He did not have the strength to contend with Marc Vanel, and Berthe might talk and doom him, confessing the crimes—but Keysar rapidly decided that he had nothing to fear from that direction. Vanel did not occupy himself in furnishing game to the Court of Assizes—which would, in any case, take Berthe away from him, for legal purposes.
Tranquilized on that matter, his thoughts returned to Etienne Aubert, who would amass today, in his wallet, nearly eight hundred thousand francs…to Etienne, who, in a fit of idiotic stupor, of incomprehensible vengeance, in order to satisfy a kind of incest, a brute passion, risked sacrificing their common salvation by a further crime. An idea whimpering in his mind began to take form. What if he were to kill Aubert in the course of the flight and take possession of the eight hundred thousand?
Anxiously, he took a taxi to return to the Quai de Javel, in order to make the tour of the banks with him and cash the checks.
It was five to two. The master of the factory was about to climb into his automobile when his accomplice arrived, leaving his vehicle in order to install himself beside Etienne, who said: “Where’s your wife?”
“I’ll explain later, when we’ve left Paris.”
When all the checks had been cashed, making a lovely wad of blue bills, with Etienne at the steering wheel, they each put on a cap that they had in the pocket of their heavy traveling coat, and drive off at top speed. They had dinner outside Paris, as far away as possible, and set off again immediately, still traveling at top speed, without stopping, passing through towns and fields, on the highway, straight and white in the moonlight. It was a hectic flight. They had stocked the car with a provision of full gasoline cans.
They had not said much thus far, each ruminating his own thoughts: only a few words at intervals, regarding the route and the intersections. They headed toward the Midi, via Montceau-les-Mines, Lyon, Grenoble and Digne, through the modified darkness of the warm spring night, with a full moon.
Suddenly, Etienne said to his companion, who was absorbed in weaving a plan: “So, Berthe, your seeress?”
Keysar old him what had happened, recalling Souriah’s cataleptic crises, and the visit of Dr.Vanel: “A savant of whom you must have heard mention, very fashionable in the salons, where he astonishes the snobs with curious experiments and whom they call Homo-Deus...”
“In brief, a charlatan like you.”
“No, charged with science and a superior intelligence, and a halo of mystery besides...”
“So?” Etienne interjected, irritatedly. “Finish your story.”
“Well, he abducted Berthe this morning, while I came to warn you that it was necessary to flee right away, because Baudard had been pinched.”
“You’re unnerving me, and I’ve already had enough of your sorcery tricks. With the result, if I understand you correctly, that we’re at the mercy of this Dr. Vanel. Homo-Deus, as you call him, is a perpetual threat to us. Thanks to your Seeress, he can track us as if we were leaving an uninterrupted trail behind us?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to worry. He didn’t take my wife in order to trouble us, but in order to have a marvelous subject at his disposal, whom he won’t want to lose by throwing Berthe into prison, and to the courts, along with us, in whom he has no interest.”
“All your sorceries don’t prevent you from being a great couillon,72 as they say in Provence where we’re going. Thomas Keysar, the Caesar of shit, nicknamed Chamber Pot. Oh, what a day yesterday was!”
“What did you do between noon, when I left you, and two o’clock?”
“I had lunch, cursing you, to gather my strength. Then I wrote a long letter to Louis Lafon, a worthy man, a former worker who became my director of personnel and materiel. I’m stuffed, thanks to you, but I don’t want the Factory to die because of my dirty adventure. Louis Laffon now has my full powers. He’ll steer the Factory toward an industrial co-operative.”
“What? While everything was falling apart for us, you thought about philanthropy?”
“I’d thought about it already, in advance. That factory, which I loved so much, was a living reminder of my crime. You remember last year, when, to incite me to murder my father—for it was you, wretches, who drove me to it—you were always clamoring at me: ‘Macbeth, you shall be king’? Well, like Macbeth, I’ve been having hallucinations for several days.
“Who was playing with me? I don’t know. Perhaps your Homo-Deus. But three times, when I went past the big flywheel, I saw the gate open. Another time, I saw blood on the iron catwalk. Another time, I heard something like the cracking of my father’s flesh caught, broken and crushed...
“It was time to finish with it. I would have gone mad, denounced myself, but for the obsession with the woman with the long black hair, who excited me and who... I’m broken down, crazy. Well, I’m almost glad to be obliged to run away... But it’s toward Her...”
To change the subject of the conversation, because Thomas could sense mental alienation with regard to that point, which he didn’t want to contradict, he said: “So you’ve given the factory to your workers.”
“What did you expect me to do? At least that way, the Aubert factory won’t perish. Yes, I’ve left them the factory, and a reserve of four hundred thousand francs--for I only took out half the money in my current account while you were hanging about in my automobile at the doors of the banks. That way, in any case, I didn’t awaken any suspicions by drawing it all out, and we have gotten out of Paris sooner.”
Thomas, who had counted on taking possession of eight hundred thousand in banknotes—he did not yet know how—cursed internally, but he said: “You did well. See, over there, where the money moon is disappearing…and dawn’s about to break. The sun will soon rise. There’s still a chance of salvation...”
“You’re boring me.”
Etienne Aubert plunged back into funereal or lubricious thoughts, while watching the road and the steering wheel, and silence fell again, in the reckless fluid of a grim hatred between the two accomplices.
XI. The Young Man of 1924
On the morning when Etienne and Thomas were traveling at top speed toward the azure coast, in Paris, at the factory on the Quai de Javel, no one going about their daily work had any suspicion that the boss had fled. All the machines were functioning as if nothing abnormal had happened. At eight o’clock, when Louis Lafon, before his habitual tour through the workshops to inspect the work in progress, went into his office, he saw a letter deposited on his desk. He read the writing on the envelope, and recognized it as that of his boss: To Monsieur Louis Lafon. Personal.
He opened it. As soon as he read the first words, he seemed to be gripped by vertigo. Then, pulling himself together, he let himself fall into his chair and resumed reading.
My dear Lafon, when you read this letter I shall be in flight in order to escape, if that is possible, the punishment of a horrible crime. I did not commit that crime personally—I could not have done that—but I had it committed, which is even worse, since it increased the cowardice. I’m no more courageous today; I’m fleeing the responsibility for the sins I’ve committed. Without excuses to palliate them, I dare say that without that execrable war, which deformed the consciences of many young men, it’s probable that I wouldn’t have committed my crimes.
More than former combatants, perhaps, I’m thinking at present about the men of letters, lying in ambush then, sheltered, in the general staff at the front, when they weren’t in the offices and formations of the rear, who have trumpeted at us too loudly, in the papers, that the man of today, who is not yet thirty, is the greatest in the world. I’ve learned by heart a passage from an article:
‘I don’t think there has ever, even in the youthful, abundant epoch of the Renaissance, appeared upon the earth a human being armed with so many resources and adorned with so many graces as the man of today. He is truly a fundamentally complete being, in equilibrium with his two bases. There is something formidable and intoxicating today in knowing that one is a man! War
has simplified him, had made him barbaric in the new sense of the term, by rendering him his original purity. It has scraped away the layer of conventions and prejudices, laid his being naked. And naked, a man feels formidably strong.’
I, Etienne Aubert, in order to believe myself stronger than I am, still drunk on victory and demobilization, on the onanism of the trenches, on decorated murder, have not been able, inebriated and disequilibrated, to recover the road and make my way, hypocritically, by marching between the flat walls of habit and the law, without causing principles and prejudices to crack in their age-old bark.
But I don’t have time for futile meditations, my dear Lafon. The moment has come for you to open the drawer that I indicated to you and take out the papers it contains. You are, in a way, the executor of my testament. Outside my instructions, I leave you full authority to make the Factory an industrial co-operative from which you will all profit.
I loved the factory too much, Lafon; it was to possess it that I became a criminal. It is necessary, at least, that the work that I am forced to abandon should not perish. What a mystery the human heart is! And how one cedes to its passions! Why did I allow myself to be drawn into killing my father? Is it because I saw, in an official theater, a poilu obliging his father ‘the old man’ to kneel down before his son and beg his pardon? Anyway, whatever you may think and say about me, honest Lafon, man of integrity that you are, will you have some indulgence for the sad culpable individual who is writing you these words?
In any case, my salvation depends on what you are going to do. Give me twenty-four hours advance on the police, if possible; that will be the means, for me, of escaping a scandal for the factory at the Court of Assizes. Do you have the right to do what I’m asking of you, though? It’s up to you to decide. Adieu, Lafon; for you, I’m already a dead man. With this testament I leave you my soul: the factory. Make it immortal. Adieu, my dear Lafon. You are the only man whose respect I regret to have lost.
Etienne Aubert
The director of personnel could not hold back his tears. His heart was breaking. He remained sitting there for a long time, absorbed in bitter reflections.
Finally, his energetic nature got the upper hand. He stood up and went to open Etienne’s desk. The young boss, foreseeing a catastrophe, had consulted a skillful advocate, Maître Albert Crémieux, and then had carried out all the necessary formalities, in order that Lafon had only to fulfill further legal formalities to transform the factory into an industrial co-operative of metalworkers. Lafon was legally charged with appointing a committee of direction and administration. Etienne Aubert’s power of attorney was transmitted to Lafon for the covering funds and the reserve funds in the banks, about four hundred thousand francs. The former worker felt extremely flattered by that confidence in his probity.
XII. The Commissaire is Obliging
There remained the question of the revelation to the law. Ought he to do it immediately, or accord the delay requested by the murderer? If it had only been a matter of Aubert, Lafon would not have hesitated. Why make Etienne pay with his head for a moral malady, a disease of the time, the post-war morbidity of those under thirty who, mentally at least, were murdering the old? But there were also his accomplices, those who had suggested the crime to him. That merited reflection.
I can still wait until midday, he said to himself. I’ll ask advice from the wife. And I can let things go here until Saturday afternoon. We work the English week, and I’ll put up a notice announcing a general meeting for the afternoon. The mates will be delighted to see themselves all becoming the masters of the factory.
At lunch, Lafon told his wife about Etienne’s flight and his decision.
“Poor fellow!” groaned Adrienne. “Our suspicions are fully justified now, alas. Notice, Louis, how evil actions sometimes engender good ones. Without Etienne Aubert’s crime, the factory would have remained Antoine’s property. From the death of one man, the wellbeing of hundreds of other will result.”
“Yes, it’s rather bizarre; the flux and reflux of life doesn’t corner itself with morality. Then, you think that I should grant the twenty-four hours requested by the murder to let him get away?”
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Adrienne went to open up.
“I’m the Commissaire de Police.”
“Come in, Monsieur Raynaud!” Lafon shouted, getting up and going out to meet him. “We’re just finishing lunch.”
“Sit down, my friend, and permit me to do likewise. I’ve come to reach an understanding with you, to avoid a scandal at the factory. Today, we have proof of the culpability of Etienne Aubert, and I have a warrant for his arrest. As you know, I’m not any ordinary cop, and when a guilty party renders justice to himself by means of a suicide, despite avoiding a long trial, morality’s thirst for blood will still have been satisfied nevertheless.”
“You’ve arrived too late. Etienne has fled. This is the letter that I found on my desk this morning, which Langlois, the factory concierge—as I learned just now when I left the factory—had only just deposited there, the boss having given him the order to do so yesterday.”
Monsieur Raynaud read the letter.
“An odd fellow. A mixture of good and evil. It’s the frantic egotism of his generation that has doomed him. Let’s give the maniac, decorated in the war for his bravery, the delay he requests.”
XIII. In Spite of Everything, Measures to be Taken
After an approving silence, the Commissaire continued: “Yes, but I’m forgetting that Etienne Aubert, who seems to me to be something of a lunatic, and in consequence irresponsible, might commit further crimes: raping his young stepmother…that would only be a pleasure for him…and killing little Antoine...”
“He’s insane!” cried the husband and wife, in unison.
“Would you care to come to the Commissariat with me, Monsieur Lafon? I need to telegraph and telephone various people. I’ll tell you what has happened on the way.”
At the nearest post and telegraph office, Raynaud sent a telegram, which he showed to his companion:
Fabio Canti, Villa Bellarosa. Théoule, Alpes-Maritimes. Etienne escaped, Arrest warrant issued. Keep watch on Madame Aubert. Raynaud.
“What? You really fear that Etienne might attempt to harm Madame Aubert or the baby?”
“Him, or the bandits who are his accomplices.”
As they arrived at the Commissariat, Monsieur Raynaud was finishing the story of the events that had taken place in Madame Desmabez’ house, which he had from a reliable source: the savior, the celebrated Painter of the Sun, Fabio Canti.
“Undoubtedly, it’s all true. But I can’t explain who was able to warn Etienne Aubert so rapidly. I know, however, that the boss was called home by a few words in pencil placed in an envelope, and that he came back to his office to collect papers, and then left again a few minutes before two o’clock, with the person who had come to meet him, giving, Langlois, the concierge, the sealed letter to me that I’ve shown you. They left in the boss’ auto.”
“Everything’s explicable. The visitor was Thomas Keysar. Do you know the number of the car?”
“28.247—a superb Helios. Four seats and a trunk, convertible top, dark red in color, nearly new.”
“Good. I’ll send that description to the Prefecture. They’ve been on the move since yesterday; that gives them a start of eighteen hours. It will be difficult to catch them if they cross the border. Which one? Which way did they go? Italy, I presume. Let’s try, anyway.”
And Raynaud, the poet, humorist and excellent Commissaire, immediately telephoned his superiors.
When he had finished, he said: “I’ll go with you to the factory, to make the obligatory observations. According to what you’ve just told me, you’re now at home there. I don’t, in any case, have to occupy myself with the factory’s concerns, but I might find interesting papers in Etienne Aubert’s house.”
XIV. The Struggle Between the Accomplices
At daybreak, Aubert and Thom
as Keysar were at Chagny in Saône-et-Loire, at the junction to Montceau-les-Mines and Creusot—a road that Etienne had taken several times. As the entire town was still asleep, they went to the railway station. At the buffet, they ate all the scraps that could be found for them, drank two cups of coffee each, and set off again immediately.
In Lyon, Thomas went into a grocery store and bought numerous provisions and four bottles of good wine, and bread from a bakery, before setting off again. After a further hundred kilometers on the road to Grenoble, however, they were obliged to stop. Aubert, the driver, and Thomas Keysar as well, were literally falling asleep.
Etienne decided to stop for a few hours. He drove the auto into a clearing in a wood that the road cut through, and they both lay down on the grass. The morning was superb, the breeze caressing the birch trees; rabbits with their ears laid back, scampered away into the cover of the bushes, and very near to the two profoundly sleeping murderers, little birds in a nest were screeching, demanding to be fed.
Finally, after four hours of leaden slumber, Etienne woke up first and shook his companion. They each had a copious swig of cognac, without eating anything at all. After consulting the map, Aubert set the car in motion again. He took the road to Grenoble, in order to reach the Estérel via Champsaur, the Col Bayard, Gap, Sisteron, Castellane and Grasse.
Everything went well as far as Grasse, but twenty kilometers further on, four armed men seemed to want to bar their passage.
“Gendarmes!” hissed Thomas in Etienne’s ear. He had seen them.
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