The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen

by Jean de La Hire

  Noël went pale. “You have no other details?” he said.

  “These are Thoth’s instructions: ‘Greetings. Am with Saint-Clair, dangerous. Put his sister in a safe place and tell African station immediately to post a threat of her death on the esplanade.’ ”

  “Damn!” said Noël, furrowing his brows.

  “You understand now,” Franz insisted. “I know that, as long as she’s in the château, Christiane is, indeed, in a safe place—but we, who know the value of words, also know that, when we receive the order to bring her out, the one to whom we shall deliver her will be implacable, if it is not her own brother…” He paused, and then went on: “Noël, I implore you, remain impassive and cold in her presence. Don’t let yourself be ensnared by the seduction that emanates from that lovely woman. We’re in the hands of the Fifteen; our honor, our fortune, our very lives are in their power. It is necessary to obey, whatever the cost. Be as gallant as you like with Christiane, but when the orders come, whatever they are, carry them out. You know that I love you, Noël, but if you turn traitor, I swear that I’ll stab you to death with my own hand—for I expect more from the Fifteen, for both of us, than they have given until now. Pretty girls like Christiane are innumerable; a colossal fortune and the power of a king are much rarer. I don’t want us to lose the latter because of the former. I’ve said what I had to say; I have faith in your courage, your good sense and your ambition. Au revoir, Noël!”

  “Au revoir, Franz!”

  “You’ll be loyal?”

  “I will.”

  And after a vigorous handshake, the two brothers returned to the middle of the terrace.

  “By the way,” said Noël, “is the Master on Mars?”

  “Yes with the Fifteen and the young women, minus Koynos, whom Saint-Clair forced to remain on Earth, if I’m taking the right inference from Thoth’s message.”

  “Have you read yesterday’s Informateur Astronomique?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Ah, it’s very good! It appears that Camille Flammarion attributes the strange phenomena that astronomers have been observing for some time in the Martian atmosphere to attempts that the Martians are making to communicate with Earth…”

  “I know. Yesterday evening, at a dinner I attended at the Aéro-Club, Monsieur Flammarion explained that theory. He is simultaneously close to the truth and yet far distant from it.”

  “If the Master ever summons us to Mars,” Noël said, laughing, “I’ll go to Paris at top speed to ask Monsieur Flammarion to accompany me…”

  They had arrived beside the airplane.

  “Au revoir, brave Malteste,” said Noël. “Bon voyage, Franz.” And he offered his arm gallantly to Christiane, while Montal and Malteste climbed back into the aircraft.

  Christiane refused the arm with a gesture.

  Almost immediately, the monoplane rolled along the terrace, sprang into the air as if to leap over the parapet and disappeared into the clouds in rapid flight.

  Christiane smiled, and said to Noël, very calmly: “Go ahead, Monsieur. I’ll follow you.” But then, for the first time, the thought of her governess came into the young woman’s mind. “My God!” she said. “Madame Rondu and poor Baptiste will be desperate!”

  “Who is Madame Rondu?” asked Noël de Pierrefort, turning round.

  “She’s my governess, Monsieur.”

  “Don’t worry, Mademoiselle. My brother is a careful man. As soon as he gets back to Paris—which is to say, in two hours—he’ll send Madame Rondu a little note to inform her that you’re not in any danger and that you’re in a safe place.”

  This was said with a sort of bizarre anger, which Christiane noticed, but could not explain. She wiped two tears from the corners of her eyes and, her determination to be strong gradually giving way to her anguish, she followed her enigmatic jailer resignedly and unsteadily.

  VI. The Nyctalope Shows His Mettle

  Twenty-four hours after the moment when, in France, Christiane was imprisoned in the Château de Pierrefort, extraordinary events related to that internment were taking place 1350 leagues away in the heart of Africa, at the point marked on the map by the intersection of the lines of one degree south latitude and 20 degrees east longitude.

  At exactly 9:04 a.m. on October 12, the aeronef Condor, shortly after the frightful explosion of the electric rocket fired by the mysterious airplane, was hurtling towards point directly above the one at which—according to the dying Bastien’s revelations—the Fifteen’s “terrestrial base” was located.

  In the helmsman’s cockpit of the Condor, Klepton was holding the steering-mechanism while Saint-Clair stood with his hands in his pockets, stiff and cold. All his muscles were taut and all his nerves jangling, to an extent that imposes on the entire human organism the kind of immobility that is, by virtue of its own exaggeration, bordering on an epileptic fit. Saint-Clair’s eyes never left the reflective mirrors, especially the one reflecting the surface of the ground.

  The jungle was reflected in that mirror, as if on a cinema screen where a film parades before the eyes of a spectator, supposedly situated in a train, the monotonous or varied terrain of a region traversed. The landscape, seen from above, with its clearings, its ravines, its chaotic rock-strewn regions and its streams, filed across the mirror at the vertiginous speed of 350 kilometers per hour—and although the image was very small, it was marvelously clear and precisely-contoured, as if it were being viewed through the lens of a good telescope. It is true that the atmosphere had a clarity and a purity that day that is very rare even in the tropics.

  Suddenly, Saint-Clair cried: “Stop!”

  Klepton gave the order to stop by telephone—but one cannot simply slam on the brakes of a machine traveling at a speed three times that attained by the fastest express train! When the Condor came to a halt, the mirror no longer reflected that which had provoked Saint-Clair’s cry; there was nothing to be seen but a portion of forest.

  “Let’s turn round,” said the Nyctalope. “Descend to 500 meters and proceed at no more than 20 kilometers an hour.”

  Klepton ordered and completed the necessary maneuvers. First, the aeronef made a rapid vertical descent, like a bird allowing itself to fall, to 500 meters. Then, slowly, it retraced the direction of its fight.

  A quarter of an hour went by.

  “Stop!” cried Saint-Clair again.

  Immediately, the Condor was immobilized, hovering—and the two men, anxiously leaning over the mirror, looked in bewilderment at an inordinate deception…

  The mirror reflected a sort of empty esplanade, surrounded by the huddled trees of the jungle. There was no habitation, no excavation—nothing but flat, bare, deserted space, like an immense landing-ground.

  “What’s that for?” Saint-Clair murmured.

  “And that pylon in the middle, whose pinnacle, if I’m judging the projection right, is scarcely 200 meters below the Condor?” said Klepton.

  “Yes—but look closer. Doesn’t it seem to you that those wires, probably metallic, connect the pylon to the esplanade?”

  “Wait! Indeed. So it’s a radiotelegraph pylon, then?”

  “Fantastic! Are the station’s buildings underground, then? They must be underneath the esplanade, Klepton. We have to go further down, to look more closely. That solitude that calm… Whatever the danger that threatens us, Klepton, we have to go down, because…” But his voice caught in his throat. A cold sweat sprang from the pores of his forehead, and his eyelids fluttered. Leaning on the shoulder of the petrified Klepton, he said: “Do you see what I see, my friend, or am I mad?”

  “Yes, yes, I see… Your sister?”

  “Oh, the bandits!” howled Saint-Clair. Wide and bulging, his eyes devoured the spectacle that the mirror presented to him.

  A phenomenon, inexplicable for the moment but incontestably real, had just appeared on the Sun-bleached esplanade: a square cavity had suddenly opened up, as if a piece of the esplanade had sunk downwards, and in that cavity, dar
kened by the shadow of its walls, luminous letters were shining—shining still—similar to those electric advertisements that illuminate the roofs and facades of buildings in civilized towns. And these letters, blood-red in the amber of the cavity, formed these inconceivable but perfectly readable words:

  Christiane has been a prisoner of the XV since yesterday. If the Condor descends to an altitude less than 500 meters, she will die.

  Five minutes—five years for the Nyctalope—went by without his eyes being able to tear themselves away from that fateful threat. Then the letters suddenly disappeared.

  “Ah!” cried Saint-Clair and Klepton, in unison.

  In the dark square hole, however, other letters immediately appeared:

  If Saint-Clair makes the slightest move against the pylon before October 18, Christiane will die.

  Five more interminable minutes passed—and the second advertisement was abruptly extinguished. The square vanished abruptly, leaving the extensive esplanade empty and bare, save for the pylon projecting from it, in the dazzling white solar light.

  Only then did Saint-Clair and Klepton think to look at one another. They were as pale as cadavers, and their bulging eyes testified to their tyrannical dread. On seeing one another, however, they recovered consciousness of themselves. First, Saint-Clair made an effort of will, which was so terrible that tears came into his eyes. The Nyctalope weeping! Klepton was distressed by that. Caught by the same impulse, the two men fell into one another’s arms and hugged one another.

  Immediately afterwards, thanks to their strength of character, they were cool and calm.

  “What do you think, my friend?” said Klepton.

  “I think,” Saint-Clair replied, in a clear voice, “that this mysterious station must be in my power before October 18, and that I must know how the Fifteen travel from here to Mars.”

  “You have a sister, my friend.”

  “Yes, Klepton—and I love her more than anything in the world. Oh, if one single hair falls from her head…! But my fiancée and 14 other young women as innocent as my sister are out there, in the unknown. I have a duty to Xavière as well as to Christiane…”

  “Well, in that case…”

  “Right—climb back to 3000 meters. Obey these infernal Fifteen. They’re stronger than us, but I’ll be cleverer than them. Ascend to 3000 meters, Klepton; let’s meet in council; I’ll make my decision known. But how can they know here, beneath us, that I am in this aeronef? How did they know in Paris that I was coming, so that they could kidnap Christiane yesterday? Klepton, I have been betrayed in Palma by a man who has the genius of intuition, and an exchange of radiotelegrams. Imagine the formidable power, the prodigious organization of these men who, although they are on Mars, are nevertheless served on Earth with such intelligence, such promptitude, such implacable force. They must have affiliates everywhere. Their orders are transmitted, understood and carried out with lightning rapidity. Ah! I’d give my life to triumph over them just once—but Christiane shall not die, Klepton. No! She shall not die, because we shall obey!”

  “We’re hovering at 3000 meters,” said the engineer, simply, having ordered and carried out the necessary maneuvers during this impassioned monologue.

  “That’s good!” said the Nyctalope, with a shudder, as if he were waking from a dream. “Let’s go to the chart-room.”

  As they walked, he murmured: “By whom were we betrayed in Palma, though? For it must have been in Palma… It could not have been elsewhere. Ah! I have it!” He struck his forehead and turned round to face Klepton, who was following him. “My friend,” he said, “if I remember correctly, Monsieur Flammarion is in the forward observation-post. Would you ask him to take part in the council?”

  “But my friend, do you think the Admiral…?”

  “Please, Klepton.”

  That was peremptory. His heart stirred by a terrible presentiment, the engineer obeyed and went to the forward observation-post while Saint-Clair went to the chart-room.

  Klepton was not long delayed in returning, accompanied by Camille Flammarion, the Admiral and Ensign Damprich. They found the Nyctalope standing in the chart-room. Scarcely had they entered and closed the door when Saint-Clair, with a solemn authority in his words and gesture, pronounced these words, the last sentence of which stupefied every member of the audience, for different reasons: “Would you like to sit down, Admiral, Damprich and you, Klepton. You shall be the tribunal. For my part, I am the prosecutor! As for you, Monsieur Flammarion, you are the accused—remain standing!”

  All eyes were turned to the illustrious astronomer, and for 20 seconds, all of them wondered whether Saint-Clair had gone mad. Flammarion was a living statue of astonishment. “Monsieur,” he said, “I don’t understand.”

  But Saint-Clair made a curt gesture and, addressing the Admiral, Damprich and Klepton, who had just at down, said: “Gentlemen, you have seen the threats in letters of fire made to me by the mysterious inhabitants of the subterranean dwellings hidden by that esplanade. You saw them as I did, didn’t you?”

  Saint-Clair was speaking in a calm voice, but in a tone as dry and trenchant as a guillotine. His strange eyes were flashing, and a tremor agitated his wiry hands. Erect and tall, the Nyctalope was terrible. The three men replied affirmatively with brief movements of the head. They were anxious and apprehensive, with an obscure anguish as to what was happening.

  “Well,” Saint Clair went on, “those threats and all the actions and facts they necessitated, were only possible because a traitor in Palma knew my plans and extrapolated the consequences of their eventual execution. Now, in Palma, I only mentioned my plans to Monsieur Klepton and Monsieur Flammarion. The former is above suspicion. There remains…” And, turning to the astronomer, Saint-Clair said: “Monsieur, I accuse you of being affiliated to the Society of Fifteen. I accuse you of having—when you went, according to you, to send a telegram to Madame Flammarion—alerted one of your associates in Paris at the same time.”

  There was a silence charged with surprise, amazement, suspicion and anger. But Flammarion replied, calmly: “Monsieur, first I was annoyed. Now I am desolate, because what you have just seen has evidently struck you so hard as to weaken your…”

  A gesture from Klepton cut the sentence short, though—and the Condor’s inventor, very pale, spat out these words: “What proof do we have that Monsieur is the astronomer Flammarion?”

  Saint-Clair threw up his arms violently. “Ah!” he cried. “Thank you, Klepton! You’ve put your finger on it!”

  He leapt forward—and before his victim had time to put up any defense, Saint-Clair had knocked him down and knelt beside him. Almost immediately, he got up again and placed a white wig on the table. Then, taking a revolver from his pocket, he said, in a sneering tone: “Get up, Monsieur. Klepton, do me the favor of going to look for a cloth and some water. Monsieur will take off his make-up and show us his true face.”

  Klepton went out at a run. The Admiral and Damprich stood up, staring with surprise and some anxiety at the unknown man who got to his feet and darted a glance at Saint-Clair that was still challenging.

  “Well played, Monsieur,” said the Nyctalope, aiming his revolver, “but you’re truly of much too dangerous a species for me to disdain the most infantile precautions, so excuse the revolver. It won’t release its bullets unless you make the slightest move towards your pockets…”

  Klepton came back in. He put a carafe, a bowl and a napkin on the table. Without hesitation, the unknown man tipped the water into the bowl, moistened the napkin and rubbed his face and neck vigorously. When he replaced the soiled cloth on the table, the wrinkles and the colors of his face had vanished. His eyebrows and moustache had darkened and he presented the image of a man of about 35, with strong stern features.

  Not a word had been spoken while this bizarre transformation was accomplished. Klepton had sat down to the Admiral’s left. Saint-Clair used his foot to push a chair between the Admiral and Klepton and sat down. The entire
width of the table separated the seated judges from the accused, who was still standing.

  “Monsieur,” said Saint-Clair, all of whose severe calmness had returned, “will you consent to answer our questions?”

  “Willingly, Monsieur,” said the unknown man. “It’s been a long time since I swore an oath to the Fifteen upon my very life. I could keep silent and you would kill me, as you will doubtless kill me when I have talked, but I wouldn’t like to leave all your questions unanswered. Interrogate me, then; I shall punish myself by admitting that I have not played my part so well as to have done me the honor of avoiding your suspicions…” This was reeled off in a tranquil voice, with an attitude of noble simplicity.

  “Strong men!” murmured the Admiral.

  “Indeed!” said Saint-Clair. “It will be difficult to defeat them, but we’ll get there.”

  The unknown man shrugged his shoulders slightly, and a skeptical smile strayed across his lips.

  “Who are you, Monsieur?” the Nyctalope asked.

  “I am Thoth, the Fifteen’s principal agent in Europe.”

  “Are you one of the Fifteen?”

  “No. Affiliation to the Supreme Council of Fifteen can only take place by succession, following disgrace or death, and none of the Fifteen had so far died or been disgraced.”

  “Tell us what this Supreme Council of Fifteen is, what its purpose is, its organization.”

  “Futile!” Thoth interrupted. “I will not answer questions of that sort.”

  Saint-Clair made a gesture of annoyance and he lifted his revolver slightly, but he lowered it again when he saw Thoth smile scornfully.

  “What sort of questions will you answer, then?”

  “That’s a good point,” Thoth riposted, insouciantly. “I’ve given in to a perfectly natural pride to demonstrate my courage—excuse me, that was a weakness. I shan’t answer any more. Even so, in order to clarify one obscure point of the adventure, and so that you will be less humiliated by your mistake, gentlemen, let me tell you that, in my travels through Europe, the appearance of the astronomer Monsieur Flammarion is the one I adopt most often. The similar shape of our faces and the identical color of our eyes renders the transformation facile, and others better prepared than you, who know the astronomer personally, have been taken in just as you have. That said, gentlemen, I shall now shut up!”