Chapter VI
When Baronne Betty Sasoitsu presented herself two days later at Professor Tornada’s clinic to receive a second treatment of rejuvenation by the ultra-green rays, she knocked at the door of the laboratory in vain. No response reaching her from inside after a further appeal, she went in on her own authority.
The large room furnished with scientific apparatus was empty—or, at least, empty of the human presence she was expecting to find there, given that the marmoset was alone in greeting her. Attached by a cord, it was occupying the stool where she had been obliged to sit in order to be sprayed with the marvelous rays. The animal was considering a fish—a carp—that was dying, while still struggling at the end of a wire descending from the ceiling in front of the screen, which was still in place. It stopped nibbling a peanut in order to address a polite grimace of welcome to her.
“Where’s your master?” Betty asked it. “He asked me to be here at ten o’clock precisely, though—and I’m even a little late.”
Only then did she notice a low door, which made her think that the scientist might be busy in an adjacent room. She went to advertise her presence with three impatient raps thereon. Confronted by a new silence, she tried to open it, but it was bolted on the other side.
“I’m here, Master!” she shouted through the door.
“I’m coming,” the voice for which she was hoping indicated from behind it.
Another moment to be patient, and then the bolt grated and her scientist friend emerged from a completely dark place. He was in his work clothes and was furnished with a rag, with which he was wiping his hands. He locked the door carefully, taking out the key and causing it to vanish into his trouser pocket.
“Pardon my curiosity,” said Betty. “You have an annex to your laboratory there?”
“I have a dark-room, at least.”
“For what further occult work?”
“Well, I’m obliged to tease photographic film, in order to conserve certain memories.”
“Are you also working to preserve the face of that monkey I see there, a prisoner of the insulator?”
“Why not? Animals are the precious witnesses of scientific experimentation, as you must know.”
“What astonishes me, Master, is that you don’t make use of assistants for those accessory tasks.”
“I’m careful to refrain from that. I do everything myself. At least I don’t have to fear any indiscretions regarding a procedure that I hope to propagate one day, and which is likely to revolutionize the world.”
The world of esthetics, you man?”
“Of course. But let’s not waste time that is as precious to me as it is to you. My minutes lost to science are worth an eternity. Yours, for your business, similarly, I imagine. Come here so that I can observe our first result in the daylight.”
He led her by the arm to the window. He picked up a magnifying glass, which he paraded over Betty’s visage.
“It seems to me that we can thank the heavens, purveyors of my ultra-green rays! The sinister crow’s-foot is already beating a retreat!”
“A crow’s-foot? Aren’t you exaggerating?”
“It’s threatening. A consequence, of course, of your infinite sadness, for mental shocks are always inscribed on the face. That explains how my ultra-green rays were so easily able to counter their effect on your cellular tissue. But it’s a warning that commands us to act again and arm you against ravages that are still possible.”
“I’m all the more intent on that, Master, because my future might demand that I maintain myself exactly as I was.”
“Already?”
“Already what?”
“You’re thinking of giving the poor Baron a successor?”
“What!” Betty exclaimed, offended. “Doctor…!”
Tornada remarked the dire blow that his joke had dealt Betty. She was near to tears. To repair his outrage, he put more urgency into dislodging the marmoset from the insulating seat and asking her to take its place. At the same time, he asked: “Why, then, the need to maintain your physical appearance? You aren’t thinking of returning to the cinematic inferno?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“But you have no need? The Baron hasn’t left you without a sou!”
“Indeed; I possess a tidy fortune.”
“But you want to have supplementary recourse to the salary of a star? I don’t understand.”
“That’s because, unlike me, you don’t have the profession under your skin, my dear doctor. You can’t imagine the attraction that possession of one’s own inferno, as you put it, can offer. Did I say attraction? No, diversion…a little forgetfulness.”
She explained her project. In truth, the demon of the seventh art had never ceased to possess her.24 She had renounced it for love of her late husband. But now that she was free, and it was necessary to deliver herself at any price from the obsession of an incomprehensible drama, which would end up driving her mad, she had decided to escape from a poisoned atmosphere and return rapidly to Hollywood. There, devoting a part of her inheritance to it, she was thinking of setting up a vast studio, in which she would be the queen, instead of a sort of slave, as she had been before—a well-paid slave, to be sure, at the mercy even so of writers, directors, cameramen, wardrobe supervisors and a host of double-dealers into the bargain. Yes, she had that intention, and would get on with it without delay, as soon as Tornada gave her leave esthetically.
“But what about the trial? You’re abandoning Félix, then?”
“He might have kept me here, but what can I do? I’m impotent, and henceforth unnecessary to the investigation. I don’t have anything more to depose. Just let Félix know that I retain my affection for him and that I believe him incapable of what he’s accused of having done, in spite of...”
“In spite of?”
“In spite of all the evidence against him...”
“What, you too?”
“Well, think about it. Listen, I mean, think about the others, the court! Think about the difficulty that Maître Giki-Rénaldi, his advocate, will have in establishing is innocence! That’s why I prefer, in consideration of our past, not to have to intervene any longer. In any case, the Assizes aren’t immediate. I could come back at any moment, if the tribunal has need of Abrovici, whom I’ll be taking with me.”
“You’re decidedly inseparable!”
“Rather say that he’s a worthy fellow, and believe that Tani’s death afflicts him greatly too.”
“Like all charitable hearts, you’re attached to those you help. For it’s out of pity, isn’t it, that you’ve taken him under your wing? You’ve known the worthy fellow for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Five or six years, since my engagement in Hollywood. He was one of the cameramen on Nirvana, the film that determined my definitive success.”
Tornada had just produced the indispensable obscurity. Only one small electric lamp remained, illuminating her from the side. He had already seized his wave-projecting apparatus. He set it down again and came to stand in front of Betty.
“That’s true—that famous Japanese film. The story was idiotic, but you were very moving in it.”
“You’ve seen me in it? I would never have thought that the cinema could interest you.”
“In truth, I’m scarcely a devotee. Life, for anyone who knows how to look at it, is a much more dramatic cinema. But I wasn’t able to refuse to accompany Vion, and Sasoitsu was with us. I learned then that he was watching it for the sixth time, simply to see you. He trembled when you appeared. It was the memory of that evening that explained his marriage to me. And to think that without Lise Bellegard’s fatal accident, he would never have known you! For if my memory is accurate, it was to the death of that unfortunate woman that you owe having become famous, by virtue of replacing her?”
“Indeed.”
“Did you know her, that Lise?”
“Evidently, since I was a member of the cast, in a role less important than hers.”
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“You were on good terms with her?”
“We were friends.”
“Tell me how the accident happened.”
Returning to that other drama displeased Betty, but she told the story, in an oppressed voice. She explained that the great American company C.D.F., which could just as easily have constructed a set, had preferred to shoot on location. There was a scene in which Lise had to lean over a gulf from the top of a crag. It was, alas, a real gulf. The place was so difficult to access, and so perilous, that she had only been allowed to be accompanied by a single cameraman, the one from whom the story of her fall was obtained. Just as the camera was about to roll, Lise, in finding the right distance, had got too close to the edge, slipped on the rock and had been crushed three hundred feet below. An expedition had been required to recover her body.
“I can imagine the cameraman’s face, when he realized his responsibility!”
“Entirely occupied with his machine, he couldn’t be responsible for the imprudence of his partner!” Betty protested.
“Even so, he could have shouted a warning to her.”
“That was what Abrovici did.”
“Ah! It was Abrovici...”
“And I swear to you that he was severely shaken. He has such a good heart!”
“A deception of appearances! The soul of a St. Vincent de Paul under the mug of a companion of St. Anthony! Which renders him more likeable to me.” He paused momentarily. “What you’ve just told me might have convinced me to put my ultra-green rays at his disposal, to attenuate if not to efface that wine-stain, paradoxical in a sober fellow.”
“You believe that…?”
“One can always try.”
“Can I advise him to do it?”
“If you wish.”
“It’s just that we’re about to leave.”
“With him, I’ll double the duration of the emission, to avoid having to repeat it later.”
“What you won’t be able to double, Master, is your honorarium. But he’ll settle up with you, I’ll demand it.”
“With what money? I’m either very expensive or entirely gratuitous. On the other hand, I’m still experimenting. He could serve as a guinea-pig.”
“Benefactor!”
Betty’s exclamation drew no reaction from Tornada. She divined in the gloom that he was about to change the disk in the phonograph astray among the scientific apparatus. Then he took up the wave-projector that he had set down in order to chat, and brandished it toward Betty.
“Let’s go to work! Turn your head slightly to the right.”
As in the first session, once he had commanded the immobility of the features and serenity of thought, before launching the sparks, he lit up the screen. What appeared there was no longer the memory of the wedding-party emerging from the church but the image of an arid mountain peak at the summit of which a climber was standing on the edge of a gulf. At the same time, the phonograph poured out the harmonies of Chopin’s funeral march.
“Again, Doctor! You’re asking me to remain good-humored while confronting me with a picture that reminds me of Lise!”
“I’m not acting lightly. That was the origin of your success in the cinema, and then the marriage.”
“I can’t, Master!”
“Silence! Don’t move again! I’m inundating you!”
Betty heard the slight click reproduced behind the screen. She received the avalanche of sparks, forcing herself to conserve the impassivity indispensable to the benefit of the ultra-green rays. It only lasted for the time necessary for Tornada to count to twenty-five. Then the click resonated again, the image disappeared, the sparks were extinguished and the phonograph ceased its lament.
“Can I move now?”
“Without danger. It’s over.”
Tornada restored the celestial light and helped Betty to put her coat on. She did not make any further observation about the macabre intervention. What was the point? The great scientist was unhinged.
“Would you like me to proceed now with Abrovici?” he asked, as he escorted her back to the auto.
“But of course!”
Abrovici accepted enthusiastically. Betty asked to watch the session, but Tornada refused.
“That would be dangerous for you.”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t be on the insulator. My rays might provoke a dermatitis.”
“But what about you, Doctor? You’re not insulated.”
“Pardon me, but I’m sure of rubber.” He raised his foot to show that his shoes had special soles. The fear of a skin disease easily persuaded Betty to take a walk in the park in the meantime.
“You’ll see the pond where I breed carp.”
“Carp? To eat?”
“No, to get to know them. Go! Go!”
Carp now? What could he want from them? Why was one of them hanging in front of the screen?
With the chauffeur, things did not drag on. It was the same procedure, point by point, doubling the time of exposure to the rays. Before illuminating the image that might evoke the place where Lise Bellegard had concluded her career, Tornada only asked a few questions reminding him of it. Abrovici would have continued talking about it, but Tornada changed the subject, asking him what he thought about the accusation leveled against Félix Vion, his gratitude toward the Baronne, and the mediocrity of his situation. All these questions immediately preceded the aspersion of the ultra-green rays. The waves only being concerned with the erasure of the birthmark, no phlegm was required.
They rejoined Betty. She was in ecstasy before the carp.
“Let’s go,” said Tornada, by way of an adieu. “Bon voyage, and may what you’re going to do in Hollywood dissipate your chagrin somewhat for both of you.”
The auto disappeared, and he hastened to shut himself away in the dark-room of his laboratory.
When his work was concluded, Professor Tornada went to the Prison de la Santé. In order to get in he had invoked the necessity of a professional consultation with the detainee Félix Vion, and in any case, he was sufficiently feared for no one to dare to refuse. He was welcomed into the abode by a warder in a dark blue uniform, in accord with the sinister aspect of the place, which took him through corridors necessitating the opening of doors requiring special keys to an intersection where he official authorization was examined through a grille.
The attendant responsible for the latter formality held on to the permission slip momentarily, and gushed: “He isn’t the first client of Monsieur de docteur’s that we’ve received. Do you remember Bordelin? But yes—Bordelin, the one whose brain you operated on by removing the top of the skull because he was an idiot? Who became so malevolent that he committed murders all over the place without anyone being able to lay a hand on him? And who, when they finally arrested him and executed him, just as Deibler25 was about to let the blade fall, cried out: ‘If I’m dying, it’s Tornada’s fault!’ You don’t remember?”
“I never concern myself with the aftermath of my operations. Get a move on.”
Another warder, another corridor, a massive door, and he finally went into the interview-room where the agents of the law, and sometimes relatives, met prisoners on remand: a room as desolate as the entire prison, with whitewashed walls, a ventilation shaft, and a large table situated between two benches, one for the visitor and one for the detainee.
Vion was brought by the warder. On finding him so transformed by his ordeal, his face extremely gaunt behind a beard that had not been shaved since his incarceration, marked with all the signs of decline, Tornada—extraordinarily, for him—felt moved by pity.
“It’s you!” said Vion. “How glad I am!” He held out his arms, but contact was forbidden. He was obliged to sit down on the other side of the table.
“You have half an hour,” the warder said, as he withdrew.
Tenderness could not last long in the surgeon. “Well, my poor old chap,” he said, sarcastically, “you’ve become quite dejected since you murdered S
asoitsu.” He did not believe that his joke would be taken the wrong way.
“”You too!” said Vion, alarmed.
“Come on! I believe it so little that I’m bringing what you need to put the fat you’ve lost back on.”
“I doubt that! I’m doomed!”
“Not as much as you imagine.”
Tornada let him talk first. He listened patiently, while stroking his beard, to what Félix believed he ought to tell him about his lamentable odyssey: his successive interrogations by magistrate who believed him to be guilty, although he had left the house by the time the crime was committed.
True, appearances were in league against him: the deposition of the attaché at the Japanese embassy who had seen someone disguised like him with Sasoitsu; the medico-legal investigation affirming a stab-wound caused by a weapon similar to the dagger he was wearing; the attestation of the chauffeur Abrovici that the weapon had been brought back to the cloakroom to be returned to the Baronne after he had gone out, forgetting to return it—which had convinced the magistrate that his precipitate exit could have had no other purpose than to go outside and clean the dagger, in order to get rid of fingerprints, which the laboratory experts had indeed not found; the return on foot to his domicile; the pretended fever that had isolated him from the consequences of the murder; and finally, even more persuasive for his accuser, the monetary motive that might have driven him to kill his associate.
In vain, Maître Giki-Rénaldi, his advocate—one of the foremost at the Parisian bar—had objected that no formal proof could justify his detention; that given the disposition of the location, closure of the door to the drawing room, and the abandonment of the cloakroom by Abrovici, nothing belied the hypothesis that a stranger, coming in from outside and disguised as the warrior Shoki, had introduced himself into the Baron’s presence and fled, without being seen, as soon as the blow was struck…the magistrate was obstinate in discounting those arguments. Even the morality of the accused, the simplicity of his tastes and his life, his disinterest, and his affection for Sasoitsu, repudiating such a dark deed, were so many futile arguments.
The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 20