“I understand you, Nieve!” said the old man gravely. “When the master returned to live here, in this house on the land of his ancestors, he built the Pentacle of Solomon in the disguise of a weathervane, so that if the gods brought some initiated soul to the land, the castle could be a temple of brief or prolonged rest. In all these years, this is the first time that the Pentacle has been seen by the eyes of a spirit capable of understanding. My old age blesses you, Nieve.”
“My youth thanks you, Hambad Sin.”
With the handle of the basket on the crook of her left arm, the young Romani walked toward the great door. The old man began to follow her. When she had crossed the threshold, he bowed at her passage, deeply, with both hands raised high.
Nieve took the direction back from the castle to the crossroads. A hundred yards further on, white smoke rose between the two wagons into the calm and luminous air.
The previous day, after having rejoined the main national road of Tours to Le Mans, the Nyctalope’s automobile had driven not in the direction of the Dordogne, but toward a much nearer goal: the big market town of La Chartre-sur-le-Loir, only about twenty kilometers to the northeast of Beech Grove.
By one of those coincidences that fill the life of men of action and abound when people live in close contact, for five days, the great market town of La Chartre was hosting the Romani caravan of Andrès del Borjo, an authentic “king” of the only tribe of Spanish Romani, whose origins went back by an undisputed tradition, surer than any written document, to the Romani of Egypt, those priests and priestesses of Isis the Mysterious, Occult and Learned. Saint-Clair was a longtime friend of Andrès del Borjo, whom he had met in Morocco in 1921, and still kept up a frequent correspondence with this strange man.
On his way from Paris to the Touraine to answer Comte d’Hermont’s enigmatic call for help, Saint-Clair had learned that in a week’s time, Andrès’ caravan would set up camp in a municipal field of La Chartre, one of the southerly communes of the département of Sarthe, not far from Saint-Christophe. The Nyctalope thus had planned to pay a visit to the Romani master and his tribe during his stay at Beech Grove.
Only a month before, he had lunched with Andrès del Borjo at his “royal” table, in the midst of the wagons and tents of the tribe, while it camped at Fontenay-Saint-Père, near Mantes in the Seine-et-Oise. He had not then foreseen that he would come to visit the tribe again in the Touraine so soon after. He was especially interested in Nieve-la-Dorée, “Golden Nieve,” because of her hair, or the “Sybil,” as the Romani called the young girl.
While at Beech Grove, thinking about what could be the real cause of the evil that plagued the d’Hermont family, except for Basilie, Saint-Clair had naturally thought of turning to Andrès for help, and in particular, Nieve.
When he left Beech Grove, he drove directly to Le Chartre, and talked for a long time with Andrès and Nieve. Then, two wagons were detached from the caravan, which had six others that would remain at Le Chartre until further orders. Saint-Clair transformed himself into “Pedro,” while Vitto became “Juan” and Soca “Antonio.” Not shaving, modifying the cut of his hair, applying a make-up so skillful that even in the sun it was not discernible, dressing as a Romani, speaking the Catalan language, which was his native language (as Saint-Clair had been born in Banyuls in the Roussillon) and which his two Corsicans assistants knew well enough, was all that was needed to make the transformation believable. Even Doctor Luvier would have been unable to identify, in sight and voice, the Nyctalope and his two companions.
When Nieve, returning from the Cross of Blood, appeared on the road, Lilla and Pépito, the two children, saw her first and ran toward her. She welcomed them at the same time with an affectionate smile and a gesture pushing them away from her skirt, for they had dirty hands after playing with the earth, the grass, the trees and a hundred other things.
Old Luisa and her daughter Joachina were working on the final preparations for breakfast, and had set up a coffee table in the sun, on which a beautiful linen tablecloth was stretched.
Andrès del Borjo was chatting with Pedro, a.k.a. the Nyctalope. They had just sat down on the slope on the side of the road, a few steps from the first trailer. As for Juan-Vitto and Antonio-Soca, they were playing to see who could best turn a golden plate of terracotta on a stiff index finger.
Unburdened of the children called by their mother, who wanted to clean them, wash their hands and serve them their meal before everyone else sat down to table, Nieve stopped in front of her “king” and “Pedro.” They questioned her with their eyes. She replied in Catalan:
“I did not see him. He had gone out, and will not return until about noon. I didn’t want to wait for him. But I have to go back in two hours.
With precision she described all she had seen, drew the portrait of Hambad Sin, and repeated the words the Tibetan had said to her.
“Well!” said Saint-Clair. “Everything remains as according to plan then, Nieve. You will do this afternoon what you could not do this morning.”
He turned toward Andrès and said:
“We must be patient. The issue has multiple angles, and is very complicated. It has to do not just with the life of my friends at Beech Grove and the destiny of a young girl whom I still believe is innocent, but also with our own lives. For if my hypothesis is correct, the man we seek will not pull back for any reason, except his own death. In order to achieve our objective, we must succeed in encircling him from all sides, materially and mentally, before he can even conceive the slightest suspicion of any action directed against him. Is this your opinion, Andrès?”
The “king” of the Romani, a forty-year-old with a intelligent, serious face of simple features, did not hesitate to reply:
“That is my view, friend Léo. You may act and command as you please, as I told you. You will be obeyed and followed. We have plenty of time.”
The two men smiled at Nieve, and Saint-Clair made a small gesture dismissing her. The young girl replied to the smile with a happy flash of her eyes, and went to put her basket in the second caravan. Then she went to Luisa and Joachina and began to help them set the table.
A quarter of an hour later, the meal began. It consisted of a very plentiful bowl of Valencia-style rice and a salad of oranges. There were also coffee, cigars, cigarettes and pipes, as a serious conference took place amongst the four men. The women remained silent. At 2 p.m., Saint-Clair stood up. Addressing himself to Vitto and Soca in the manner that was by now his practice, that is to say in the Catalan language, and calling them by their Romani names, he said:
“Juan, Antonio, prepare to accompany me to La Migeonne.”
And to Nieves, he said:
“Sibyl, in half an hour you will return alone to the Cross of Blood.”
That Sunday afternoon was the day of the gathering in the hamlet of the Priory, located two kilometers west of Saint-Christophe. Each person in the small Romani caravan had his or her role to play. The old woman Luisa kept watch over the caravans, mules and children. Andrès and his wife Joachina went to the gathering, allegedly to sell wickerwork, but in reality to take a good look around, for at this gathering, all the peasants of Saint-Christophe and its neighboring villages would congregate to exchange gossip, joyful talk, and plan future fairs and markets. Eyes and ears like those of Andrès and Joachina, duly informed and instructed by Saint-Clair, could see and hear things that might be useful.
Nieve had her own specific mission. No less precise was that of the Nyctalope and his two assistants, who wished to put an end to the riddle of the shoe with the cracked sole, and in addition make a thorough investigation of the buildings of La Migeonne, left empty for a few hours by Hector Gasse, his wife Anna, and their three servants.
Yes, left empty—and open, for, in that region of Touraine, the honesty of inhabitants was truly total. In this land, in human memory, there had not been a break-in, a theft, or even any notable pilfering. On festive days, whether it was for a fair or a simple gathering,
the villagers, tradesmen, artisans and peasants took the day off, closed the ground floor doors and windows, shut up the barns and stables, and went to the provincial place of rejoicing. No one was left even to steal a rabbit. As for vagabonds, tramps and hobos, they were not seen outside the immediate vicinity of the great national road from Tours to Le Mans. If someone went astray on a road near the entrance of a farm, the guard dogs were usually sufficient to keep him at a distance, all the more so if the vagabond knew that the barking would wake up a farmer or valet in the house. Saint-Clair knew all this already, through Jacques d’Hermont. The operation at La Migeonne would thus be very easy.
The previous night, after they had returned by bicycle from Le Chartre-sur-le-Loir, Soca and Vitto had sprinkled large quantities of sand in two places on the dirt road taken by the inhabitants of the farm to go at the hamlet of the Priory. The shoes of the Gasse family and their servants would leave imprints there.
Everything had been planned well. Saint-Clair and his two assistants hoped to find the shoe with the cracked sole, or at least its trace, to determine if the individual wearing it on the night of the luminous phenomenon was one of the five people living at La Migeonne.
Before their departure, Vitto slipped several pieces of raw meat wrapped in paper into a large pocket of his simple jacket. Soca went armed with a bag of nightingales. Neither they nor Saint-Clair carried any weapon. But each of the three men kept on him their identity papers in case they ran into some kind of trouble with the local gendarmes.
To arrive at La Migeonne, the three men skirted the gardens of the Cross of Blood, crossed the Nais in a jump, climbed the slope of the railroad track and followed a path that meandered through the thickest section of the great wood that occupied the borders of the property of Beech Grove on each side. They did not travel directly through the woods and fields. As an added precaution, Comte d’Hermont had given formal leave to all his gamekeepers to go with their wives and children to the gathering at the Priory.
The weather would probably remain fine all day long, for wind was still blowing from the east and the air was crisp. Chances were that the peasants would linger at the gathering until after sunset, as the evening light would last long enough to light their way back from Saint-Christophe to the scattered hamlets and farms.
Without difficulty, and without having been spotted, Saint-Clair, Vitto and Soca reached the immediate vicinity of La Migeonne. After making absolutely sure the surroundings were deserted, all three crossed the threshold of the open porch together. On the pavement of the front courtyard, two dogs were sprawled in the sun. They rushed forward, barking. But Saint-Clair called them by their names, and calmed them with a voice that soothed them into absolute stillness. Vitto threw them the pieces of raw meat he had brought. Attracting them with further chunks of meat and whispering flattering comments, he led them toward a kind of dark recess on the side of the pigsty and adroitly shut them away. The dogs quickly occupied themselves in gnawing on their meat, and satisfied as they were, did not start to bark again.
Then Vitto went to post himself to watch for any possible arrival at the opposite gate, on the side facing the dirt road. The latter had two doors that could be locked from the inside, but there was a wide gap between them, through which the watchman could easily keep an eye on the road running straight across the fields toward the point that the hill began to slope toward the valley of the Nais.
Meanwhile, Saint-Clair and Soca walked rapidly to the small building that contained the living quarters of the farm. There was just one door and three windows, of which two were closed. The lock on the door did not long resist one of Soca’s tools; its bolt gave way, and the two men entered.
Saint-Clair knew the lay-out of the farm from having come there with Jacques d’Hermont: kitchen, dining-room, living-room, etc. Quickly but carefully, he made a search that turned up nothing. There was only one piece of furniture shut with a key: a solid old country cupboard, containing some silver cutlery and table linen. Nothing suspicious, nothing even a little significant.
The next room was obviously the bedroom of Hector and Anna Gasse, the farmer couple.
“Curious!” said Saint-Clair, amused. “Everything here is cozy and perfectly maintained. The terrible greed of the Gasses does not prevent them from maintaining a certain personal ease, a private luxury, in secret. Attention, Soca! Everything must be displaced somewhere. The smallest corner must be examined, even the frame of the bed, as well as under the mattress and cabinet. But then we must put everything back in its place, and it must look as if we have not touched it.”
“Naturally, Monsieur!”
In this room full of furniture, with its glossy hardwood floor covered with a large rug, window trimmed with thick white tulle and red curtains with a double layer of pink sateen, the investigation went on for much longer than in the living-room. Everything was meticulously searched without result.
They ended with the cabinet, a most remarkable piece of furniture. This item, supposedly from the First Empire, did not look antique at all. It had four drawers stacked above one other, all locked, and a table made of thick black marble. At first Soca lifted and removed the marble, fixed by its weight alone. He set it on the floor and leaned it against the wall. Under the marble was another slab, made of a single plaque of very thick wood screwed, studded and strongly glued to the four massive columns that ended with a ball foot. When the marble was removed, however, one could not see the inside of the upper drawer, as one usually does with this kind of furniture.
Standing in front of the cabinet, the Corsican cautiously opened the four drawers, which he pulled fully open without removing them completely. Each time he felt a clear resistance, a sharp jerk.
“Fixed brackets are holding them back,” he said, “but I can touch and see the bottom without difficulty.”
While Soca was engaged in the work of successively opening and closing drawers, Saint-Clair stood two steps to the side: a movement and halt that were not calculated, or even conscious. He did not think there was a secret hiding place in a piece of furniture. He had always thought that the hiding place, if it did exist, would be in a well-concealed hole in the wall, in a sordid and little-frequented place in the house.
But his eye was naturally observant, and with his mind sharpened, he was quick to see, notice, compare, deduce, and conclude. In front of the piece of furniture, or standing at a slight angle, Saint-Clair would probably only have seen what Soca saw, and not remarked on anything, compared anything, or deduced anything else. He would have concluded that they only had to empty the drawers methodically, and put everything back that they contained.
When the first one was opened, Saint-Clair thought: “Obviously the shoe with the cracked sole cannot be inside, any more than in the furniture we have already seen. But I am not only looking for that shoe. With a criminal of the rare nature I suspect, if there is an accomplice at La Migeonne, I must look for clues of a very different kind!”
By chance, he found himself two meters to one side of the cabinet, so that daylight passed between the drawn curtains and cast it into full light. Then he clearly saw the full width of the drawers pulled out of the furniture.
He heard Soca say mechanically:
“I can touch and see the bottom without difficulty.”
And the mind of Saint-Clair thought logically:
“So, this bottom I can see from here does not extend fully inside the cabinet.”
Saint-Clair’s eyes saw, and his mind noticed, that the width now visible from the drawers, front to back, measured barely more than two-thirds of the extension of the cabinet. And his mind deduced:
“So the drawers, when pushed in, do not reach to the back of the cabinet!”
He exclaimed sharply:
“Soca!”
“What is it, Monsieur?” asked the Corsican, looking at his master.
“I’ll explain. But do not move, for luck has positioned me well to see precisely what all our efforts might have
caused us to miss!”
“What?” exclaimed Soca.
“Yes. There’s something abnormal about this cabinet.”
“What must I do?”
“Find the fixed brackets, remove them with as little damage as possible, and take out the drawers completely, placing them on the carpet. Be calm, but quick, because one false move could break something, and we have neither the time nor the means to repair it.”
“Understood, Monsieur.”
Quickly, but with method, the Corsican emptied the upper drawer, and carefully set all the contents on the carpet. There was only linen, rough but good quality, sewn by peasants. With his eyes and fingers, Soca studied the bottom of the drawer, and the walls and inner walls of the cabinet.
“I have it, Monsieur. There is one bracket on each side. The wood at the bottom of the drawer juts in, and the brackets have been applied under the table. Now the whole system is coming apart: the three drawers, top to bottom, are held together. The brackets of the table keep the first drawer in place, the brackets of the first keep the second in place, and so on. It’s not bad. I do not need to completely pull out the drawers of the cabinet to empty and inspect them. But I do not see the reason for such joy on your face…”
“You will see, you will see soon,” said Saint-Clair. “Continue and do not speak at all!”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
And without speaking, at least until his master questioned him, the Corsican continued to work.
Unscrewing the eight brackets was for him a quick job.
At the end of it, Saint-Clair said:
“The ease of the extraction of brackets proves they were not placed with the intention of permanence, and even that someone took them out and screwed them back in before you did so yourself, Soca. No doubt this happened a long time ago, for the countryside is damp, and even in this closed room, moisture penetrates. Not touched for months, the screws would be rusty. But they are perfectly sharp and shining, and their heads bear scratches from the blade of a screwdriver. The fingers that handled them were obviously less skillful and light than yours, Soca.”
The Nyctalope and The Tower of Babel Page 16
