Enter the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  The main square of Montbéliard, very picturesque and original in character, is partly bordered on one side by the ancient church of Saint-Martin, now Protestant. It is a beautiful 16th century edifice, the durability of whose interior architecture—especially its ceiling—is much vaunted. It was in front of this building that Leon Saint-Clair brought the sports car to a halt.

  At 3 a.m., however, and in the present circumstances, that halt was not motivated by the picturesque architecture of the ancient church. The friends and the Pole gave no thought to contemplating either façade, which were, in any case, plunged in a darkness that the humble street-lights of the square could not succeed in dispelling. If they were stopping there, it was because someone as waiting for them there. The four young people knew that, Wen having specified that the Colonel had talked on the telephone to the Prefect of Doubs, and that the Prefect had taken care to alert the Adjutant in command of the Montbéliard gendarmerie, that small town being the nearest one to the fallow field in which the black airplane had made a forced landing.

  On the threshold of what would undoubtedly be many very exciting adventures, into which the four young Frenchmen and their Polish companions were now launched, it is important for us to have better descriptions of the physical and moral character of these brave lads.

  Leo Saint-Clair, the Chief, was a tall, handsome fellow with black hair, eyes the color of roasted hazelnuts, and well-defined features that were both delicate and energetic. He was a complete athlete, at least to the extent that his youth permitted. He had a very quick and lively intelligence, a commanding and decisive gaze, indomitable will-power, as much wise prudence as heroic courage, and, to cap it all, a heart of gold. His voice was firm and sonorous, incisive and very virile, clearly authoritative in certain circumstances but soft and jovial when it was time for smiles and serenity. He exercised great prestige over his comrades, by virtue of his personal qualities and the manner in which he carried out the functions of captain at rugby.

  Robert Champeau was rather short, but stocky and thick-set, with a truly exceptional physical strength. Even so, he had considerable manual dexterity, due to the fact that his father had not only made him a nurse of the first order but also a medical and surgical assistant capable, in pressing circumstances, of administering the initial—and often most vital—cares of medicine and surgery. He had bright chestnut-colored hair, grey-blue eyes, and a somewhat angular face, slightly coarse and bad-tempered in appearance, although he too had a very good heart. His voice was a little hoarse, and usually soft and discreet. He was courageous, of course, with a Breton stubbornness that became an invincible obstinacy in grave circumstances. He was bound to Leo Saint-Clair by an affection that dated from their earliest steps, and which was genuinely fraternal.

  René Croqui was of medium height, but he seemed taller because he was thin, gangling and given to gesticulation. Lightly blond, with sparkling black eyes, and a bony oval face, he seemed serious because he habitually maintained a malicious reserve; let off the leash, however, he was a Parisian street-urchin with a mocking voice, a punning, joking hooligan with an inexhaustibly fertile comic imagination. People call him Croquignole, which they pronounced Croquignol!3 He was brave and valiant, but in the most bizarre fashion—which is to say, with the appearances of the most astonishing fearfulness. The fallacious excess of that fearfulness launched him, doubtless by compensation, into the craziest temerities. “Oh, that Croquignol’s a character!” they said of him in the society of young football fans. Yes he was, and no ordinary character.

  As for Jean Degains, he was of indeterminate height, normal corpulence and medium strength, but possessed of marvelous suppleness, agility and dexterity. He had reddish hair, with bright green eyes specked with gold, a long face, and very white skin with a few russet blotches. He joked about himself and did justice to himself at the same time in saying, in a clear and tranquil tone: “I might be carrot-topped but I’m not bone idle.”4 Indeed, no one was quicker than him in coming forward. His mechanical ingenuity, in construction and making repairs, was prodigious, served by a manual skill that continually pushed back the limits of the possible. He was capable of patching up a motor with materials drawn from a sardine tin and opening the most complicated locks with a piece of wire. He had all the courage he needed, but he was cunning above all, either spontaneously and impulsively, or reflectively, calculatedly and very knowledgeably, according to the circumstances.

  That was our quartet.

  As for their companion and auxiliary, Wenceslas Polki, we have already described him as aged 23, but not looking any older than 20, and apt to give himself an art of being even younger. He was small, slender, agile and strong all that the same time, with disheveled blond hair. He had bright blue eyes set in a thin and quite child-like face—and he possessed a well-tempered soul.

  Such were the five bold fellows who, in the pitch dark of the early hours of Thursday March 5, 1912, leapt out of the steel-grey roadster on to the rounded pavement of the main square of Montbéliard.

  Let us add that Saint-Clair, Champeau, Croqui and Degains were dressed in their everyday clothes, with fur-lined leather overcoats; that Wen was wearing a golfing costume with a long, very warm cloak of thick but light cloth; that all of them had fur hats with ear-flaps and thick gloves. And let us note that on leaving the family home, Leo Saint-Clair had said: “We’ll buy clothes and underwear, and whatever else we need, on the way.”

  Of the five young men, only Wen Polki was armed; at his waist, on the right, a little above and behind the fly of his trousers, he had a solidly-mounted leather holster, which contained a Browning loaded with seven bullets.

  As soon as they were out of the car, Leo Sant-Clair ordered: “Champeau, Croqui, Degains, stay here and guard the car. Wen, come with me.” And he set off along a corridor leading to the office of the gendarmerie. A door had already opened, inscribing a rectangle of light on the somber façade of the edifice.

  “Come in, gentlemen,” said a cordial voice with a strong Alsatian accent. “As you can see, you’re expected.” This was Adjutant Mutz, the Commander of the Montbéliard gendarmerie. He did not ask his visitors to sit down when they had shaken his hand. Having closed the door again, he immediately said to the first man to enter: “It’s Monsieur Leo Saint-Clair, isn’t it? Good. Your rooms are ready at the Hôtel du Vieux-Chaudron. You can get a few hours rest. Tomorrow, I think, you’ll be leaving for Switzerland.”

  “For Switzerland?” Leo echoed, in surprise.

  “Yes. This is what I’ve been instructed to tell you, summarizing all the information received since yesterday which is in accord with certain older items of information of which you’ll have the benefit.” He took a deep breath, for he was fat and a trifle asthmatic, then continued: “It’s possible that the black airplane had fled before the north-westerly storm, but having headed north after taking off from Bourg-la-Reine it would have headed east anyway, and then south-east, because it was to Switzerland that Sadi Khan had to go. An engine-breakdown forced the black airplane to land near Montbéliard instead of setting down close to Basle, not far from the Swiss frontier, where accomplices were waiting for it. We know that, and we also know that Sadi Khan and the pilot of the black airplane have taken the train at Belford for Basle. And finally, we know that on the shore of Lake Geneva—on the shore, you understand, near the water’s edge?—in a property whose exact location is unfortunately unknown to us, international, or rather Russo-Asiatic spies, certainly nihilists, have installed their general headquarters. That’s where Sadi Khan and his companion are headed.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going!” exclaimed Saint-Clair.

  “Of course!” said the Adjutant. “Listen to me. For diplomatic reasons, the French and Swiss police are maintaining the greatest caution in this affair, effectively remaining inactive, but you can act. You can go to Switzerland as simple tourists. Your passports are on that table. They bear your true forenames, but they give each of you a false fa
mily name. It’s possible that a Saint-Clair and a Champeau might alert the enemy, but your forenames haven’t been changed, so that you can address one another with all the ease associated with habitual names. Understood? Good! You’ll have carte blanche over here. Are you armed?”

  “No,” Saint-Clair replied, intensely interested.

  “That’s been anticipated. Look over here. These little Brownings in holsters are for you. It’s necessary to conceal the weapons in the right-hand pockets of your trousers, so that they’ll be invisible but within easy reach. I warn you—you’ll have to make use of them! Bah! God is with you, since you’re going up against Sadi Khan. I won’t keep you any longer. You need to rest, and sleep until for least five hours. No one’s any good after a sleepless night.” Accompanying his words with prompt gestures, the adjutant concluded: “Here are the passports, and here are the Brownings. Take them all, Wen. You can divide them up in the car. Ah! The Hôtel du Vieux-Chaudron is at the end of the first street on the left. Comfortable rooms and good beds await you there. Just past the porch there’s a garage that communicates with the interior of the hotel. The night-clerk will open up to you at the first sound of the horn. Adieu, Monsieur Saint-Clair. Au revoir, Wen. And good luck!”

  The entire scene had lasted less than five minutes.

  “Well,” said Leo to his companions before getting back into the car, “Adjutant Mutz doesn’t beat around the bush. He was rapid, precise and clear. I’ll explain everything to you at the hotel.”

  At the hotel, after the explanations, which Champeau, Croqui and Degains greeted with enthusiasm, the four young men and the Pole went to bed. It was now 3:45 a.m. They slept until 9 a.m. At 10 a.m., furnished with their passports, armed and vibrant with hope, they were on their way again.

  On March 5, the weather in the region was fine, cold and dry, with a clear sky and a north wind. The steel-grey sports car sped along the well-maintained road with the wind behind it, at great speed and noiselessly, though Belfort, Delle and across the Franco-Swiss border. The formalities of passing through customs were brief, the passports and the auto-triptych given to them by Adjutant Mutz were perfectly in order.

  They could only travel at moderate speed on the steep and difficult road from Delle to Délémont, where they ate a late lunch; then they went on to Neuchâtel, traveling along the side of the lake, turning toward Lausanne at Yverdon.

  “Finally, we can get on work,” Leo Saint-Clair announced, gravely.

  Wen, who knew Lausanne, pointed out a good second-rate hotel equipped with a garage with closed door. It was the Hôtel du Pélican.

  The four Frenchmen and the Pole took baths there, ate dinner and went to bed, wisely putting off to the next day their first personal investigations of the trail of the Z Projector and its criminal possessor.

  The young men had chosen three rooms with communicating doors, two of them with two beds and the third with only one. The bore the numbers 15, 16 and 17. Leo Saint-Clair and Robert Champeau installed themselves in the first, René Croqui and Jean Degains in the second, and Wenceslas Polki in the third, number 17. Each of the three rooms was equipped with a W.C., but in forming a distinct apartment they only had one bathroom. They were arranged in a straight line, with three third-floor windows on the façade, with a southward view over the wide and beautiful Avenue de la Gare. Their doors, and that of the bathroom, opened on to a corridor, at the far end, as far away as possible from the head of the staircase. They were not very large, but were ingeniously arranged, neat and comfortable; they would have lent themselves to a longer stay.

  On the morning of March 6, Wen was the first to wake up. The two interior doors communicating with the other two rooms had remained open all night. Sufficient dawn light came in through the gap in the casements and shutters, which had been left hygienically ajar, so that the Pole would be able to see what time it was on his watch, placed on the bedside table.

  “Quarter past six!” Wen muttered. “All right. Are they asleep? Yes, probably. One of them is snoring. I’ll get up. I’ll follow up the idea that I had last night. If I succeed, the terrains will be considerably cleared, and I’ll have more chance of a swift enlightenment…and may I be hanged if we aren’t hot on the trail in less than 24 hours.”

  He slid out of bed and went on tiptoe to close the door to the next room, where Croqui and Degains were sleeping like babes. After having opened the shutters wide and closed the casements of his window, he washed rapidly and dressed himself from top to toe. Then he took out a pencil and wrote on his notepad:

  Don’t worry about me. I’ve gone out. If I’m not back by noon, have lunch without me—but afterwards, I beg you to wait for me here, for I’ll need to talk to you as soon as I get back. W.

  He tore off the sheet and attached it to the pillow on his bed with a pin, directly under the beam of the bedside light, which he switched on-and he went out, carefully closing and locking the door to the corridor. He took the key with him.

  The first person to see the piece of paper on the pillow was Jean Degains. Having woken up at 7 a.m., he had chatted briefly with René Croqui, who had also just opened his eyes. They had heard the attenuated voice of Saint-Clair coming from room 15: “Hey! Good morning, friends! Is everyone awake?”

  “Here, yes,” Croqui had replied.

  “Here too, and good morning!” said Robert Champeau, stretching.

  “Oh!” said Degains. “Comrade Wen has closed his door?” He leapt out of bed in his pajamas, bare-footed, went straight to the closed door and opened it. Immediately, he saw the lighted lamp, the empty bed and the pinned sheet of paper. “Oh! Right…he’s gone out!” he muttered. And, accompanied by René, who had got out of bed, Jean went to take the note to the Chief.

  In Room 15, Saint-Clair and Champeau, who were out of bed, were in the process of opening the shutters and closing the windows. A horizontal and oblique sunbeam was gilding the panes, and it was by that joyous light that the four friends, bringing their heads together, read Wen’s note.

  “Very good!” said Saint-Clair. “He knows Lausanne well. He has an idea.”

  “But what about us? What shall we do this morning?”

  “Well, we’re tourists. What do tourists do on the first day? They look around. We’ll simply take the car and go half way around Lake Geneva—and as we have a secret agenda, we’ll take any opportunity to chat to the people we meet, look carefully at slightly isolated private houses…slightly isolated, while being quite close to the water’s edge…”

  “Right!” groaned Champeau. “Good idea—but let’s not waste time. I’ll die of hunger, Leo, if we don’t order breakfast immediately.”

  “Order away!”

  Robert rang. The friends separated in order to wash and dress.

  Two waitresses brought four servings of bread rolls and hot chocolate. They ate with hearty appetites.

  At 8 a.m., they brought the steel-grey roadster out of its box. The courtyard of the communal garage and the private boxes was to the west of the Hôtel du Pélican, separated from the Avenue de la Gare by a high wall and communicating with that avenue by means of a large gate with two wooden battens that moved to the left and right on rollers fitted to iron rails.

  The four friends’ automobile made a sensational exit from this gate; the Touring Club’s triangular flag in the French colors floated from a staff to the left of the windscreen, and the steel-grey sports car, with its long hood, under which the 40 horse-power engine thrummed and roared, had everything needed to attract all gazes, excite curiosity and provoke admiration.

  All of that, a trifle ostentatious, was intentional—for, following the lead of the cunning Degains, they had reasoned as follows: “Let’s not seem to be hiding. On the contrary, let’s make a show of being what we want people to think we are: French sportsmen on a tourist trip by car and on foot. As the names on our passports—the only names by which anyone here know us—can’t give us away, no one will imagine that young men so expansive in every way are
really secret detectives on a counter-espionage mission. Thus, the more we show off, the better masked we shall really be, free to act without provoking the suspicion of anyone we might encounter by chance who has reasons for mistrusting any new face.”

  Leaving the Avenue de la Gare at the first junction to the left, Leo took the automobile along the road to Ouchy, and then headed westwards—which is to say, in the direction of Geneva—on the highway along the shore of the lake.

  It is only 61 kilometers from Lausanne to Geneva but, rolling along at a moderate speed, after the fashion of tourists who do not want to miss any of the countryside, often stopping at sites or viewpoints that were particularly picturesque, the steel-grey roadster took an hour and a half to cover that distance.

  As they came into Geneva, Saint-Clair turned round, for there was nothing they wanted to see in the town. Then he stopped, in a spot without too many houses nearby, to exchange a few words with his friends.

  “Nothing suspect!” he said to Champeau.

  “Nothing,” said Robert.

  They both turned round in order to talk to their comrades over the rear windscreen. “Well?” asked the Chief.

  Croqui and Desgains replied together: “Nothing seen”—but the latter added: “The house in question might have a perfectly innocent appearance, you know. It isn’t some more-or-less remarkable villa that I’d suspect, but rather one that won’t attract any attention in its isolation, and might even be hidden behind a curtain of trees of some sort…”

  “We’ll go back to Lausanne, then,” Saint-Clair concluded. “But let’s come to an agreement. I’ll keep my attention focused on the car. Robert will inspect the right-hand side of the road—the lake side, which has fewer houses. And you two, Jean and René, will observe the left-hand side, the hills. As we came out, we had general views that permitted us to eliminate a priori those villas that are too conspicuous or too luxurious; as we return, our attention should pick up certain details that might have escaped us.”