“A hired gondola was waiting for us. It was a round trip of several hours. We took a nice cold lunch. Lili came with us. Everything went well, except that Irène and I were haunted by an obsession from which nothing could distract us–endless questions with no plausible answers. Finally, with the help of the brisk air of the lagoon, Irène recovered some of her appetite. After that, the monastery proved interesting. We were heading back towards Venice, slightly less tormented, when the gondolier, coming alongside the public gardens, pointed at an old woman sitting on the damp steps. He said to us: ‘There’s a witch–the most famous on these shores. For a lira, she’ll tell you about the past, present and future–but she’s from Toledo, and although she’s been in Venice for 20 years, she can only speak Spanish. People understand anyway–they always understand!’
“The old woman was already leaning over. She stared at Irène and took her hand in an authoritative manner–but she barely glanced at it before drawing back. Interlacing her fingers in a pitying manner, she looked at Irène with eyes full of sadness. ‘Ay, probrecita,’ she murmured. ‘Hechizaa! Hechizaa!’ And she fled, whimpering. Silently, the gondolier plunged his oar back into the water–and I noticed, as we left the gondola in front of the hotel, that he looked at Irène with a sort of fearful pity. For her own part, Irène was calm, indifferent, seemingly unconscious, having not even thought of asking me what the witch’s words had meant.
“As for me, despite my familiarity with the Spanish language, I did not know the meaning of the word hechizaa–but I hastened to find out. Having left Irène in the care of Lili, who was helping her to undress, I went to the hotel library. There I found a Spanish/French/Italian dictionary. I searched for the word hechizaa. It means spellbound or bewitched. Spellbound! That was a ray of light for my mind, but for my heart, it was an atrocious shock!”
With a sigh, Raymond de Ciserat fell silent. He lowered his head and placed a hand over his forehead. Then, with a sudden shiver, he went on; his eyes were sparkling and his voice was harsh. “The phrase was not unfamiliar to me. Louis had often spoken to me of strange phenomena. At his suggestion, I had read recorded accounts of a number of genuinely troubling experiences–but I had always remained skeptical before. At that moment, however, I was convinced. The bite–the visible bite! And a conviction imposed itself on my mind and my heart: the conviction that, somewhere in the world, there was a man–a coward and a monster–who loved my wife and who had embraced and tormented her at a distance! And my wife had actually experienced the embraces and the tortures of that man!
“I didn’t want to believe it. I said to myself: I shall watch and observe. That is what I did–and that night, the night of April 30, was a terrible one. Irène was seized and beaten, struck–even scratched! You will see the wounds on her left side. I held her in my arms, but I could not protect her. It was horrible! In the morning, I wrote to you. We no longer had any other hope but you. Irène, look at me!”
Hurling himself to his knees in front of his wife, Raymond seized her hands. In a transport of love and anguish, as she leaned over him, he threw himself upon her and they hugged one another, sobbing. Professor Lourmel got to his feet. Drawing himself up to his full and imposing height, he towered over the entwined spouses curled up in the vast armchair and looked down at them with an indefinable expression of tenderness and sorrow. Then, his eyes became bright and piercing again, almost icy. “Irène, Raymond,” he said, gravely, “have faith. Mattol and I will be the stronger. Answer me, Raymond–what has happened since the night of April 30?”
“Nothing!” said the naval officer, dully. “But as every minute passes, we tremble in anticipation of the minute to come.”
“I want to see these stigmata. Get into bed, Irène.”
The spouses got up and, still entwined, went into the next room. When they had disappeared, Lourmel went into the anteroom, where he found Lili. “My girl,” he said, “go and tell Monsieur Mattol that I want to see him. Wait with him in the sitting-room. I’ll be in the bedroom. You must both come and join me when I call for you. Close and lock every door behind you.”
“Yes, Professor,” the servant said. She went out.
When Lourmel had subjected Irène to a physical examination, the young woman, a little calmer, put on a dressing-gown. Lourmel then called Mattol. Followed by Lili, the intern came into the bedroom; he kissed Madame de Ciserat’s hand. In response to the Professor’s invitation, everyone sat down.
Succinctly, but without omitting anything, with the clarity of a mathematical demonstration, Lourmel acquainted Mattol with the facts as reported by Irène and Raymond and the observations that he had made. “The bruises are irrefutable,” he concluded, “as are the superficial scratches that I have examined. The former have the appearance of having been produced by quite violent blows with a little hammer; the latter are exactly what one would expect if the skin had been broken by a fork with three sharp prongs. We therefore find ourselves confronted with material phenomena that cannot be doubted. What has caused them? Struck by the manner in which the phenomena were produced, and also by the word spoken by an alleged witch, Raymond believes that a spell has been cast, and this despite the profound skepticism that he formerly professed with regard to mysteries of that order. Irène does not know what to think; she lives in continual terror. But we must know the cause to suppress the effects, and there are two conceivable hypotheses–can you see what they are?”
“Yes, Professor,” the assistant replied, gravely. “The two hypotheses are, on the one hand, a complex case of somnambulism, hypnotism and suggestion, and, on the other, an explicit case of spell-casting.”
“Perfect!”
“Professor,” Mattol went on, ardently, “I do not believe that the former is the case. It would imply defects and disorders in Irène and Raymond that are not evident in either of them. You know both of them too well, and I know Raymond too well, to have the least doubt on that subject. I see no sign in them of any somnambulism or hallucination sufficient for Raymond to have subjected Irène, unconsciously, to the physical phenomena that she has felt and you have established, especially without Irène having actually seen Raymond acting in that extravagant and brutal manner. Lili was in the room during the second phase of the phenomena, while Raymond was downstairs in one of the hotel’s reception-rooms. The problem is complicated by the fact that Lili herself would have to be involved in the somnambulistic and hallucinatory vertigo. Everything indicates that that is not the case.
“As for the possibility of suggestion, autosuggestion–in which Irène would be her own victim–it might have enabled her to go so far as to experience sensations of any kind, but not to the extent of causing cuts and bruises. In thaumaturgy, such cases are possible and do occur–but scientific experience tells us that they only occur in certain subjects predisposed to ancient, profound and dominant cerebral defects; this is not the case with Irène, whose mind, in addition to having been educated by you, is calm, logical, reasonable and immune to all excessive imagination. As for Raymond, you know as well as I do how sound his brain is. Thus...”
“There is nothing more probable than bewitchment?” said Lourmel.
“That is my opinion, Professor.”
There was a pause. Irène had abandoned her hands to Raymond’s, and her large blue eyes, full of fear and sorrow, were imploring help that her one true love was, alas, incapable of providing. Raymond, incessantly squeezing and caressing his wife’s hands, was looking back and forth at his uncle and his friend, pleadingly.
“Mattol,” said the Professor, “you have studied these questions more than I have. I will admit that a spell has been cast, with the reservation that this admission will not be definitive until I have personally witnessed the production of the phenomenon. That’s understood, then. But what is the remedy?”
“There is but one,” Mattol replied, unhesitatingly.
Irène and Raymond, breathless, were hanging on their friend’s every word. Lourmel fixed his eyes
on his pupil. “Which is?” he asked.
“Firstly, to identify the spell-caster.”
“Good! And then?”
“Then, to have a material image of him, a photograph, painting or figurine, charged with the subject’s sensibility–which is to say that it must have been in contact with his flesh for several minutes. By means of such an image, we might in turn cast a spell on the spell-caster. Or, better still, we could find the spell-caster himself and kill him.”
“There’s no other cure?” Lourmel said, simply.
“No, there’s no other,” Mattol said, curtly.
“In that case,” the Professor said, turning to Irène, “it’s you, my child, who must guide our first step. You’ve heard Louis. He is knowledgeable, to the extent that anyone can be knowledgeable in matters that exact science has not yet penetrated. What he says is true, to the extent that a statement can be true based on experiences that are still insufficiently numerous for a theory to be safely established. Various speculations, of a more or less practical kind, have been set before you. We have talked; we shall now act–and it is the first step of the action that we must all take together, by trying to identify the spell-caster: the unknown entity whose victim you are. Let’s see Irène–summon all your usual reason, all your calm, all your fine intelligence. Do you feel that you are capable of reflecting, remembering and considering this question with us coolly?”
His warm, sonorous voice carried a sort of suggestive force; it radiated energy and will-power; Irène received its beneficial influence. She had already withdrawn her hands from Raymond’s grip, as if to collect herself. She closed her eyes. Her beautiful pale face recovered some color. When she opened her eyes again, they were a deeper blue and shone more brightly; they were almost hard beneath the dampness of restrained tears. In a very calm voice, in which all her will-power was perceptible, the young woman said: “I’m ready, uncle.”
Professor Lourmel stroked his short, bushy white beard with his right hand and tapped his thigh with his left. “Good!” he said, with evident satisfaction. “Don’t hold anything back. Do you suspect someone? Someone who might have pursued you–pardon me, little one; excuse me, Raymond, but we have so few words at the service of our thoughts!–with his desires, his love, his spite, his jealousy, his hatred?”
Irène closed her eyes. Her facial expression was untroubled, merely displaying the concentration of an avidly-searching mind. Several minutes ran by without anyone pronouncing a single word or making a gesture. Not a breath was audible. Lourmel, Raymond, Mattol and Lili all wore the same anxious expression as they studied Irène’s face. That face suddenly reddened violently. The young woman’s entire body shivered. “Ah!” she cried, putting her right hand to her forehead.
She opened her eyes, which turned passionately towards Raymond. “Yes, that’s it!” she said to him. “That must be it! You shall be the judge. I remember... Oh, things that I had completely forgotten! I remember them now, quite clearly, in every detail, as if it were yesterday. And the man’s features...! Yes, yes, it can’t be anyone but him!”
She fell silent, after emitting a great sigh; her eyes never left Raymond’s face. The latter took his wife’s hands very gently, and caressed them. “Speak, Irène.” he said, tenderly. “Speak!”
“And be calm, little one–very calm,” the Professor added, slowly.
Overcoming her emotion, Irène began to speak. “It was last winter, during the big party you gave, uncle, in honor of the American Professor Jameson, when he visited Paris. You were at sea, Raymond. I had just danced with you, Louis. I had gone into the library in order to rest for a while. I had been alone there for a few minutes when a man I did not know, and had never even seen before, came in. I thought that he, too, was seeking solitude, and that he would leave when he saw me–but no! He came straight towards me. I can remember him exactly: tall, very thin, smoking a cigarette, with red hair and a moustache, and a sort of fixed smile–a rictus sardonicus–upon his lips. His eyes were some indefinable color between yellow and green, but were dark and sparkling nevertheless, profoundly sunk into their orbits, with long red eyelashes. He was elegantly-dressed, apparently relaxed, feline and powerful. I had that entire impression then, although it was certainly unconscious–and it all came back into my mind a few minutes ago, appearing before my eyes with an intensity that frightens me!”
Irène shuddered and her eyes closed–but she opened them immediately, and they expressed a wild willfulness.
“The man came forward,” she continued, “bowed to me, and said, without any preamble; ‘Mademoiselle, I have an income of 3000 francs a year, I belong to a great Polish family and I am 35 years old. I saw you this evening for the first time. I looked at you for an hour–and I love you. Will you give me permission to ask Professor Lourmel for your hand?’ ”
Irène laughed nervously, and went on: “I was stupefied–but not for long. Suddenly, emerging from the profoundest depths of my soul, the horror of that individual overwhelmed me. ‘You are mad, Monsieur!’ I cried. ‘And you repel me! Go away, this instant!’ Then, as I now remember, the man smiled strangely, accentuating his rictus. Without saying a word, he raised his right hand above me. I slumped back in the armchair, overtaken by a strange somnolence. I must have kept my eyes open, however, for I could still see, as if in a dream–or, unable to help myself, a nightmare. I saw the man go straight to a shelf, on which there was a large family photograph album. He opened it, riffled through it, and withdrew three items. Then, returning to me, he untied the ribbon that was wound twice around my hair, and used it to attach the three photographs together...”
“Ah! I understand!” Professor Lourmel exclaimed.
“I deduced as much!” murmured Mattol.
“What? What do you understand? What have you deduced?” said the astonished Irène, as if waking up from a dream.
But Raymond, who was listening with anxious avidity, leaned over her ardently. “Go on, Irène,” he begged. You were saying: ‘...used it to attach the three photographs together...’ ”
“Ah! Yes!” After blinking for a moment, she went on hurriedly: “He attached the three photographs together, and slid them over the skin along the nape of my neck, between my shoulders and into the cleavage of my silk dress. Then, he took me by the hands, forcefully, looked me straight in the face and made me shut my eyes, although–I remember it perfectly–I wanted to keep them open. A short time afterwards, I sensed that he had withdrawn the photographs and perceived that he had gone. I must have fallen asleep right away, for, if I’m not mistaken, I was woken up–I don’t know how much later–by you, uncle.”
“That’s right!” said Lourmel, gravely. “I, too, remember it well. Everyone had gone and I had not seen you for an hour. I thought you were in your room, but Lili corrected me. I searched for you and found you profoundly asleep in the big armchair in the library. I woke you up. You burst out laughing, and embraced me joyfully–and you went to bed without mentioning the red-haired man.”
“I didn’t remember anything,” Irène affirmed, with evident sincerity. “But just now, doubtless under the influence of your words and Raymond’s ardent presence, a veil suddenly seemed to be lifted from my mind and I saw that whole scene again...”
“That’s normal,” said Mattol.
“And the photographs?” the Professor asked.
“Have they really disappeared?” cried Irène.
“You haven’t opened the album since then?”
“No, I don’t think so. I would certainly I have noticed the absence of three photographs and would have mentioned it to you.”
“All the more so,” said Mattol, “since the photographs are certainly of you, Irène. It’s thanks to them that the red-haired man was able to put you under a spell.”
“My God!” groaned the young woman, shivering again and hiding her face with her hands.
Raymond sat down on one of the arms of her chair, put his arms around her and kissed her on the forehead.
“I discovered the absence of the photographs a few days later,” Professor Lourmel said. “I thought that Irène had taken them. I remember remarking that the missing photographs were of her, for the album was quite familiar to me: one in a tennis costume, one in an evening dress, taken from the front, and one in the same evening dress, in a rear view with the face in profile. It was when I was correcting the proofs of my report to the Academy on a new study of the nervous system. I was excessively preoccupied with the corrections, and immediately forgot about the photographs, which I suppose I never mentioned to you.”
“Never,” whispered the young woman.
“And you never saw the man again?”
“I have not seen him since.”
“Did you notice him that evening, Mattol, in the crowd swarming in the drawing-rooms, the dining-room and the library?”
“No, Professor,” Mattol replied. “I didn’t notice him.”
“But he’s the one we have to find!” cried Raymond.
There was a brief pause for reflection.
Irène raised her head and squeezed her husband’s hands. She looked alternatively at her uncle and Mattol with an anxious expression. Raymond’s eyes were fiery and his face expressed the rage and hatred that were seething in his heart; he saw the abhorrent image of the red-haired man, the enigmatic sorcerer who–no doubt seemed possible–was Irène’s impudent and cowardly torturer.
“But to what end?” Raymond suddenly spat out. “Is it merely for revenge, or does he have some plan? Ah–we must find out who he is, find him, seize him and kill him!”
“Yes, we must find out who he is,” the Professor repeated, determined and somber in his calm. “Anticipating an enormous influx of visitors, I had placed Richard in the hallway, charging him to obtain the name and address of each guest. I wanted the list to later pay homage to Professor Jameson. A long table was placed across the hallway, leaving only a narrow passage. Richard was sitting at the table with the guestbook, the pen and the ink. To the left were three hired valets in charge of the cloakroom. That should have worked very well.”
The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer! Page 4