in warm wool dressing gowns, gray for the Laure, dark red for Madeleine.

  When, after a few words about the state of health in which the three patients found themselves, they had sat down in two other armchairs before the fire, between the Count and the Nyctalope, Jacques looked questioningly into the eyes of his friend.

  “I will speak first,” said Saint-Clair.

  Turning toward the two women, who had the same attentive and confiding look, he went on in a calm tone:

  “This evening, I am going to take some steps that I very much hope will provide the solution to the mysterious problem of Beech Grove. Jacques and I will have roles to play, and you two as well. Do not ask for any explanations now. You must do exactly as I tell you. Understood?”

  “Yes!” replied the aunt and her niece, together.

  “First, you will make an effort to go downstairs and have dinner with Basilie. Then you will ask her to follow you back to your apartment and keep you company, reading and chatting without any music, until she can no longer resist sleep. Understand that you have to keep her with you as long as possible. Can you do this?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Laure. “Although we have never asked her to do that before.”

  “If it seems necessary to insist,” Saint-Clair went on, “then you must insist. And without letting her realize that you are observing her, you will do so. Perhaps she will remain as she always is. Perhaps, on the contrary, she will suffer first from the constraints she may be obliged to impose on herself in order to comply with your request, or from a more or less progressively rapid discomfort, a sudden outbreak of fever, a violent desire, hardly fought or not fought at all, to leave you and return to her own room... If this happens, you will give back her liberty only when she visibly cannot take anymore. Have you understood me?”

  Once again it was Madame Dauzet who answered:

  “Your instructions, yes, but not your purpose.”

  “You will understand it later. Use all your energy not to be overwhelmed by the usual evil. Hold on until Basilie leaves. Afterward you can abandon yourselves to the fever and the depression without further struggle. Tomorrow morning, you will wait for Jacques to come and see you. That’s all. No! One more thing. Neither your brother nor I are going down to dinner. You will tell Basilie that I am not hungry and that I would like to keep Jacques company. Do I have to add more details? Do I need to be more precise?”

  “No,” said Laure, clearly.

  “What about you, Madeleine?”

  The young girl did not hesitate any more than her aunt:

  “No. I have understood what we must do,” she said. “It is very simple. But how long will we have the strength to hold out ourselves?”

  “I do not know,” confessed Saint-Clair, smiling. “But I repeat: draw for as long as you can on the energy of which your nervous natures are capable. You will be astonished, both of you, to see what high point this energy can reach, especially in a single and expected case of voluntary tension.”

  He fell silent. It was clear he had no more orders to give. And they knew in advance that he would not explain anything.

  Laure looked at her brother. During the conversation, Jacques d’Hermont had not said a word or made the slightest gesture. Slumped in the low chair, elbows on his knees and chin on his folded hands, he had listened, looking in turn at the eyes of his friend, of his sister, and of his daughter. Looking at Laure, he understood that he himself had to conclude. So he straightened up, rose with a slow and painful movement, and with a firm voice said to the two women rising at the same time as Saint-Clair:

  “I join our friend in imploring yo
u to be strong, clever and attentive. Laure, Madeleine, I will see you tomorrow.”

  He opened his arms. Together, his sister and daughter came to him with lightheartedness. He drew them into an embrace, kissed them on the cheeks and, drawing back a little, detached from them. For Saint-Clair, the women had a smile and a look at once submissive and grateful.

  When they had gone away and the door was closed, Saint-Clair said simply:

  “Jacques, let’s wait for Firmin. I do not think it is useful to speak.”

  “As you like,” said d’Hermont, docilely.

  They sat down. The Comte took out a log from the basket of wood at the outer corner of the fireplace and laid it on the pile of red embers. Soon a flame leaped up, and danced broadly and capriciously, colorful, luminous and, at times, playful—a sight before which a man with an active interior life could spent hours thinking and dreaming. The vast room was gently illuminated by this moving flame and by the electric bulb of a bedside lamp veiled by a green shade. No sound could be heard from the night outside. In this half-light, this silence, the two friends did not speak a word until discreet blows were struck on a door.

  “Come in!” said the Comte.

  Firmin appeared, a tray of biscuits balanced on his left hand. He placed it on the thickly-marbled pedestal table in the middle of the room.

  “Will Monsieur le Comte need anything more?”

  “No, Firmin.”

  “When shall I bring the hot milk?”

  “In ten minutes. I am going to bed early.”

  “Very well, Monsieur le Comte.”

  Turning toward Saint-Clair, the intelligent valet hesitated, but he immediately overcame this and asked:

  “What about you, Monsieur?”

  “In fact, Firmin,” said Saint-Clair, affecting a tone and aspect of great weariness, “I do not feel the slightest appetite, no matter how succulent the dinner prepared by Amélie. Madame Dauzet will excuse me along with Mesdemoiselles Madeleine and Basilie. I am not going down. And the notion of a glass of warm milk makes me wish to imitate you, Jacques...”

  He fell silent. Firmin asked:

  “Would Monsieur like for me to bring him a glass of warm milk, as well?”

  “Yes, Firmin, definitely yes. But without biscuits.”

  “As Monsieur wishes.”

  Firmin went out.

  Quite naturally, the Comte thought of waiting for Saint-Clair’s milk to be brought, so the two of them might take this light evening meal together. As the fire was no more than embers, to occupy himself during his friend’s silence, Jacques d’Hermont began to put more wood in the fireplace. But he was interrupted by a gesture and a touch from Saint-Clair, who gently said:

  “My dear Jacques, if you expect the room to be heated and brightened by a fire burning slowly during the second part of the night until morning, you must arrange the logs differently. But if you want beautiful flames at once, I warn you, we will be leaving this room in under a quarter of an hour, that is to say as soon as you have eaten a biscuit and drunk your milk, and I mine. Besides, you are trembling and sweating from fever. I advise you not to eat and just drink your milk in small sips. I will do the same, for I too... Hey! There it is!...”

  For a moment, he shivered, and with a clacking of teeth he stopped speaking.

  “The fever!” moaned d’Hermont, who at the Nyctalope’s first words had abandoned the fire. “I feel so miserable... And you. too..”

  “It is beginning again... a little more brutally than yesterday... But I expected it... Jacques, we will soon leave here... I will...”

  The Nyctalope had to stop, so strongly did his teeth suddenly begin to chatter. He let himself be overtaken by this attack for a moment. Then, reacting, he continued in a tight voice between clenched jaws:

  “I would like... We will retire to a room located as far as possible from your room and mine, a room situated on the axis northwest-southeast of the castle. Think... If there are central heating and comfortable armchairs, all the better. We will suffer less physically. Do you know this room? My dear Jacques, we will have to go there and stay secretly, without anyone knowing it, not even Firmin. During my visit to the castle, I saw a painter’s studio, currently unoccupied...”

  “Yes, yes,” whispered d’Hermont, whom the fever had left exhausted and annihilated, whereas it had made Saint-Clair nervous and agitated. “Yes, there are two rooms... a painter’s studio and a room to the northeast... well heated by many radiators... There are also two chimneys all filled with wood ready to be lit. I had them set up for a painter with whom I have close relations, a Belgian whose character and paintings I like... The four still lifes in the dining room are by him. You admired them yesterday... I...”

  “Yes!” cut in Saint-Clair, between two violent shudders.

  At that moment Firmin reappeared with the two glasses of milk.

  While placing the second tray on the table, he looked at his master, then his guest, and did not refrain from saying to Saint-Clair:

  “Monsieur has a fever, like Monsieur le Comte did yesterday...”

  The Nyctalope replied:

  “Like Monsieur le Comte, no! But like yesterday, yes. Firmin, you will tell Madame Dauzet, Mademoiselle Madeleine and Mademoiselle Basilie straight away that your master is in bed, and that as I am giving him some exotic medication gathered during my travels, they should not come to say goodnight. As far as they’re concerned, of course, I don’t have a fever at all, is that well understood?”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  And in another tone:

  “Monsieur le Comte has no more orders to give?”

  “No, no, go!” sighed Jacques d’Hermont, between two gulps of milk.

  Firmin bowed and stammered:

  “I wish, er, a good night to Monsieur le Comte... to Monsieur...”

  Then he turned on his heel and left.

  Immediately they both began to drink the very hot milk, with little sips. When they had emptied and set their glasses back down, the Nyctalope stood up and quickly said with a kind of violence:

  “Now, let’s go! Let’s go fast, for the love of God!”

  Jacques d’Hermont felt too weak to walk without support.

  “Léo,” he said, “give me your arm.”

  “Here. Are you sure we will not meet anyone in the corridors?” asked Saint-Clair.

  “No one. My sister and Madeleine are in their apartment. Basilie must be in her room. Besides, we are going straight into a corridor where all the rooms are uninhabited.”

  With one hand, Saint-Clair set the grate in front of the fire. On the way out, he switched off the bedside lamp. He removed the inside key from the door and closed it from the outside, with a double turn of the key. Then he slipped the key into one of his pockets.

  A minute later, the two friends had entered a dark vestibule. But as we know, there is no such thing as darkness for the Nyctalope.

  D’Hermont said:

  “Léo, is this the door I see in front of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s not turn on the light. Let me guide you.”

  With care, Saint-Clair closed the door of the corridor again. With his left hand, the Comte crossed the vestibule, crossed another threshold and closed another door. Only then did he switch on an electric light. A large ceiling lamp lit up, shedding generous light.

  The studio was large, comfortably furnished and in good taste, illuminated during the day by a high canopy at present hidden by an immense curtain of bisected canvas. A monumental chimney showed a pyramid of logs in the fireplace. On a small adjoining table was a box of matches and a cigarette box.

  “That’s good!” said Saint-Clair, smiling.

  The Comte sat down heavily in an armchair. The Nyctalope set fire to the paper and the twigs placed under the logs. Immediately the flame rose, sparkling, to give joy to the eyes of the two men seated near one another. Saint-Clair drew up an armchair and settled into it.

  “There! Now we wait,”
he said, with visible satisfaction.

  He didn’t try to suppress the shivering and chattering that gripped him again. It lasted several minutes, under the anxious glances of Jacques d’Hermont, prostrated by immense fatigue but strained to the full by curiosity and expectation, hope and fear.

  The Comte stammered, his voice low and hoarse:

  “Wait... wait for what... my dear friend?”

  Rubbing his sweaty palms on his handkerchief, Saint-Clair calmly replied:

  “What will happen soon, if my hypotheses are well-founded. I did not give you any quinine, nor have I taken any myself. It is important this evening not to fight the evil with artificial means. There’s something else I’m waiting for, which is the rapid diminution and cessation of the fever that afflicts and overwhelms you, and that overexcites my nerves, overwhelming me too as well. Patience! Speak, if you wish to do so, but let us speak of something other than the mystery of Beech Grove. Come, tell me how you met this Belgian painter. The canvas I see on this easel, if I am not mistake, represents a view of Saint-Christophe. It reveals a talent even better than the still-lifes in your dining-room. His name, his career, his character, his manners. Tell me! Tell me! You would not believe how much it interests me right now.”

  Was Léo Saint-Clair sincere? Did he only want to give his friend an easy and abundant subject of distraction? Revive him by engaging him in bringing the past to life? Dupe or not of this subterfuge, if subterfuge it was, Jacques d’Hermont began to speak, at first slowly and painfully, in a low and halting voice that searched for words, then with greater ease, and eventually with obvious pleasure.

  As if he were, in fact, deeply interested in his friend’s account, Saint-Clair cut in to ask questions, clarify details, dates... He even interposed digressions on painting in general, discussing the modern Belgian-Flemish school. He set forth ideas that d’Hermont, very “classical” in his tastes, fought with an ardor that was friendly, but intense, and a great lucidity of thought and lively ease of speech...

  Then, all at once, a silvery sound rang out gently. One, two, three... The two men went silent. Twelve chimes rang out. With the uninterrupted tick-tock of its clock, an old pendulum in a high painted case had just sounded midnight.