“Go on,” said the former dead man.
“The scene was arranged in advance. While teasing you on the bed, I succeeded in tilting your head backwards, over the head of the bed. My husband, hiding behind it, was waiting for that moment. I seized your arms and descended upon you with all my weight, while he, grabbing your head and twisting it backwards, broke your spine on the headboard.”
Vauclin leapt forward and stood in front of his victim.
“I was sure that I’d succeeded. I can still hear the sound of breaking vertebrae, see the body falling limp and inert on to the bed. You’re dead, Monsieur de Vandeuvre, really dead, and it isn’t those two sorcerers behind you who’ve brought you back to life. Ha ha! You’ve played a trick on me! But I can see clearly now. Don’t be afraid, Sophie, these Messieurs are playing a game.”
Turning to the two astonished scientists, he said: “That’s all right! You’re very good. Fortunately, you’ve had the good taste to make me play this macabre comedy behind closed doors, for I recognize that it would have played as well in public.”
He turned to Sophie, who was looking at him in bewilderment: “Come on, stupid,” he said. “Can’t you see that it’s a matter of suggestion?” He let himself fall into an armchair. “That’s all right! I’ve got the trick. But now, let’s stop playing games, because it’s becoming tiresome. Come on, my dear phantom, do me the pleasure of decamping from my mind—I’ve seen enough of you... As for you, Messieurs, I warn you that it would be dangerous for you to play this comedy any longer.”
With lightning rapidity, he opened a drawer in the nightstand and seized a revolver. “I’m in my own home, in a case of legitimate self-defense. Free me from this suggestion, or I’ll kill you.”
He aimed his revolver at Marc Vanel, while making a rampart of his armchair.
“You’re forgetting that your drawing rooms are full of people,” said Homo-Deus, “and that at the first shot...”
Vauclin lowered his weapon.
“A poor means, you see. However, as the situation can’t be prolonged, it’s necessary to put an end to it. What should we do, Jeanne?”
Jeanne Fortin emerged from her hiding place and came forward.
“Mademoiselle Fortin!” the député exclaimed—and then immediately howled. “Oh, you swine!”
Taking advantage of his astonishment at Jeanne’s arrival on the scene, Marc Vanel had leapt forward and, twisting Vauclin’s wrist, had snatched away the revolver.
“Ah! Am I going mad, then? What does this mean? Is it a dream or an impossible reality? Who’s alive? Who’s dead?” He turned to Marc Vanel. “Well, kill me,” he said. “Kill me. I’d rather die than live like this.”
“It’s up to your victim to do with you what he deems appropriate. Our role is concluded. Monsieur de Vandeuvre, you owe us our lives. Don’t forget that.”
With that, Jeanne went out, followed by her father and Marc Vanel. They went back down to the drawing rooms.
“Well?” asked the old chemist Bernardot. “I hope that Monsieur Vauclin…?”
“It’s nothing,” said Fortin. “We left him in the care of his wife and my pupil. You’ll see him come down in a little while. We’re leaving.”
“Already?”
“You’re forgetting, Bernardot, that for us, this social tumult is a veritable fatigue.”
“For me, too,” sighed the chemist. “But my wife...”
“Well, au revoir, my dear colleague. We’ll meet again, one if these days, at the A.D.S.”
“They slipped through the groups toward the exit.
“I’m going to run home,” said Homo-Deus, “and I’ll come back; amusing things are going to happen here tonight.”
And Marc Vanel leapt into his auto, which departed at speed, while Jeanne and her father took a modest taxi to return to Saint-Cloud, to the Red Nest.
IV. The Wife, the Husband and the Puppet
The departure of the three scientists had left Vandeuvre somewhat at a loss. Until then, the presence of those who had rendered him life had sustained him and encouraged him. Left to himself he lost his self-assurance. Since, by courtesy of Sophie’s story, his anterior life had been recalled, he had gradually returned to himself, and the mentality of Georges Garnier was soon completely effaced, giving way to that of Julien.
He hesitated for a long time, while the two murderers still remained under the influence of the terror they had experienced. Finally, he made a decision.
“Since I know, Monsieur, that you’re not unaware of my relationship with Sophie, I have no fear that you will punish her severely. I won’t say that I love her as I did before, but I don’t feel the horror for her that I ought to have. Give me back the stolen money, and I’ll leave you free to lead your lives as best you can. When one has passed through death, as I have, one is more indulgent to human weaknesses. Nevertheless, my indulgence for your crime does not go as far as abandoning my millions to you. I can’t accuse you of murder, since I’m alive. The judges would take me for a madman, but it would be easy for me to prove the theft. So, make restitution, or I shall make the accusation.”
While Julien was speaking, Vauclin had recovered his composure. Return the money? How? It had been swallowed up in the Baruyer catastrophe. As for what Barsac had given him, that was his money, and to return that would be giving it away. Never in this life! Rather kill again—but how could he do that? To murder him now, in the middle of a party from which he and his wife had already been absent for too long...
It was necessary to go back to the drawing rooms, and as soon as possible. He stood up. “You must understand, my dear Monsieur, that I don’t have the money that I…abstracted from you…here, at the ready. On the other hand, I can’t abandon my guests for too long. Will you give us until tomorrow to make the restitution?”
Sophie, who had also recovered her aplomb, said: “Monsieur de Vandeuvre is too gallant a man to drive us into poverty. He’ll give us time.”
“It would be impolite of me to refuse, inasmuch as I don’t have the means. Given that I’m not pursuing you, it’s necessary to accept your conditions.”
Vauclin and his wife exchanged complicit glances.
“Well then,” said the husband, “Madame Vauclin will bring you the sum of two hundred thousand francs every month, until the debt is liquidated.”
Julien looked at the enchantress. She had a Circean expression in her eyes that caused a voluptuous frisson to run through the marrow of his bones.
“So be it,” he said. “Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow, I’ll give you all that I can put together. Until tomorrow, at your home.”
Julien looked at Sophie. “Until tomorrow—at my home.”
Perhaps Vauclin would have let him go—but as Vandeuvre reached the door, he received a shock, recoiled, staggering, and bumped into Vauclin, who was following him. There was a cracking of broken bones, and Julien collapsed at the feet of the fearful député.
“What have you done?” cried Sophie. “You’ve killed him.”
“Me? But I haven’t touched him!”
They lifted up the body, which was limp, the head hanging inertly from the shoulders.
“It’s enough to drive one mad!” roared Vauclin. “There he is, just like the other time, with his neck broken—but this time, it wasn’t me! What demons are guiding this adventure?”
At that moment, someone knocked on the door. Vauclin grabbed the body and dragged it behind the bed. Sophie approached the threshold.
“Who is it?” he asked.
The voice of a domestic replied: “People are anxious about the long absence of Monsieur and Madame.”
“We’re coming right away. My husband is better.”
“Let’s take care of the most urgent matter,” said Vauclin. “Let’s go down. We’ll see about getting rid of the cadaver later.”
After having dabbed eau-de-Cologne over their faces to restore a measure of composure, they went back to the drawing rooms. As people
gathered around them, Vauclin said: “It’s nothing. A sudden malaise, but it’s dissipated.”
In order to get the party moving again they competed in gaiety and wit, so effectively that no one had any suspicion of the confusion of their thoughts.
As they left the tragic room, they had switched off the electric light. A few seconds later, the light came on against.
But the room was empty.
V. Swirls of Nightmare
When the last guests had gone, at three o’clock in the morning, there was no one left in the deserted main drawing room but the two white-faced spouses, their eyes wild and their faces anxious. Madame Vauclin had sent away the domestics, only retaining her chambermaid. Alone at last, the two accomplices looked at one another in anguish. The same thought was congesting their brains: what were they to do with Vandeuvre’s cadaver?
They examined various means, one after another, but none seemed practical.
Finally, Sophie had an idea. “You remember, Arsène, that grain loft under the roof on the other side of the corridor leading to the maids’ rooms. Three weeks ago, when I was showing the new cook to her bedroom, I saw the masons who were making repairs at the time storing sacks of plaster, bricks and various materials there. The work is finished now; months will go by before anyone sets foot in there. We can hide Julien’s body there for a few days.
“Let’s go take a look at it.”
After rapidly changing their clothes they went up to the fifth and top floor of the building. Hazard favored them. The tenants on the third and fourth were on holiday and the bedrooms of the Vauclins’ domestics were at the end of the corridor to the left, and consequently opposite the one that led to the grain loft in question—a kind of storeroom for all the lumber of the house, only closed by an external bolt. The six-meter-long redoubt extended beneath the roof, and the ceiling slanted down to the level of the tiles of the edge of the roof. There were three hinged panels in the roof, but they were closed. There were stacks of bricks and bags of plaster along the wall.
“Are you capable of playing the mason? With those bricks you could construct a kind of box. People might take it for a bench set deliberately along the wall. But it’s necessary not to dawdle.”
They went downstairs again. Sophie helped Vauclin to load the body onto his back. Fortunately, they had found some Japanese lanterns in the apartment, with candles. They went upstairs with the aid of that illumination.
It was a singular spectacle: the two nightprowlers, dappled with red, green and blue reflections by their colored lanterns. When they arrived at the redoubt, Vauclin was sweating profusely, as much from fear as fatigue. When he had dropped the cadaver on the floor, he looked at his wife.
“Did you hear something just now? It seemed to me that soft footfalls were coming up behind us. I lifted the lantern, but it was an illusion—the blood hammering in our temples. No one.”
“To work, then. We need water.”
“Get everything ready. Look, here’s a zinc bucket you can use to mix the plaster. I’ll go get some water in this old sandstone pot.”
“But I don’t have any tools or a trowel.”
“You’ll have to make do—use that piece of slate.”
There was a drinking fountain for the maids beside the water closets. Sophie found a zinc jug there, which was less heavy and more comfortable than the sandstone pot.
In no time at all, Vauclin had erected around Vandeuvre, who was in formal dress, folded in two, a little wall of bricks, which soon surpassed the breadth of the cadaver.
“There’s no more to do than fill it with plaster.”
In order to go more rapidly, he emptied several sacks over the body, sprinkled it copiously with water, and finished it off by smoothing over the surface. It was so hot that they had been obliged to open one of the roof panels. They were streaming with sweat. As they completed their macabre task, dawn was blanching the sky.
“Just in time,” said Vauclin. “Here comes the daylight.”
“Oh, the flunkeys won’t open their eyes for some time yet. We’ve time to put things in order. Finish off your work while I tidy up.”
“That’s good,” said the député. “I doubt that Vandeuvre will come back to bother us now.”
“Who knows?”
“What do you mean, who knows? You’d do better to hold your tongue than say such stupid things.”
“But it was you who said who knows?”
“Oh zut! Let’s get out of here. I’ve got the wind up all of a sudden.”
They headed for the door, which they had closed while they cleaned up—but just as they were about to open it, they saw a word traced in chalk: Resurgam.
“What does that mean?” asked the wife.
“I shall rise again.”
White and trembling, they looked at one another; then, gripped by panic terror, they ran back down the two flights of stairs. Having returned to their own home, they did not speak for some time, distraught with terror.
“Are we mad or hallucinating,” she said, finally. “Perhaps we were dreaming. It’s a nightmare that the three illusionists suggested to us.”
But they could see that they were still white with plaster. The député yelped: “Damnation! Damnation! But what have I done, then, to the good God?”
Finally at the end of their strength and thought, they washed themselves and went to bed. It was not until late in the morning that they finally went to sleep.
VI. Albert Baruyer Goes Mad
In a cold and dismal prison cell, with wan daylight filtering in through the barred window, Albert Baruyer was waiting for the law to decide his case. He was not nurturing any hope. The presence of an invisible being in the room where their drama had unfolded had not encountered any credence in the examining magistrate; he dared not bring that subject up again, for the magistrate’s gaze, that of the clerk, and even that of his own defender spoke clearly enough of the anxiety of men confronted with a madman. He had the atrocious fear of finding himself incarcerated in a lunatic asylum.
During the investigation, he had tried many times, in vain, to get his brother to come. Did Georges seriously think that he was a parricide? Get away! Their mother, in the course of that hectic chase, had made the two brothers share her conviction that an invisible being was spying on them. So…?
No, Albert Baruyer was not deceived. His brother would not have been himself if he had not seized that opportunity to get rid of a dangerous accomplice once and for all. And he understood that very well, feeling neither hatred nor despair; it was profoundly human, in conformity with their temperaments, and he would not have acted any differently.
He had chosen for his advocate Maître Henri-Robert, whose character and talent he admired. To the celebrated president of the bar and member of the Académie Française, exaggerating a calm that he wanted to be cold and logical, he had recounted the drama as it had happened. He had not asked him to believe him, but had begged for his help in deciphering the enigma by submitting the case to scientists.
Certainly, he had picked up the dagger from the desk, and that was the weapon that had been found in the dead woman’s throat; but he told his defender: “If I had committed this odious crime, I would have denied it. There was only my brother and myself in the room where the drama unfolded. If I had shouted out first, accusing Georges, he’s the one who would have been arrested. Remember that there was no witness to the scene.”
That plausible, judicious reasoning had impressed the great advocate. When he came back from the homes of men of science to who he had recounted the tragic circumstances, however, he treated the accused with reticence. In spite of everything, Henri-Robert did not understand any more than anyone else.
Albert Baruyer could not sleep, and was forever thinking about the probable fate that was reserved for him. Parricide! Such criminals always went to the scaffold!
One evening, a warder making his round came into his cell, accompanied by a guard carrying the keys and another equipped
with a lantern and a ledger. Behind them, the door remained open. They had no fear, of course, that the prisoner might escape.
The warder made his inspection of the cell, cast the habitual glance over Albert Baruyer, and left. But it seemed to the advocate a moment later that an unexpected sound moved at floor level, though could not see anything abnormal.
The Invisible was there. Homo Deus did not like to leave tasks half-done. Continuing his role as an administer of justice, he was tracking the gang of frightful rogues.
Already, human justice had juxtaposed itself with his, and the enigmatic misanthrope was amused to observe that it was for a crime of which the accused was innocent.
He had therefore come into Baruyer’s cell. For him, that was easy. And when he saw the man lying there, his haggard eyes open, his ears unquiet, he placed himself before him, invisibly, and, projecting his hands forward and murmuring incantatory words, he imposed his will by suggestion on Baruyer, without putting him to sleep, in order that he would remember.
Then, the fatigued prisoner, closing his eyes, lived a frightful dream. He heard a dull, distant rumor swelling like a tide. Then there were footsteps resonating in the corridor, before the door of his cell, and finally, the entrance of men in frock coats, bare-headed, with the faces of undertakers. Other silhouettes, black and curious, leaned around the doorframe.
“You appeal has been rejected. Be brave!”
A chaplain, whose face was framed with gray hair, shivering in his long robe, came forward.
“My child, don’t forget that God pardons the greatest criminals for their sins, if they request it.”
The prisoner recovered all his energy to cry out: “I’m innocent!”
“Have confidence, then, in divine justice, which is not deceived...”
Immediately, Albert Baruyer saw an individual whose appearance was reminiscent of a petty bourgeois in his Sunday best; it was the executioner. Then he felt himself seized by brisk and brutal aides; practiced hands turned down the collar of his shirt, and he shivered under the cold steel of the scissors sliding over the nape of his neck.
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