Sixty-five thousand francs. No more. A year of tranquility, provided Johan did not spend too much money. A year at most, which would begin in a fortnight at the latest. It was the 5th of June; so, on June 20 of the following year, Bansberg's hands had to become acrobatic again. Otherwise, it would be the plunge.
In a fortnight. She knew a jeweler who would buy pearls and diamonds at their fair price. Johan would not know anything; he never opened the coffers. However, perhaps it would be wise to buy fake stones, to replace the real ones ...
It was sad, all the same, to be there! "Sell your jewels", only calamities in three words!
But why not right now? Why differ?
Hey! who knows? In a fortnight, many things can happen!
Indeed. Many things. As, for example, a typewriter of thirteen hundred francs, accompanied by a cash bill. And well before the end of the fifteen days. The next day, in the morning.
A disgrace among them annoyed Johan. His writing kept a despairing awkwardness. It was all right to apply exercises; the elegance of the past did not reappear in the letters he wrote. Weary of fighting, exasperated by a clumsiness that spread the news of his decay everywhere, he had decided to buy a machine.
Mrs. Bansberg bowed under the blow that reached him doubly: Johan avowed himself defeated on one point - bad omen! - finally, the three thousand francs of cash were so well started that it was necessary, without stopping, to sell the jewels. The fifteen days were reduced to a few hours. The expected fifty-two weeks might be reduced to a few days.
When Johan had cloistered herself into the "Hand's Room" with her new acquisition, Katarina dressed to go out, and opened the jewelry chest.
She fumbled, green ...
The chest was sealed on a high ground. She could not see inside. But touch was enough. The jewels were gone.
It was an irreparable misfortune.
Trembling and icy, as if winter had come to besiege her with frost, Katarina, shot down, looked at the sunny window where, like some dark mist, a dreadful shadow was finally dissipating. The ghostly figure, always lined with its incandescent fringe, seemed to cross the window and, crossing it, to evaporate outside ...
Katarina, having recovered, ran to the window. From the balcony, she inspected the facade: a smooth wall. She glanced quickly from all sides, downstairs, upstairs. She questioned the street, the park, the sky, hardly daring to admit that she was trying to catch the flight of an invisible ghost, carrying invisible jewels. She saw only passers-by and swallows.
Then she suddenly felt close to Johan. Like a new lamp, this misfortune which reached them both showed him his love in all its strength. She was aware of her homework. Such a feeling made him cool with indignation.
- Poor Johan! she says.
This was the only expression of his distress.
Stolen! They had stolen their modest treasure! Johan had been robbed of the right to heal in peace, the chance to heal, maybe even ... By the way: values, titles! ...
She seized the keys, played feverishly the secret of the other chest ... (But had not the jewelry chest remained open, had not she found it perfectly closed to the triple secret, like this one??)
The titles were there. All. She counted them and recounted with a hand that was still shaking. Had not the thief had time to consume his larceny? Or did he really want only jewelry? Let's see: in his hurry, he might have left some? ...
She ran her hand through the jewelry chest.
Ah! something, in the background ... A simple piece of card…
Yes, a business card, horny, which carries, written in purplish letters, this unimaginable name: The Scarlet Banner.
The scarlet banner! An association of brigands ... But what brigands? Terrestrial, human? ... Scarlet, exactly, what does that mean? Infrared, ultraviolet, invisible light, X-rays ... Ah! Like the strange treatments of Dr. Petiot and his Luciferian knowledge. In short, the scarlet banner, that would mean: bandits crossing solids, opaque or transparent? Bandits penetrated with dark rays and especially X-rays? Beautiful humbug! ... But the ghost, she had seen it, though! Seen with his own eyes, despite all the rebellious forces of his reason! ...
"Let's take a look," Katarina told herself.
She climbs on a stool, and looks inside the jewel box.
Nothing extraordinary: a banal emptiness, metal surfaces painted red. And not the slightest vestige of jewelry. Stolen, all the pricy trinkets like the necklace of pearls and the pendants of brilliants. We did not leave them anything. It is the gross robbery of a burglar who is all good ...
No. Infrared bandits, accomplices of "Demonoplasm" cannot commit a robbery of this kind. They know what they do. Their purpose is less vulgar.
If they have taken everything, it is to remove the Bansberg any chance to continue calmly, so successfully, the reeducation of the pianist. They wanted not to leave more jewelry in this chest than hopes in Katarina's heart. And what precision in their maneuver! What a ferocious opportunity! Just strike at the psychological moment! Flying at the very moment when the subtracted thing becomes indispensable to the victims of the theft!
These wonderful people must have read Katarina's thought.
"Chance," she thinks, "cannot explain a coincidence so harmful to such considerable interests. But this time, I am afraid! Can we fight against enemies of such power? How are they doing? How is it that a prodigy really happened there in this closet? How strong, resistant jewels could they pass through a safe with triple secrecy? A chest of fire and fire! Thick walls a centimeter! ... »
There is no evidence of break-in. The lid has not been weighed.
The entrance to the lock is intact. The bolt plays freely.
Katarina tries to reason. It is brought back by the hand to the big day of common sense.
Or the chest was the object of a phenomenal visit, or (which is infinitely desirable) it was opened with the help of a key.
A key. A false key or the real key?
A false. Because the real, buried with that of the vault of valuesin the hiding place of the Director office, is absolutely not found. This hiding place is safe, and unless you read in souls ...
So, a fake key. Made by means of an imprint? But no one has been able to break in here. Through the door? The servants are unsuspected, and the house is guarded militarily by Alexander, old hairy who does not joke with the instructions and who, in the absence of his masters, did not suffer from intrusion. By the window? It's impossible, materially impossible, unless you're a spirit ...
True key, false key, it seems that the solution of the enigma is given neither by this false key, nor by this true key. Especially since, true or false, it is not enough to have a key to open this chest. There is still the knowledge of the triple secret! And unless you know the thought ...
But whoever could penetrate the skulls would enter the coffers without the help of a key! ... And then, Katarina has not left the apartment since yesterday, since she opened and closed the jewelry chest. If anyone, if any stranger, if somebody of flesh and bone, of weight, of volume, and of noise had slipped into their home, she would have heard it! ...
And now, by a detour, the exploration of the possible brings Ms. Bansberg to the roundabout of the impossible, to this jagged crossroads where "Demonoplasm" erects its vengeful shadow.
Katarina was there with her thoughts, when she heard Johan leave the "Hand's Room". She quickly closed the two chests and dialed her face.
- You leave? he said to her, seeing her "hat".
- Me? Ah! no, well, it's too late. I did not watch the time. She could not delay the admission of their situation.
But to denounce the flight was useless. Johan would be desperate. The jewels of his wife, he held there, as much as Katarina values. Their disappearance would cause him more sorrow that he had to be spared. And that was easy; for, by the very fact that these jewels were very dear to him, he would not think of pledging them, much less selling them, and one could not fear either that the idea should make him sure
of their presence. nor that he discovered otherwise their absence, since Katarina did not wear them. As for his rings and his tie-pin, they had no commercial value, and it was to be hoped that he would not claim them more in the future than he had hitherto done.
It was enough, then, to tell him that the household's resources were exhausted, and that the time for doing so had come.
But Katarina, having gathered her courage, did not find the firmness necessary to face the scene which such a news would certainly provoke. She sensed a pathetic dialogue, in which it was indispensable that she shows a great deal of serenity. His task was less to announce than to support, less to strike than to succor. She adjourned her to the morrow, feeling that until then there would be trouble in her soul.
Whatever she did, she could not chase away the obsession with "Demonoplasm", and she constantly saw the haughty ghost, coming through the tiles, spreading his hooked hand ringed with amethysts to the cupboard, passing it through the trunk. jewelry and remove it full of jewels.
"Demonoplasm"! She thought she had been delivered, to the point of having ceased all research aiming at her identity. She had thought it was over terrorism, phantasmagoria and signs! After weeks of disappearance, the return of the spectrum alarmed him singularly. And this obsession pursued her so intolerably that, for the first time, she questioned Johan on the subject of the unknown dead.
They were at the table.
This is often where critical conversations engage, because that is where your opponent is best kept. He cannot escape without scandal, to turn away without betraying himself. To invite someone to lunch is to put him under observation. Every dining room is a temporary prison where civility connects diners to the table served.
It is thought that Katarina, on this occasion, displayed all the delicacy and skill that she was capable of, which is saying something.
Having brought her sentence, transitioning in transition, she spoke, as if by chance, of a traveler dressed in white, who had been found dead not far from Johan.
But he, in a detached tone, without seeming at all embarrassed, declared that he did not remember the man in question.
"After all," he added, making the knuckles play with his fingers, "nothing proves that he was not traveling in the same wagon as me; it's possible. I did not move from my corner. When the accident happened, I had just walked down the hall. Maybe that's what saved me, so to speak, he said, looking at his hands. That's when I saw our car shrink like an accordion ... Brrr! let's talk about something else, will you? I have goosebumps when I think about it!
"Lord! prayed Katarina, let it be true! ... Is he sincere? He is neither flushed nor pale; but in a few words, we are far from "Demonoplasm"! If he deceives me, my beloved, my beloved, it is because he has done something involuntary and frightful! Because I see he loves me more than ever, and I know he is incapable of a crime! ... Ah! to know, to know if he hides something from me, or if I am mad with my suppositions! "
They contemplated each other with love. She compared it in itself to "Demonoplasm". What could this pretty little man, sensitive and almost puny, have done to this giant? David would definitely not have been able to stab Goliath with a knife ...
Left alone, Katarina drew from her bosom the map of the scarlet banner. She had insinuated it in this tender hiding place according to the teaching of the theater and the cinema, without knowing, for the rest, that she obeyed an example. In vain had the couturier provided his short skirt and long tunic with gussets. (And God knows that Johan would not have allowed himself to search the pockets of his wife!) No, no, letters, notes and other messages or documents, these are objects that are hidden in her bosom, when we are women and especially when fashion is at the neckline. We do this as naturally as we breathe. It's an acquired reflex.
Throughout the lunch, the poor child had felt the damn card scratching her flesh with her inexorable horn.
The red ink, having rubbed off, bloodied the skin at the place of the heart. Anything other than Katarina would have moved. Anyone else would have seen some new sign. But with her, one could be sure that the belief in the marvelous would never proceed from a simple personal interpretation. Recalcitrant to the supernatural, it was necessary that external facts should have manifested themselves with incredible evidence, so that she would agree to discuss its nature. In contrast to so many humans who see occult interventions everywhere and reject the enlightenment of science or the propositions of common sense, it admits as prodigious only phenomena that are clearly inexplicable by the laws of matter.
But sometimes the most fabulous wonders are hidden under a seemingly innocuous ...
The appearance of the card evoked nothing infernal. This card was not a parchment taken from some newborn boiled in a wizard's cauldron. This aniline ink was not blood. These English characters, written by hand, did not appear traced by a pen of Hell, by means of its longest claw. The card did not smell like sulfur or burnt ...
And yet, by all the gods! this piece of cardboard had gone through a steel armor a centimeter thick! There was no way out of there! And "Demonoplasm" had reappeared before Katarina, leaving her as usual in the throes of mystery and the memory of dread, which is itself a terror! The death of Saint Maur was against her husband, it was certain. Why? Why this grudge from beyond the grave, this posthumous vendetta? Scary problem.
Ah! Earlier, she had raised her tongue to ask Johan if he had seen "Demonoplasm", like her, on the door where the knife was bleeding. But how can one go about asking such a question without revealing anything, without betraying what could frighten the unfortunate?
All this led her to believe that she alone had distinguished the ghost; that her eyes alone knew how to perceive certain clandestine presences, and thus she had a strange superiority over the others, with regard to this adversary.
As well - and that made her smile not without pride - she had played a certain happiness in her dark war against the unknown. At this hour of meditation, she was convinced that she had caught "Demonoplasma" in the act of stealing, and that she had prevented him, by his intervention, from seizing the titles and thus reducing Johan to indigence. Thanks to Katarina, the fantastic burglary had only half been successful. It logically resulted that she had some power over the ghost; that his arrival was an embarrassment for him; or that loneliness was the condition of his omnipotence.
Having recognized it with sagacity, she promised herself to watch jealously on values, and to keep them constantly within her reach, whatever embarrassment she might feel.
10 – THE FALL
The next day.
It was the fatal day of the confession.
Mrs. Bansberg - as we have already seen - knew how to use meals to serve her purposes.
It was at the end of a delicious lunch, washed down with generous wines, that she opened to Johan the sad state of their finances.
She realized the revolution that this report fomented in the dilapidated soul of her husband.
However, he took her hand, and said, her forehead laden with wrinkles:
- I suspected it. I hurried to heal myself. I had only one fright: that you announce the ruin to me before my ... restoration. And here we are! It happened!
But Katarina did not let him dwell on the sadness of the irreparable, and pointed him to action:
"What is done is done," she said. In your opinion, which party to take? Me, I would start by reducing our train and, to ward off the most hurried, I would get rid of some objects ...
Johan, without answering, got up and went to the living room. She followed him there.
The pianist performed Chopin's Nocturne, easy.
It was the game of a good student, who hangs a note here and there.
The trial ended, her eyes questioned Katarina. She was silent.
So, he started a Rubinstein concerto. But he stopped himself on the threshold of difficulties, renouncing the approach to the inaccessible.
"That's not it yet," he said, wiping the sweat from his face.
- It needs patience! Katarina replied bravely. You have already made great progress. Another effort, and in a few months ...
- What to do? he asked, looking lost.
- First, continue with perseverance the rehabilitation of your hands. Then, if you could give some lessons? This would help us win the moment when you resume your concerts ... Your name ...
- Lessons in solfeggio, harmony, then? Because the piano ...
He went down a minor scale, and, striking the tonic:
"So about me," he said. I am still Bansberg, but at an octave below. And his head was a Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows.
Katarina felt the moment when she could no longer restrain her pain. Her smiling mask was getting thinner as she delivered to Johan revelation on revelation. This mask, despite all its energy became transparent. One more second, he would let the truth be seen in tears ...
Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen…. Page 9