“How do the troopers communicate with the Baron?”
“By telephone–there are no human intermediaries.”
“How many men are there in the castle, in total?”
“I only know 30, including Ragh and me, but there are others–I don’t know how many.”
“What time is the curfew?”
“It sounded about half an hour ago. You won’t find anyone in the rotunda or the circular corridor. All the doors are closed and electrified, except the one to the kitchen, which stays open for the benefit of the two men on watch here–everything is made available to us in extreme abundance but wine and spirits, which we never touch. At 8 a.m. the doors are de-electrified and normal life resumes: intense circulation, armed patrols...”
“What do you know about the castle and what goes on there?”
“Nothing–absolutely nothing! I’ve never been into it. I’ve never been further or higher than the guard-room. Those within the troop who know something say nothing, because there are spies among us, and the least indiscretion–no matter how trivial or inconsequential–is punishable by death. I ought to tell you that you must take me with you when you leave, if you wish me to live. Otherwise, I’ll be electrocuted.”
“We’ll take you,” Saint-Clair said. “Corsat, gag him and tie him up again. Get rid of the corpse–push it under the bed. Quickly. Follow me Pilou!”
He went to the telephone and manipulated it delicately, using forceps taken from the satchel.
“There’s a risk that the Baron will telephone,” he said. “In that case, Corsat, you’ll reply that all’s well. If anyone comes, kill them silently. It’s a pity, but we have the alternative, at every moment, of killing or being killed. No hesitation, Corsat–strike! It’s 10:30 p.m. If neither Pilou nor I has returned by 4:30 a.m., leave by the peep-hole, slide down the rope and return to Colmar. Wait three days, then tell the whole story to Monsieur Prillant in Paris.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Good! Come on, Pilou. More talk will lose time. Let’s see–if we can’t do anything tonight, we’ll get going after the 8 a.m. awakening. If that’s the case, we’ll have plenty of time before then to find out what else Wolf knows and to form a plan of action. Stay alert, Corsat!”
Followed by Pilou, Saint-Clair left the sentry-post and went up the lighted staircase. The rotunda was also lit. The numerous doors there were all closed except one, leading to the kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen. A concert of snores was audible behind one of the doors.
“Let’s try the circular corridor,” said the Nyctalope.
They went up the next flight of steps, which came to an end on a landing in the form of a vaulted cellar. To the right and left of the lighted landing were the openings of two dark tunnels: the orifices of the corridor that made a tour of the castle’s base, along whose length various loopholes and peep-holes had been cut in the masonry, permitting the valley and surrounding mountains to be observed.
While moving from the sentry-post to the landing, Saint-Clair had observed the orientation of various points relative to the overhanging turret that was probably inhabited by a woman, where heavy curtains had been drawn across lighted windows.
“It’s to the right,” he said.
Still followed by Pilou, he took the tunnel to the right. They were soon in total darkness, the light from the landing no longer reaching them. Pilou’s only guide was the flow of slight sounds that his finely-turned ears picked up, but he followed the Nyctalope step for step around the corridor’s various bends.
When the Nyctalope stopped abruptly, Pilou stopped behind him.
They were beside a peep-hole, with neither a casement nor a shutter, where the night without was slightly less darkly-inscribed than the night within. Beyond this rectangle of attenuated darkness, a kind of perpendicular white beam was distantly discernible.
Saint-Clair leaned out, looked up and then drew back. “We’re almost facing the overhanging turret,” he said to Pilou. “The guard-room, close by, separates us from the apartments on this floor that are within the turret. The castle’s structure, at this point, forms an angle that puts us, relative to the turret... Look, Pilou! The wall is old and our daggers are sturdy. Can you make your way from the peep-hole to the turret, then attach the lasso? Then I can rejoin you.”
“I’ll go see, boss. Hold on, here’s the lasso. I’ll keep the other end attached to my belt. You let it out as I go. Your dagger?”
“Here it is. Wait a moment.”
The peep-hole was wide enough and deep enough for both men to be able to pass through it, but two thick iron bars forming a cross divided it into four rectangles that were too small. The Nyctalope used the electric cutter to saw through the bars at the four ends.
Pilou lay flat on his belly within the peep-hole. Leaning out, he made out the overhanging turret, vaguely outlined in the darkness but marked by the perpendicular line of light. He groped along the wall to the right and planted a dagger; the mortar displaced by the blade made a slight sound. He tested its solidity by leaning on the hilt. Then, using it as a point of support, he slid forward in a serpentine fashion, put out a leg and searched the ancient and corroded stone with his bare foot for a usable foothold. Then, he moved on.
Drawing the rope with him as the Nyctalope unwound it, Pilou planted the second dagger, suspended himself from it, and searched with his toenails for another foothold in the cracks where the mortar had crumbled away from the masonry. Drawing out the first dagger, he planted it again, higher up. Then, he repeated the operation.
Once he had arrived at the overhanging turret, whose mullioned windows were lavishly embellished by sculptures, Pilou had no difficulty finding a deeply-excavated item of scrollwork, in whose protrusions he looped, wedged and knotted the lasso. He pulled on it and it held firm. He buttressed himself between the two mullions and remained immobile.
The Nyctalope, not without anxiety, had watched the brave Pilou accomplish this vertiginous and perilous acrobatic feat, approximately 105 meters above the ground. When he saw Pilou become still, he took a deep breath. Personally, he never gave any fearful thought to what might happen. He made his exit from the peep-hole feet first. When the greater part of his body was outside, he braced himself with his shoulders and attached the taut rope to the cross formed by the iron bars. The cross, when placed in the peep-hole in a certain manner, was immobilized by the tension of the rope, which it served to attach and maintain.
Creeping along the rope, Saint-Clair suspended himself limply over the void. He could not support his feet against the wall, because the rope was extended too tautly between the peep-hole and the turret–but it was child’s play to him to move hand-over-hand while suspended, towards the tower. He arrived there, quickly braced himself between two colonnades that stood out in sharp relief, found a sill with his foot and was soon standing upright, with his breast pressed against a casement-window with 20 small lights. Pilou was next to him.
“Come on!” whispered the Nyctalope. He was at the right-hand window; he wanted to move to the central one, so that he could see into the turret’s interior through the gap between the two opaque curtains. They slid easily from colonnade to colonnade, thanks to the sharp relief of the sculptures, ledges, borders, uprights and mullions.
When he reached he middle section of the central window, Saint-Clair looked in.
Pilou heard him exhale and saw him clench his fists, with his forehead, his lips and his chin stuck to one of the little panes of glass. Pilou leaned back slightly, with his arms extended, and leaned sideways so that he too could look in through the gap in the curtains–and he was able to make out a very beautiful woman in a white dress.
Her hands were clasped between her breasts and she was weeping. She was weeping desperately, her face tragic and immobile, and the tears were running down her pale cheeks, which were very pale indeed.
III. The Invisible, Immutable, Insurmountable Wall
Leo Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope, was e
ndowed with that prompt, clairvoyant, resolute intelligence which discerns the detail of a set of facts with lightning speed, which instantly forms hypotheses within the framework of those facts, and which acts immediately in the most propitious manner, with regard to the desired outcome.
Saint-Clair saw before him, tearful and desperate, a woman he had recognized instantly: the only woman whom he truly loved. And that woman was in the formidable castle of Schwarzrock, where a man reigned who was undoubtedly not far removed from considering himself to be an incarnation of Satan–a human Satan, cruel, lustful, ambitious, avid and pitiless, armed with an unfathomable occult power...
“Laurence!” he murmured. “Laure, my love... My life!”
The time that elapsed while Saint-Clair remained immobile and inactive, pressed against the array of small lights that garnished the central window of the overhanging turret, was no longer than three minutes: three minutes during which he observed, hypothesized, decided. Then, immediately, he acted.
It was the simplest and easiest action in the world–but one after which no retreat was possible. The only alternatives were to triumph, to die, or to become Lucifer’s slave... Except that there was a fourth possible dénouement, which Laurence Païli’s lover could not, and did not, envisage.
He acted, then–which is to say that he held himself in place by gripping a sculpture with his left hand, his two feet resting securely on a solid ledge, and he used his right hand to rap on a glass pane with the pommel of his dagger, which Pilou had returned to him.
He rapped–and immediately saw Laurence shiver. Her eyes changed expression and fixed themselves upon the narrow gap between the two huge curtains suspended in front of the trifenestral balcony forming the overhanging section of the turret.
Saint-Clair rapped again, and Laurence Païli–no longer weeping, her visage expressing nothing but immense amazement–took several steps forward. Hesitant and decisive at the same time, thinking impossible things and daring to imagine, nevertheless, that they might be realized, Laurence came right up to the curtains, lifted her lovely bare arms, seized the heavy cloth in both hands and drew the two sheets apart.
Oh, Leo! Is it possible? Him! Here! These cries of happiness, exclamations and questions were all confined to Laurence’s thoughts. She had opened her mouth, but no sound came forth. She remained immobile and rigid, her arms outstretched, her hands clenched in the two parted curtains. Her head was thrust forward, her avid eyes fixed on the face she saw behind the tiny transparent pane, illuminated by the bright pure light of the electric chandelier. That face! How could she have failed to recognize it? It was that of the only man...
He saw that he had been recognized, and he smiled.
Suspended above an abyss into which the least accident might precipitate him–at the bottom of which his body would be crushed–having decided to get into that room, where he might be ambushed and killed, and resolved to do anything to snatch this woman away from the monster who had certainly tortured her, Saint-Clair smiled. It was the smile of a gentle and happy lover, a smile so marvelous in its youthful, calm and confident serenity, that Laurence, seeing nothing but that smile, forgot everything that surrounded, threatened and loomed over her–and her lover, unexpectedly brought by some miracle of which she had not dared dream–and she, too, began to smile.
That was the commencement of an unforeseeable scene: a scene at first astonishing, then terrifying, then maddening, which would convince the Nyctalope of the power of the man he had set out to fight.
Having smiled, and thus filled one another with happiness, Leo and Laurence understood one another. She knew that she could open the window, and he knew that she knew it. And, indeed, the young woman unclenched her hands, let go of the parted curtains, and with her arms already reaching out, tried to take a step towards the central window, from which she was only separated by a distance of approximately one and a half meters–a distance represented by the extent of the projection forming the overhanging part of the turret.
Laurence wanted to go forwards. She managed half a stride, her bosom extended and her right arm slightly outstretched–but the stride was suspended; she could not complete it.
After she had stood with her left foot upraised for a few seconds, she lowered it slowly to the carpet, lowering her arm at the same time. Her face immediately–for the beautiful captive had a quick mind and knew what Lucifer could do–expressed a violent and nameless terror: a terror that made her entire body tremble, and so suddenly enfeebled her muscles that she subsided, her legs buckling, her arms loose, her hands slack.
Saint-Clair watched all that. He did not understand the cause, but he measured all the consequences of the effect with a single flash of thought. He did not hesitate.
“Pilou,” he said, brace your back against my chest, if you can; wedge your legs against mine, if necessary. My left hand has a secure hold. You must have both hands free. Diamond and mastic. If someone comes, we’re dead, so be quick! Get that window out in such a way that it stays intact, and can be replaced if necessary.”
On receiving an order exposing him to danger, Pilou grumbled before obeying, when he had the time–but on this occasion, there was no time to spare. In consequence, Pilou obeyed immediately.
While Pilou got into position and worked with the diamond and the mastic to cut out and pull away a window, noiselessly, Saint-Clair replaced the dagger in his right hand by the silent Browning. If anyone comes, he said to himself, I’ll kill him. Laure’s there. First, we must free her, whatever it costs. Since we can’t get to the rooms on the circular corridor without passing through the electrified guard-room, we’ll have to go that way. Laure will have to suspend herself from my shoulders, with her arms around her neck. Pilou will help me. The first thing is to free Laure! But why has she collapsed like hat, in despair, evidently incapable of the slightest movement?
In front of him, the two leaves of the window came apart and opened, Pilou having lifted the interior catch with his left hand, reaching through the hole he had cut through the pane.
A lithe catlike leap carried the Nyctalope on to the balcony formed by the overhanging turret. Laurence was still watching him with terrified eyes. She tried to lift her arms and reach out to him, but the gesture was interrupted mid-way. “Ohhhh!” she moaned, dolorously. “I can’t.” The terror expressed by her eyes was mingled with desperate supplication.
Saint-Clair was only separated from Laurence by two paces. He took one–and then...
He experienced the frightful horror of suddenly feeling a mysterious and invisible obstacle in front of his fists, his forehead, his breast and his knees, against which even his indomitable will was powerless!
The Nyctalope had the impression that he was pushing, with all the force of his taut, forward-thrusting body, against crystal glass of perfect clarity and transparency, which was quite invisible. But when he realized that there was no glass there, and that his hands, face and entire body had been interrupted by an object devoid of material existence, he immediately understood why Laurence had collapsed on the far side of the same immaterial object. An acute sensation of the crushing disproportion of the forces deployed by the man against whom he was at war flashed through him, and he was chilled by fear.
Pilou had come in behind him. Discreetly, he had taken up a position in a corner of the balcony, saying to himself: The curtain will hide me. Whatever the boss does, he won’t think about me until he needs my help. If I’m hidden, I won’t be remembered inopportunely, but I’ll see everything, and if I see that it’s necessary to intervene to save him, I’ll be ready. He had two free hands, ready to seize a dagger or a Browning.
When Pilou saw Saint-Clair’s face take on the same terrified horror and the same despairing and desperate supplication as the woman’s, however, and saw them as motionless as two statues, five centimeters apart from one another, one standing up as if stretched out and the other sitting on her haunches as if folded up, he felt the chill of the cold breath of myst
ery. Still lucid, he fought against his fear–and as there was no other action he could perform but marching forward, he marched. He moved straight ahead, thus approaching Saint-Clair diagonally from the flank.
It was then that the Provençal’s right elbow brushed against the invisible obstacle. By virtue of a natural reaction of the muscles, Pilou lifted the elbow and leaned to his right–and felt himself stopped short. “What?” he said. Immediately, he turned his head, then his entire body. He lifted both hands and plunged forward–but was stopped dead. His eyes, the curvature of his mouth and all his other facial features took on that same terrified horror, and he was frozen by fear in his turn.
Sufficient time had now elapsed for the Nyctalope to overcome his distress and regain control of his momentarily-paralyzed senses. While keeping his eyes closed, he used his hands to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead, cheeks and bare neck. He shook his head violently and breathed in through flared nostrils. Calm again, he opened his eyes.
“No more panic!” he said, in a low voice. “Let’s observe and reason.” For him, reason followed observation as thunder follows lightning.
His hands groped, testing the obstacle. His gaze was no longer directed at Laurence Païli but at the objects in the room to the right and the left.
No glass, however perfect, he said to himself, could have this transparency. Then again, glass would produce a noise when my hand struck it. I already had a intuition; now I have an incontestable certainty. The obstacle doesn’t produce any sort of noise when struck; my hand is stopped dead, as if the air itself had acquired solidity without becoming visible–an impossibility, in the familiar order of things.
The same obstacle is raised before Laure, who is five centimeters from me. If I rap it hard, my hand feels the reaction. If I touch it gently, my hand does not experience any sensation of cold or warmth; the obstacle is the same temperature as my fingers, my hand, my lips, my cheeks or my forehead, according to which part of my body comes into contact with it. Finally, the most powerful effort of my tensed muscles bracing my shoulder has not the slightest effect on the hardness, stability, solidity or immobility of the obstacle. What conclusion can be drawn, except that this invisible, immutable, insurmountable wall is an immaterial wall? It is the effective result of the command You shall go no further! pronounced by someone whose will imposes itself absolutely, without any relativity.
The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer! Page 15