The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 1: Enter Lucifer!

by Jean de La Hire

  The Nyctalope could read the eyes of men. He knew that Franz Zucht would not play false, so he let him return to Berthold. With Pilou, he immediately began the ascent towards the white rock behind which Adalbert Zucht lay in ambush.

  Like his sons, the father was watching the zigzag road, his mind concentrated on the pedestrians and riders who might arrive at the pass by that means, if Berthold and Franz or the six horsemen with lassos had not stopped the little troop already. If any one of the fugitives–man, woman or horse–escaped the lassos, Adalbert was ready to kill a quadruped or break the leg of a biped, for his sight was keen and his rifle-bullets always hit their intended mark.

  Saint-Clair and Pilou no longer had to be wary of anyone but Adalbert, and it was not important for them to make no noise during and after the mountain man’s capture.

  “Slowly!” said Saint-Clair to Pilou. “We must get behind him. The white rock is set in such a way that we can go round it on either side. I’ll go left, and arrive in Zucht’s sights without appearing to see him. He’ll shout “Hands up!”, certain that I won’t try to put up a fight, since he’ll be pointing his rifle at me. Indeed, I shan’t fight–but as I put up my hands and all his attention is fixed on me, you grab him from behind and immobilize his arms. It doesn’t matter if he cries out.”

  “What if he has time to pull the trigger?” Pilou objected.

  “Bah! I’ll watch his fingers. Anyway, the jolt you give him will deflect his rifle and the bullet will go over my head. I’ll be all right. Understood?”

  “Understood, boss.”

  “Let’s separate, then. You follow the path; I’ll go that way, through the maze of rocks. I’ll be upset, though, if on of us has to break the man’s arm.”

  The ensuing scene was brief, and such that Zucht kept the secret of his humiliating stupor until his dying day.

  After making a noise intentionally, Saint-Clair stood up, emerging from behind a large flat stone with his back turned to the old mountain man–who, ready to fire, immediately cried: “Hands up! Turn around!”

  Manifesting fearful surprise, Saint-Clair obeyed. Contentedly, without any suspicion, Zucht lifted up his rifle. At the same instant, Pilou leapt on him from behind and immobilized his arms, using is thighs to press them against his sides. With a gesture as skillful as it was unexpected, Pilou snatched the rifle away with his right hand, while putting his left over Zucht’s eyes, completely blocking his sight.

  “Franz! Berthold!” Zucht cried. “Help! Help!”

  Saint-Clair spoke briefly, with goodwill. Father Zucht calmed down. The sons arrived. Everything was swiftly explained, after Berthold had prudently ascertained that the white rock screened them completely from any watchers in the castle–where it was probable that powerful binoculars were trained on the pass, with attentive eyes behind them.

  The result of the brief conference was that the three Zuchts were left at the places along the path where they had been surprised and vanquished, duly bound and gagged, disarmed and slightly roughed-up.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Franz said. “Within an hour, someone will come from the castle to find out what became the six riders, their horses and us. We’ll be untied before we get hungry or thirsty. The six dead men will say nothing. Berthold and I will tell that part of the truth which would have been the whole truth if we hadn’t talked. As for father, his humiliation and surprise are too sincere for his to have any need to talk or dissemble. He’ll keep quiet. We’ll play our parts–our lives are worth a few petty lies, although Our Lord the Baron isn’t to be trifled with...”

  “Why are you submissive to that man?” Saint-Clair asked. “Couldn’t you live somewhere else–and even here, aren’t there laws of the land that...”

  “Let’s not speak of that, Monsieur!” said Berthold, frowning. “Bind and gag my father here, then my brother, over there, then me, further away–and go! If I might be permitted to offer you some advice, never come back. Those who escape Our Lord the Baron once never escape him a second time.”

  Nothing more was said.

  Saint-Clair stayed behind the white rock, where he tied up and gagged poor Adalbert Zucht–who had aged a great deal in those few minutes. Meanwhile, Pilou went with Berthold and Franz, whom he accommodated according to their desire. Then the Provençal ran to the place where Corsat and Wolf were waiting, with Laure–still unconscious–and the prostrate red-haired man.

  A quarter of an hour later, Saint-Clair having picked up Laurence again, the little cavalcade went through the pass without any difficulty. They went down the mountain as quickly as possible. At a carefully-chosen spot in the forest, as they had arranged several days earlier, Louis Nortmund met them with a large limousine.

  “Finally!” the Alsatian cried. “I was beginning to fear that you had suffered some misfortune...” He stopped immediately when he saw the young woman held in Saint-Clair’s arms. He thought she was dead. Very pale, he set about unwrapping her.

  IX. Dead or Alive?

  The horses were abandoned. Pilou took the wheel, with Wolf and Corsat squeezed into the front seat beside him. Saint-Clair and Louis Nortmund installed Laurence Païli as comfortably as possible in the back of the vehicle, then sat down facing her, on the tip-up seats attached to the partition. They placed the red-haired man, still silent and stupefied, between them.

  For the benefit of the impatient Nortmund, Saint-Clair gave a quick summary of events. Then, leaving the industrialist to his utter amazement, he devoted himself to planning ahead while the car headed at top speed for Vieux-Brisach, where they could pass into Alsace without hindrance because Monsieur Nortmund knew the customs officers and forest rangers. In any case, Saint-Clair’s suitcase–which was in the car–contained official papers adequate to overcome any difficulty that might present itself.

  “First, Laure!” Saint-Clair concluded. “It’s necessary to bring her out of this cataleptic state–for she’s alive! I cannot and will not accept that she’s not alive!” He looked at the young woman’s inanimate face for a long time with an expression of infinite love and infinite pity. “After that, I’ll go to see Professor Lourmel and tell him everything I’ve observed. He’ll have news of Irène and little Henri, whom Mathias Narbonne will have to join on the Lampas in New York. Then I’ll return to my war against Lucifer. It won’t be long! It’s him or me; one or other of us must die, before the survivor’s eyes, by June 10–the date when Lucifer has sworn to unleash his wrath. Twenty-four days at the latest, since it’s now May 17.”

  While the limousine sped on through the night, the Nyctalope continued thinking hard, watching Laurence Païli all the while, continually asking himself, in the depth of his being: “Is she dead? Is she alive?”

  Thanks to Louis Nortmund, who had only to show himself at the frontier to be waved through without difficulty, they crossed the Rhine at the new bridge at Vieux-Brisach. They turned into Neuf-Brisach and went through Wolfgantzen, Andelsheim and Horburg to Colmar, where they went into The Willows at daybreak.

  The Nortmunds got busy. A new guest-room was opened, aired and warmed up. Blanche Nortmund and her maidservants laid Laurence Païli on a low bed, after undressing her, massaging her, and dressing her again in a delicate nightgown. The vaporous whiteness of the nightgown was not as white as her face, which was that of a living corpse, although her body was scarcely chilled and her flesh was youthful, supple and solid.

  In Colmar, there was an old physician from Strasbourg named Jacob Goulden, retired but highly reputed, very knowledgeable and wise: the medical oracle of Alsace. Summoned by Louis Nortmund, Doctor Goulden was welcomed by Saint-Clair, who showed him Laurence Païli, saying: “Can she be revived, doctor?”

  Goulden remained alone with Madame Blanche by the motionless body. An hour later–60 minutes that Leo Saint-Clair spent wandering in the garden, experiencing 60 years of anguish–Goulden summoned the Nyctalope and the Nortmunds. “She’s alive,” he said. “Yes, she’s alive. I don’t know any more. Her exact
state is neither catalepsy, nor a hypnotic trance, nor a faint, nor ordinary sleep. I’ve tried every known means of exciting her sensibility. Useless! Nothing! It’s an unprecedented case, at least for me. I’ve never seen, nor read, nor heard of anything like it. Her body’s alive, unquestionably–it’s scarcely breathing, but it is breathing. Nourishment is impossible–I’ve tried, but nothing passes... so I don’t know...”

  “That’s enough about the present,” Saint-Clair said, calmly. “Tomorrow, and the day after...?”

  “In my opinion,” the doctor said, modestly, “she’ll die slowly for lack of food. She’ll fade away. But as her vital functions are reduced to an infinitesimal minimum, her present state might last for weeks without any other modification than a progressive loss of weight. The body will devour everything within that can nourish it–then, when there’s nothing left by bones, shriveled muscles, drained nerves and atrophied organs, the body will die.”

  “And you don’t see any possibility of an awakening?” asked Saint-Clair, as calmly as before.

  Doctor Goulden made a gesture expressing helpless ignorance. “Anything is possible in nature,” he said, softly. “We only know what we have so far been permitted to discover–which is very little–and science itself is clouded by a thousand uncertainties.

  “So what do you advise, doctor?”

  “That two intelligent experienced and conscientious nurses should take turns of duty by day and night in the young woman’s room, observing intently. At the slightest sign of change in her present state, call a physician–always the same physician, preferably a neurologist. While waiting, make every attempt to stimulate life...”

  “Very well,” said Saint-Clair. “You undoubtedly know Professor Onésime Lourmel, doctor?”

  “Certainly! I’ve met him twice at his surgery in Paris, and have had the honor of receiving him in my home while he was passing through Strasbourg five years ago.”

  “He’s the one who will care for the patient.”

  “In that case,” the physician concluded, nodding his head, “if a strangely sleeping body of this sort has one chance in a thousand of returning to life, this young woman’s eyes will reopen! Professor Lourmel can work miracles.”

  Eight hours later, Leo Saint-Clair was in Paris, having driven the Nortmunds’ large limousine from The Willows to the little house in the Rue Nansouty with the Nortmunds’ chauffeur beside him.

  In the rear section of the vehicle–to whose wheels new tires had been fitted before departure–were Louis Nortmund and his wife Blanche, watching over Laurence Païli, who was laid out on the soft cushions of the back seat. Following behind, in the Nyctalope’s roadster, were Corsat, Pilou and Wolf with the red-haired Hunter, who was still befuddled. They drove like the wind.

  Meanwhile, Charles Nortmund and Doctor Goulden telephoned from Colmar to put Professor Lourmel in the picture–so effectively that when Saint-Clair carried Laurence’s inert body into the guestroom of the house in Rue Nansouty, he found Professor Lourmel, flanked by two nurses, waiting by a made-up bed.

  “Doctor Goulden has given me the details of the case,” the professor said, immediately. “Lay the child down there; these ladies will look after her. I’ll examine her, in case I can offer a fuller diagnosis than my colleague. Go take a warm bath to calm your nerves, my dear friend–you need it. Then eat, drink and sleep. I don’t want to see you again until you’ve recovered your usual balance. I won’t leave your Laurence in the meantime, I promise you. Then I’ll talk to you about her–and other people too. You can’t do any more now. Go! That’s an order! Bath, table, bed. Get out!”

  Held upright by the prodigious empire of his will-power over his muscles, although his nerves and entire body were exhausted. Leo Saint-Clair replied: “You’ll understand Laure’s case better after I’ve told you...”

  “No! No, by thunder! No!” cried the professor. “I don’t want to hear you or see you until you’ve eaten, drunk and slept. Do you want to collapse on the spot, like a puppet with its string cut off? Tell me afterwards–and I will, indeed, understand Laurence’s case better. I’m talking too much! Get out!”

  He shoved Saint-Clair out of he room, slammed the door and turned the key in the lock, rudely.

  Aided by Choiffour, Sidonie had prepared everything: the bath, the table, the bed. As he got undressed in the bathroom, Saint-Clair asked after Corsat, Pilou, Wolf, their captive, Madame Blanche and Louis Nortmund.

  “Corsat, Pilou and Wolf are splashing about in tubs in the laundry,” Choiffour replied. “Monsieur and Madame Nortmund have gone to the hotel with their chauffeur; they told me to tell Monsieur that they will stay there for a week, after which they’ll return to Alsace. As for the red-haired man, Corsat and Pilou have kept him with them, and he’s doing everything they say. Monsieur will permit me to say that the man is very obedient, and that it’s very funny to see him imitating Corsat and Pilou...”

  Rinsed, fervently massaged, rubbed with alcohol and enveloped in a thick dressing-gown, Saint-Clair ate and drank. Then he listened at the guestroom door, remaining there for five minutes. He heard absolutely nothing, and assumed that Lourmel and the two nurses were observing Laure. As he was tottering with drowsiness and fatigue, he resisted no longer and went to bed, aided by Choiffour.

  “Can he wake her up?” he mumbled, already semi-conscious. “Can he prevent her from dying? How shall I find her? Dead? Oh, no! Living?” Almost as soon as he lay down, though, he fell asleep, no longer capable of movement or thought.

  It was May 17. There was a chronometer on the mantelpiece of the large study-bedroom where Leo Saint-Clair was lying, minutely regulated according to the conventions established by all the astronomers in the world: the personal chronometer of the director of the Paris Observatory, who had made a gift of it one day to the explorer Leo Saint-Clair. The chronometer’s movement persisted for 365 days without rewinding; on February 29 in leap years, the key was given a quarter turn to rest it just enough to accommodate the extra 24 hours. It was, in brief, the most precise chronometer in the world. As the Nyctalope fell asleep, at the very moment when his will-power and conscious life were temporarily annihilated, while time itself moved on incessantly, it indicated 16 hours 12 minutes and 18 seconds.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN:

  PART TWO: DRAMA IN THE BERMUDAS

  PART THREE: THE TRIUMPH OF THE NYCTALOPE

  Notes

  0 In order to maintain the continuity of the series, we have chosen to use the name “Leo Saint-Clair” throughout the book (note from the publisher).

  1 Eugène Albert d’Aiglun Rochas (1837-1914) was the most famous psychic investigator in France at the turn of the century. He was sacked as the administrator of the Ecole Polytechnique because of his interest in occult matters, subsequently hosting many investigations of spiritualist mediums at his country house in the vicinity of l’Aguelas, near Voiron. Among his guests was the celebrated Eusapia Palladino (see Note 33); as a result of his observations of her apparent ability to project the force of her motor nerves, he wrote L’exterioriation de motricité [The Exteriorization of Motricity] (1896), advancing “motricity” as a hypothetical mechanism of telekinesis. The fact that La Hire does not use that term, preferring derivatives of envoûter, might indicate that his research was a trifle superficial, or merely that he could not expect his readers to be familiar with it.

  2 Charles Gabriel Pravaz (1791-1853) invented a metal syringe in the final year of his life which could be used in association with the hollow needle invented nine years earlier by Francis Rynd. (Previous medial syringes had been used in association with rubber tubes, and were incapable of injecting liquids into subcutaneous veins.) The discovery might have revolutionized medicine had it not been for the fact that early users did not realize the importance of sterilization; surprisingly, Professor Lourmel also seems ignorant of this necessity.

  3 Vercingetorix was the chieftain who attempted to rally the feuding Gaulish clans in united opposition to Julius C
aesar’s invasion, but accomplished too little too late; he was captured after a long and costly siege and the whole of what is now France was subsequently integrated into the Roman Empire.

  4 When Leo Saint-Clair the Nyctalope was introduced in Le mystère des XV (1911), he was already 33 and, therefore, should now be ten years older; but La Hire likely sought to reintroduce the character from scratch in Lucifer, including rechristening him “Jean de Sainclair.” What made him change his mind and revert to the original “Leo Saint-Clair” version in the next novel is unknown.

  5 La Hire describes Saint-Clair’s car–which is an open-topped “touring car”, and is carefully contrasted with the numerous limousines and saloon cars featured in the plot–as a torpedo, which sounds much better than the Anglo-American “roadster,” but I have resisted the temptation to retain the French term.

  6 The Trouée de Belfort [Belfort Gap] is a pass at the north extreme of the Jura mountains, separating that range from the Massif des Vosges.

  7 One result of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 was the transfer of the long-disputed province of Alsace-Lorraine to German rule. It was returned to France in 1918 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, which brought the Great War to a conclusion.

  8 The foremost French military academy.

  9 One might argue that there is no point whatsoever in this sequence of disguises, since Saint-Clair has no reason to think that he is being followed or that Lucifer is on to him; the final disguise he adopts, before introducing himself to the Nortmunds ,proves equally unnecessary; it seems that La Hire is merely establishing that the Nyctalope is a master of disguise like any other vigilante detective.

  10 Strictly speaking, a Kalmuk is a member of a Tartar tribe who stays at home while other members go off hunting or marauding, but La Hire presumably means to imply a greater similarity to the latter party. He appears to think that Kalmuks are bloodthirsty savages–another incarnation of the Yellow Peril–we shall meet some supposedly-literal examples later in the plot.