Enter the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  by

  Jean de La Hire

  Translated by

  Brian Stableford

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Table of Contents

  ENTER THE NYCTALOPE 4

  BLACK AND GOLD 140

  MARGUERITE 150

  THE HEART OF A MAN 152

  Afterword 183

  ENTER THE NYCTALOPE

  Part One: The End of Darkness

  Chapter I: The Drama

  When he woke up on the morning of March 3, 1912, the engineer Pierre Saint-Clair felt his heart gripped by an obscure anguish. It was a presentiment that the day would not pass without some misfortune befalling him.1

  He was reassured however, at 8 a.m., when Mélanie, his old cook-housekeeper, brought him a telegram announcing the arrival, before noon on that same day, of Madame Saint-Clair and their son Léon, whom they called Leo. On the previous day, Madame Saint-Clair and Leo had gone to Chartres by automobile, in order to deliver their birthday greetings to an old uncle. Monsieur Saint-Clair had not been able to accompany them because he had had to work late into the night on a very important laboratory experiment.

  For more than a year, in fact, the engineer had devoted all his time and the greater part of the income from his fortune to the realization of an invention of immense potential. That invention consisted of an electromagnetic wave “captoprojector” capable of attracting and, so to speak, storing wireless telegraphy waves, and subsequently liberating then, authentically or in a falsified form. Result: absolute mastery of all the wireless telegraphy communications in the entire world, by means of a permanent control enabling censorship, transformation, delay and even suppression.

  The science and applications of wireless telegraphy were then in their infancy, and the scientist anticipated their marvelous progress.

  The Saint-Clairs lived in a fine family property between Paris and Bourg-la-Reine, comprising a comfortable house, grounds enclosed by high walls, and vast commons. The engineer had installed his laboratory—a workshop-shed and an experimental field—in the middle of the grounds, in a large clearing surrounded by tall trees. He worked alone, but his twenty-year-old son Leo, who was intelligent and devoted, sometimes served as his enthusiastic assistant. The young man had just been awarded a degree in science, but he was a combative and ambitious sportsman and was still hesitating over the choice of a career.

  One the morning of March 3, 1912, therefore, Saint-Clair was reassured by the thought that his wife and son would be returning on that day, and not—as might have been the case—the following day. At 10 a.m., he was in his laboratory, hard at work, satisfied and triumphant. He had just completed the definitive experiment in the most fortunate manner when the private telephone connecting the laboratory to the house sounded its silvery bell.

  Monsieur Saint-Clair uncooked the receiver and said: “Hello?”

  “Hello, Monsieur!” replied the easily-recognizable voice of Mélanie. “Antoine has asked me to tell you that there’s a gentleman asking to see you.” Antoine was the Saint-Clairs’ gardener, a faithful old retainer who lived in a little lodge beside the gate at the entrance to the property.

  “The gentleman has given Antoine a card, which he has just handed to me,” Mélanie continued. “His name is Stanislas Vibrosky. He’s a chemist. He says that he has traveled from the depths of Poland for the express purpose of seeing you.”

  Monsieur Saint-Clair knew the name Stanislas Vibrosky, of whom he had, indeed, heard mention as a very knowledgeable chemist. He had even seen his picture several times in illustrated periodicals. Furthermore, he often received visits from foreign scientists, for “the engineer Saint-Clair” was world-famous by virtue of several inventions related to electricity, radiography, radiophony, and wireless telegraphy in general. In consequence, the engineer’s suspicions were not aroused.

  As he always did in such cases, he replied; “That’s all right, Mélanie. Tell Antoine to let Monsieur Vibrosky in, to take him to my study and ask him to wait for a few minutes.”

  He hung up the telephone and went back to work. In fact, he required nearly a quarter of an hour of material manipulations and note-taking to finish off the definitive experiment and to consign the final formula and its technical consequences to his “Radiant Z Journal.” When that was done, he left the apparatus and the Journal where they were on the large steel laboratory table and went into the study.

  The latter was a room of restricted dimensions, furnished as a library and smoking-room, and equipped with three good armchairs. Saint-Clair used it for resting, meditation and reading, and also for receiving visitors when he was in his “Workshops.” The laboratory was connected to the study by a short corridor with two doors. Between the two doors the corridor served as a cloakroom for coats and hats. The study was entered from the outside by a separate door opening on to a wide pathway that led directly to the house.

  On entering the study, however, Monsieur Saint-Clair experienced a sharp surprise. The man who was standing there waiting for him, whose face was clearly lit from the side by the room’s only window, was not recognizable as the Stanislas Vibrosky of the printed portraits. Abruptly, with a vague chill running along his spine, the dark presentiment he had experienced on awakening came back. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, on his guard—but it was already too late!

  Violent and terrible, the drama unfolded. It began with a gesture from the stranger and a rapid speech. The gesture consisted of the man raising his right hand and aiming the Browning with which it was armed at Monsieur Saint-Clair. As for the speech, it was as menacing as the gesture, and just as frightfully significant.

  “Monsieur Saint-Clair,” the false Vibrosky pronounced, in a harsh tone, with an accent that was certainly that of some Far-Eastern nation, “you will immediately give me the complete dossier of your Radiant Z, and you will follow me to the automobile that is waiting for you on the road outside the gate of the property. If not…”

  Monsieur Saint-Clair stiffened, put his hand on the back of a chair that he thought might serve as a weapon, and said, courageously: “If not?”

  The response was immediate. His green eyes shining with an evil gleam, the stranger said: “If not, whatever the consequences might be, I’ll kill you.”

  Monsieur Saint-Clair was agile and vigorous. He thought quickly and acted promptly. He crouched down, while gripping the chair with both hands, and raised it in the air—but he was dealing with a coldly determined criminal aggressor. Before the raised chair could strike him, the stranger pulled the trigger of his weapon. Three detonations were heard, but they were soft and feeble, because the Browning was equipped with one of those so-called “silencers,” which are little used although they are genuinely effective, considerably diminishing the sound of a rifle- or pistol-shot. Those three detonations would not even have been heard by anyone who happened to be in the neighboring laboratory.

  The unfortunate Monsieur Saint-Clair collapsed, and the chair fell back upon his own body.

  Without sparing his victim a glance, the criminal leapt forward and shoved the corridor door, which still stood ajar. He opened the door to the laboratory, ran to the steel table, set down his still-smoking Browning on a corner, and began riffling through Saint-Clair’s “Radiant Z Journal” with both hands. His Mongoloid face, with slanting eyes and prominent cheek-bones, wore an expression of ferocious joy as he sniggered.

  “This is it!” he growled. “It’s all here. It’s ours—and it will be ours alone, for my little time-bombs will destroy all this in a quarter of an hour. And in a quarter of an hour, I’ll be far away, since the car will get me to the airplane in less than five minutes. Hup! Let’s not waste any time.”

  The criminal was wear
ing a raglan overcoat with large, deep pockets. Into one of them he slid the bound notebook constituting the “Radiant Z Journal;” in the other he buried two items of apparatus, with disks and reels, which had also been on the table. Then he picked up the Browning in his right hand.

  He took a small square box from the left-hand outside pocket of his raglan, and put it under a stool. He scraped a fingernail over one of its surfaces, thus exposing the head of a pin that had previously been hidden beneath a thin layer of plaster. He pulled out the pin, and threw it away.

  He left the laboratory immediately by the back door and passed into a large work-room. There he placed four little boxes in different places and removed their pins. Finally, he went out on to the lawn, went around the buildings at a rapid pace, rejoined the wide pathway, went around the house and headed for the gate along a path slanting from the right.

  As he came out of the bushes he saw that the gate was open and that Antoine, standing beside one of the battens, was waving to a red cabriolet that was going past him into the grounds, launching itself into the central pathway with the forceful acceleration that only first-class motors can achieve.

  “Good!” muttered the fake Vibrosky. “Here’s Madame Saint-Clair and her son coming home. Our information was accurate. I’ve arrived just in time, and I’ll wager that it’s the perfect moment. There’s no time for delay.” And as Antoine, who was about to close the gate again, looked at him, the stranger said: “Au revoir, my good man.”

  Bewildered by such rare generosity, Antoine contemplated the hundred-franc note that the visitor had just slipped into his hand. When he raised his head again and looked at the road, the stranger and his car had disappeared.

  Chapter II: Ah, Youth, Beautiful Youth!

  “Is Monsieur in the Workshops, Mélanie?” asked Madame Saint-Clair as she got out of the red cabriolet, which her son was driving.

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Leo, closing the car door. “I’ll go on there.”

  He declutched, changed gear, and re-engaged the clutch magisterially—and the powerful car, drawing away without and shock, rolled like a supple streak of lightning along the broad rectilinear pathway that led from the house to the Factory.

  Leo stopped in front of the large laboratory door and got out. Not seeing his father in the laboratory, however, he crossed the immense room at a rapid pace and went straight to the study.

  “Oh, my God! What’s happened? Oh, Father, Father!” He had immediately caught sight of the extended body, with the chair overturned on the legs and the arms outstretched, the face livid and bloody… although the eyes were wide open and very much alive!

  Leo Saint-Clair was a tall, strapping lad with a steady heart, a clear mind and a courageous character. Although his soul was very sensitive, he was endowed with a magnificently cool head. He had an intuition of what had happened and a fugitive idea of its causes and goals, but he did not waste time with such thoughts.

  His eyes were brimming with the tears of a violent and dolorous emotion, but he acted nevertheless with an admirable presence of mind. Take care of him, he said to himself. First, take care of him—but there’s none of what’s necessary here. The house… the house, quickly! And he added, with infinite tenderness: “Father, can you hear me? Yes? Good. Don’t talk. I’ll carry you to the house. I can see that you’re wounded in the chest. I’ll do it gently.”

  He had been a scout, and a renowned patrol-leader. He how to take a wounded man in his arms, lift him up and transport him. The captain of Bourg-la-Reine Rugby Club, he was strong and lithe. He could seat his father in the cabriolet…

  Less than five minutes later, Pierre Saint-Clair was on the divan in the house’s large drawing-room. Madame Saint-Claire, tearful but courageous, forcing herself to remain calm, exposed his breast in order to administer first aid. Mélanie went upstairs in search of the large box of medical supplies, and Leo telephoned Doctor Champeau at Bourg-la-Reine, a friend of his father’s and a very skillful physician.

  It was then that five distinct detonations rang out in the grounds, one after another, at intervals of a few seconds. The five principal bangs were accompanied by a thunderous racket.

  The Workshops could only been seen from the house along the central pathway bordered by linden trees. Through a window looking out in that direction, Leo saw a distant chaos of debris, smoke and fire. Although trembling with emotion, pain and anger, he maintained his presence of mind; he was already at the telephone, giving the alarm to the firemen of Bourg-la-Reine and Arcueil-Cachan.

  What a day!

  That evening, however, as dusk fell, the situation was clear.

  Leo summarized the various aspects of the situation for his friends from the Rugby Club, Robert Champeau, René Croqui and Jean Degains, who had hastened in response to his summons in mid-afternoon and who were dining with him at the house—an undercooked meal served by a tearful and frightened Mélanie.

  He was very pale, but steadfast, his gestures precise and his voice level; his entire being emanated a formidable resolution and determination. “My friends,” he said, “let’s get straight to the point! I’ve called you together to make some decisions. This is how it is. Firstly, my father. A single bullet struck him, going straight through his chest between the lungs, the heart and the stomach, without injuring any of those vital organs—but it grazed the spinal column. Your father, Robert, is certain that he’ll recover, after several months of daily treatment, but he’s afraid that a partial paralysis, whose precise location and limits he’s unable to specify as yet, might be unavoidable, because of the injury to the spine. I intend to avenge my father, my friends!”

  Making an effort to contain the emotion that was making him shiver, Leo Saint-Clair summed after a brief pause: “Secondly, the invention, Radiant Z. You know what it is. You’re the only ones I’ve told, with my father’s authorization. Well, the criminal has stolen the plans, drawings, instructions and technical notes relating to the invention. He’s also stolen the two scale-models of the apparatus. Finally, he’s destroyed the laboratory, the work-room, and everything precious and useful relative to Radiant Z that the Workshops contained. Now, my friends, I intend to get back everything that this criminal has stolen!”

  There was another pause, untroubled by Robert Campeau, René Croqui or Jean Degains, who were very emotional and passionately attentive. Then Leo Saint-Clair continued, still with the same concentrated energy.

  “Thirdly, and finally, the criminal! Having found or stolen one of the distinguished Polish chemist Stanislas Vibrosky’s visiting cards, the bandit has only left us impressions of his face, his build and his accent—impressions graven in my father’s memory. When my father was able to talk, he described the physical appearance of the murder to me while I stood at his bedside: Mongoloid face, medium height, thick-set, broad shoulders; a rough, harsh voice with a strange accent, which is none of the accents that Europeans have when they speak French. And one precious item of information, one particular clue: my father noticed, unthinkingly but unmistakably, that the murderous bandit, the mysterious thieving spy, had a horizontal scar on his forehead, directly above the nose and very close to the hairline, cutting across the dull yellow complexion of his facial skin with its livid pallor. The spy kept his hat on, but the abrupt movement he made as he aimed the Browning displaced it slightly and tipped it slightly backwards, thus uncovering the forehead, so that my father’s eyes saw the scar and his memory registered its appearance permanently. My friends, I intend to find that man!”

  As he made that final statement, proffered with violence, Leo Saint-Clair rose to his feet. His friends immediately followed suit.

  Standing up straight, tense and determined, Leo added, rapidly: “I’ve inherited a considerable sum of money from my maternal grandmother. I’m sure that my father, on my request, will put it at my disposal. Furthermore, if I ask them in my father’s name, my dear friends, your relatives—who loved and admired him—will perm
it you to interrupt your studies as I shall interrupt mine. Why? In order that all four of us can devote ourselves, from this day forward, to a mission of justice and patriotism: to recover Radiant Z and give it to France, and to capture the murderous spy and have him punished. Are you with me? Do you feel that you have the strength and courage to undertake long and perhaps difficult journeys? To brave a thousand dangers? To run risks that might be terrible, and even mortal?”

  Leo Saint-Clair had no need to go on. Acting as one, Champeau, Croqui and Degains threw themselves upon him, seized him by the hands and arms, their eyes filled with tears of emotion and enthusiasm, and cried in unison: “Yes! Yes! We’ll go with you!”

  “We won’t just be working for France, but also for Europe!” Leo Saint-Clair went on, more calmly. “For the assassin-spy is neither German, nor English, nor Italian. He’s a Mongol, an Asian. For whose profit has he carried out such an abominable and audacious crime? For Germany? We shall find out—but I have an intuition that he might be in the service of enemies of civilization and European peace, of our religious faith and of our magnificent French grandeur: the Russo-Asiatic nihilists!”

  Young as they were—between 18 and 20 years of age—Robert Champeau, René Croqui and Jean Degains knew enough about the great events of modern history not to be unaware that the nihilists, bloody conspirators in Russia who aspired to disturb the entire world, were indeed quite capable of wanting to take possession of the marvelous instrument of war and victory that Radiant Z might be, in order to turn Europe and Asia upside-down. Their minds and hearts were, therefore, as one with the mind and heart of their leader and friend Leo Saint-Clair—and like Leo, in an atmosphere of intense emotion, they raised their right hands with their arms extended, and pronounced after him the oath that sprang from his entire being: